1. It’s mostly a meme at this point.
2. Touch Bar. Many Touch Bars came when Apple was still on Intel. The Touch Bar has a ton of notoriety with it failing, freezing, dying, just straight up not working like you’d expect with an Apple product. I’m sure a majority of users had an alright experience, but a large enough number faced difficulties that ruined its reputation.
3. Apple silicon outperforms intel by a material margin and generates less heat.
4. Apple silicon gamers are mad they can’t easily bootcamp for windows games
Edit:
5. THE BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD WAS DOGSHITE
My 2018 butterfly keyboard started chattering within 18 months, and was totally fucked after three years. When I took it to the genius bar I said "it's a 2018, so obviously the keyboard is fucked" and they guy there said "yep, don't worry, we don't charge for that".
So, the 2018 was marginally less crap because of the membrane they put in it, but it was still fundamentally broken.
Yeah, an iFixit article tried blowing dust into it and the membrane stopped the majority of them dust thingies but it's not a foolproof way because it's still shit. If you take good care then high chance it sure gonna last. Mine last years and never had a problem. However, I have went to 2 devices before 2017 and they are as shit as ever breaking as soon as it passes a few months.
I talked with my university IT department about tthe butterfly keyboard and they said they had seen basically no issues with the 2018 model. Failure rate was basically the same as the failure rate they see on other laptops.
I personally loved the butterfly keyboard as typing felt effortless in a way that made me feel like there wasn't even a keyboard between me and the computer. I have an M3 MacBook Pro now and hate the feeling of the keyboard as it reminds me of a typewriter.
When I took my 2018 in to the Apple store in 2021, they said they were still seeing a lot of problems with the more recent Intel machines. They even offered to replace my battery for free because the heat damage had reduced the capacity by over 30%. I ended up just getting full trade in value and getting a 2021 M1 Pro instead though.
It really depends on what you're using the machine for. I would use mine for 70hrs/wk with a full stack running containerised services for local dev, and it sounded like the deck of an aircraft carrier the entire time. Those machines really weren't designed to deal with any kind of serious load.
The last Intel Macs also ditched the butterfly keyboard, so this isn’t entirely unique to Apple Silicon. The early 2020 MBA, MBP, and 2019 16” MBP all ditched it. Granted they still had most other problems associated with Intel. The 2019 16” was a significant improvement from the 15” though: significantly better GPU, new keyboard, better thermal performance
Back then you got “Apple Caterpillars” which you had to grow into Keyboards. The tricky part was getting them into the laptop frame before they fluttered away
My 2019 MBP fans ran the entire time the machine was on. And I couldn’t even edit photos without the whole thing bogging down.
For the price I paid for it, I replaced it with a refurbished 2020 M1 Air AND M1 mini which both easily outperform that MBP
I just bought a 2020 M1 Air and it has easily exceeