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Laptops · Apple MacBook Pro

Apple MacBook Pro Intel

27owners with an opinion
39%of verdicts positive
8/12positive/negative since 2024
7 yrslongest happy owner
2happy after 3+ years

Praised for battery and reliability; criticized for performance.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 7 years
Their machines have always lasted. I bought a refurbished Intel Macbook Pro 13" for personal use in 2015, and kept it for 7 years (I did replace the battery with an iFixit kit along the way). I only upgraded because I figured there's no way I would tell people I work with professionally to depend on hardware that old, so in later 2022 I replaced it with a refurbished M1 MBP 13" which I'm still using and have no plans to replace any time soon.
Likes itOwned 5 years
i buy used everything these days unless i have a business need when it comes to electronics. i still use m1 max 32gb which i got last year. i got it for $899. it replaced a intel mbp which had served me well for 5 years. i use an iphone 15. idk i mean i have money so im not broke or poor. but you can bet your ass even if i had more, like $100 billion or whatever, i am STILL NOT going to drop $2k on something if its not going to make a meaningfully life changing different in my life. it’s just a phone made for doing the Least Common Denominator type shit. like calling and texting or doom scrolling a bit consumerism is for losers. no shame in that. i rather just collect the money via my indirect investments including in apple if others want to blow their money tho! i can spend it on something actually unique and interesting :) like high end audiophile earbuds which sound amazing but are brittle and have issues. so i’ll buy 2-3 pairs of those while one of them is under repair :)
Doesn’t like itOwned 5 years
I had the 8Gb MBP. I bought it the day they were released so it arrived on launch day. Because of the holidays we had extended return window, so we could use it until January 15th before returning it. I used it that whole time and fell in love with the computer, but returned it for the 16Gb model. But not for the reasons you would expect. I originally bought the 13" MBP on M1 because I was in desperate need of a new laptop. I previously had a maxed out 16" MBP that cost me around $3,500. I had used it for about 5 years and was looking to replace it. But Apple's systems were in flux and I didn't want to drop $3,500 again on an intel macbook right as they were going out of production. So when I saw the new M1 macs released, I decided to buy the $1,200 13" MBP with 8Gb of RAM and a 256HDD. Just the base model. The idea was that I would use this computer for a year, until Apple released the 16 inch "big boy" models. Then I would sell the 13 inch and get the real 16 inch that I was waiting for. But when I got my new mac in November, I started using it and was just so amazed by the performance that I realized it could do what I was asking it to do, plus I loved the size, the epic battery life, and the no fan noise. I essentially fell in love with that computer. When I went back to my 16" macbook it felt so large and heavy, I wanted nothing to do with it. Even if Apple fixes the fan noise (that the 16" is horrible with) and the battery life, I still hate the size. I had truly fallen
Doesn’t like itOwned 4.4 years
I was pretty careful with my 4.4yr old Intel MBP, nearly always using Charge Limiter to max at 80% or so. It's at 500 cycles now, the battery has been declaring it recommends service for a year, and taking it out to cafes limits my work time to maybe 3 hours max (starting at 80%). There were at least one or two occasions where it 'cooked' itself to death inside my backpack though, when it didn't sleep on lid close as expected. Not sure how big an impact charge limiting has made (is my battery life better? did I avoid pillowing?). Or the self-cooking. But that has been the life of this computer.
Doesn’t like itOwned 2 years
> Gamers and power users of course shunned them for so long saying, "you could get a better laptop for half the price!" but it's a testament to how good the build quality was that the full force of tech enthusiasts telling everyone not to buy it wasn't enough to sway people away. I've had two Intel MBP cook themselves to death within two years. The best laptop I've ever used was an Thinkpad X1 Carbon and I'll die on that hill - I find that Apple's build quality for a lot of stuff is ridiculously overrated and on-par with PCs that cost similarly. The lack of cooling is awful and the extra survivability of MacBooks is helped a lot by their status as shiny prestigious toys for people who don't care that much about using their computers. Obviously plenty of people get real work done on them, but I'm not sure that they're actually more reliable for the price.
Likes it
Yeah, I am quite sad that I am packing up and shipping off my nifty little Intel MacBook Pro and for the first time ever, I'm wondering if I can do without a Mac, not even really wanting one.... the one form factor which sort of appeals is a Wacom Movink 13 w/ a Mac Mini (but I hate that the screen is so low resolution and none of the Cintiq Pros use the same stylus as my other stylus devices (Kindle Coloursoft, Samsung Galaxy Note and Book)
Doesn’t like it
In my experience, Intel Macs have always been that way. Every one I had was uncomfortably hot. My work Intel MBP’s fans would runs constantly, because everything would send its CPU through the roof. I always felt like I had to treat them with kid gloves to avoid the CPU running away on me. Webex meetings and screen sharing would always spike my CPU and make everything unusable. I’d have to stop sharing to actually do what I was trying to show someone. All this was before Apple Silicon even released, when Intel was the preferred chip. It was garbage. This never happens anymore with the M1 Pro MBPs I have. I’ve never heard the fan spin up on my work MBP. I have heard it on my personal one, but I was actually pushing it, it wasn’t a random runaway process doing it, as was common on Intel. I’d take a modern MacBook Air over the highest spec’d Intel Mac Apple ever made.
Doesn’t like it
I love the Lightning connector, and think it feels better than USB-C. My Intel MPB has terrible USB-C ports where the cables just fall out all the time. But to be fair I've also had many issues with Lightning. A few shorted out and became unusable and burnt on one side. And those were 100% original bought in the Apple store, as were the 5W chargers and iPhone this happened with. Knockoffs were generally terrible and might stop working. A "genuine" cable bought from big retailer turned out to be a knockoff once after a software update, resulting in annoying popups from Apple. And some knockoffs were so bad they didn't stay in. Even certified Mfi ones from Belkin somehow felt different, like the tolerances were slightly off. Those worked though. Overall, I think it's had a good run and was underrated as a connector physically, but on the whole I like USB-C and it's more open ecosystem more.
Doesn’t like it
I like thinkpads and use my x220 from 2012 or what is it quite a lot. For my work, it beat my mbp 16' intel one I had in 2019 on just feeling faster (with Linux). But the apple silicon airs (for me airs: pros are just too bulky) ones are not beaten at the moment. And I try a lot as I really want to run Linux and not mac os x. But there is nothing better for many reasons (most mentioned here and yeah I could care less about the sound). I sponsor asahi linux for that reason. If Chinese vendors would be smart, they would open up whatever hardware they ship and get all geeks on board which pushes the rest. They are not though so for now, it's macbook airs for me. Hoping for Frame.work to get there though.
Neutral
> Macos has no support for a second monitor This is factually inaccurate. It's perhaps true on the Air and base model Pro, but not the others. I hate on Apple's bs all the time, but it seems like the reality in your situation is that you got nearly the cheapest mac laptop 5 years ago, with a shitty screen, bumped the ram, and you're doing just fine still, except for some esoteric limitations that I just factored into my budget when buying one recently and aren't blocked by, namely external monitor support without MST. I didn't get that computer at that time because of some of those limitations, sticking with my prior intel 13" until last year, until I finally convinced myself it was time. Doesn't mean they aren't worth complaining about though, I think 5 years on an Air is pretty good, they've always favored mobile utility over stationary excellence
Likes it
I've used an Intel MBP for a few years and now an M2 MBP for a few more. I've always had extremely stellar standby battery life. That is, until a few months ago. Now I get home and my backpack is warm from my MBP turning on while sitting in my backpack. This is the one biggest thing I loved Apple hardware for over Windows laptops.
Neutral
~ > time bb -e '(println "Hello World")' Hello World bb -e '(println "Hello World")' 0.01s user 0.03s system 18% cpu 0.212 total bb is Babashka: a pre-compiled (using Graal), interpreted, scripting language version of Clojure. In terms of realistic work: ~/workspaces/github/pedestal/tests > time clj -X:test {:in user/eval2321, :line 13, :thread "main", :dev-mode? false} Running tests in #{"test"} ... Testing io.pedestal.test-test Ran 391 tests containing 1180 assertions. 0 failures, 0 errors. clj -X:test 30.15s user 2.04s system 203% cpu 15.838 total ~/workspaces/github/pedestal/tests > java -version openjdk version "23.0.2" 2025-01-21 OpenJDK Runtime Environment Corretto-23.0.2.7.1 (build 23.0.2+7-FR) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Corretto-23.0.2.7.1 (build 23.0.2+7-FR, mixed mode, sharing) That's on my Intel MacBook Pro. Pedestal's test suite loads a good amount of Java classes and Clojure namespaces. To make things faster, there's ahead-of-time compilation (which basically captures the read-eval-create-bytecode part of loading a Clojure namespace as Java .class files that can be packaged into your app).
Doesn’t like it
Plus, the reduced power consumption and battery life extension is insanely good now. Whereas I could only get an hour and a half from an Intel MacBook Pro, I can now get over a days use out of the M4. I have not been affected by the lack of “legacy” software support and I am more than happy to have this tradeoff.
Doesn’t like it
> Apple's offfensive pricing on SSD and RAM upgrades are the one that offends me the most. I feel like I'm being scammed everytime I look at spec'ing up a new Macbook. Which is completley different to the feeling I got when ordering a new Framework 13" for school use! I've been holding out with my 13" Intel MBP for that reason, I guess until the wheels fall off. Thankfully they don't really verify the education purchase program.
Likes it
I feel like manufacturers still haven't cracked the 3+ monitor code. My ThinkPad T500 could output to three monitors, way back in 2009 - but you needed to disable Windows' driver signing, and run a custom, patched video driver. Linux on the other hand supported it natively, but you lost the ability to switch between the Intel and AMD graphics cards - it did this by running one display off the Intel card. Luckily, my daily driver (ThinkPad T460p) outputs to three monitors just fine. At work, I've specifically requested that I keep my circa-2019 Intel MBP, because it can support three monitors, but at least one of them must be DisplayPort. They're now giving out MBPs with the M2 Pro, but these only support two external monitors at all, and that's a dealbreaker for me.
Likes it
My previous Intel MBP which I've used for every day charging to 100% and discharging to 20% or so has 600 cycles now, battery health is at 81% and has been hovering there. It's still fine, but my point is if you think of relying on applecare+ to replace your dead battery, they will only do so if it's under 80% reported health and my conspiracy is that there's some reported value stickiness around 80%, it will have to be really bad for it to go below, and without it going below no applecare+ replacement.
Doesn’t like it
Great project, it's nice to see so many people are building stuff with Gaussian Splatting. Just the other day I went through the whole list of known viewers on MrNeRF's awesome 3DGS resources, to find one that runs on a MacBook. I'm working on compressing 3D scenes by sorting Gaussians into 2D grids [0], and I wanted a native viewer that I could for experiments on the go.. perhaps as an alternative backend to the CUDA one in my colleague's exploratory Python viewer [1]. VulkanSplatting was the only one I could get to compile and run on my Intel MacBook. Unfortunately the feeble Intel GPU isn't able to display even the Lego scene at an interactive framerate. Do you think there's performance headroom, and that it will become possible in the future, or should I give up trying to run this on an Intel MBP? [0]: https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/Self-Organizing-Gaussians/ [1]: https://github.com/Florian-Barthel/gaussian_viewer
Likes it
I end up forgetting my charger when I go on trips because 99% of the time when I unplug my laptop at home (to use in a different room), I never need the charge cable. It used to be 50% of the time I'd take the cable with me, so I could be somewhere else for 2+ hours. Now I so rarely bring the charger that it just doesn't even occur to me when I'm unplugging the thing to pack. It's night-and-day compared to the Intel MBPs.
Likes it
Have you ever used a Apple computer for long, like 1-3 months? I ask because I used to be like you, calling Apple users "fanboys", throwing hard data from benchmarks in discussions, being proud of my true h4ck0rz Linux installation on a IBM ThinkPad for work that was a pain in the ass to maintain in working state, had to stop updating after too many hours spent troubleshooting. Or relegate myself to working in Windows on ThinkPads. Until one day I begrudgingly accepted a Intel MBP at a new job some 15 years ago, I was going to install Linux on it anyway so didn't care. Started using macOS in the meantime, it had the shell utilities I needed so I kept using it while checking how you install some Linux on it, the UI worked flawlessly, the OS was a breeze to learn, after a few months I had barely had to troubleshoot anything, I'd just turn it on and work. I never went back, I want my tools to work well and found a tool that worked much better than anything else I had used before. When something better shows up I'll be very excited to try, unfortunately nothing in the past 15 years has changed my mind. Not everyone likes it, and that's ok, but calling satisfied customers "fanboys" is a tad bit immature. The product works, and works well.
Doesn’t like it
I also had hell even with an Intel Macbook Pro. This whole just works thing Apple has been able to project is unfortunate. I have refused using Apple products from work because of how poorly their products integrate. It's not Dell. It's Apple. Any other monitor manufacturer will have the same issues. Apple also refuses to implement a protocol that allows controlling the brightness and volume of a non-Apple monitor from the keyboard or even macOS itself. It's infuriating. The only monitors it works with are Apple's and the two overpriced Apple-sanctioned LG monitors sold in the Apple Store.
Likes it
I'm not a _huge_ gamer, but I've been very happy with my MacBook Pro (I have the 16" Intel one) + GeForce Now for me ~1-2x per week gaming sessions. There are other similar cloud gaming services if GeForce Now doesn't have what you want. Caveats: wifi can work okay if you're close, connect with 5GHz, etc., but an actual ethernet cable works way better. The latency is good enough for me, but again: I don't game that much and I'm certainly not good enough at e.g. Apex for the latency to be the primary factor in why I lose :)
Doesn’t like it
I found the MBP 16 Intel version to be the worst macbook they have made. Great screen, but everything else wasn't worth the money. They also introduced a crazy bug which when you plug in a USBC charging cable you can twig the temperature sensor on the macbook sending the whole CPU to 100% and it was a software issue not a hardware issue. Still not fixed. I intend to get the nex M1X for the simple reason that it will be better integrated with the mac's and OS. I don't love Apple, but I consider them to make the best laptop so i'll be excited to see what they release on monday.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
For those that read the article and are still confused (as I was) about what Apple hardware would give you the full 10GbE speeds: - 10GbE Thunderbolt adapter is still the best. Full symmetrical 10GbE on laptops as far back as the 2018 MacBook Pro 13" (Intel) and every laptop since. Including the Airs starting with the M1 chip (Not sure about Neo). - No Apple hardware supports the 3.2 v2x2 standard (20Gbps) and your connection will be downgraded to 10Gbps on these RTL8159 chips. Because of processing overhead, you will only get 5-7Gbps of total Ethernet throughput. - Upgraded Mac Mini or Apple Studio base models have builtin 10GbE ports For now, thunderbolt adapters are still the most reliable 10GbE for Apple laptops.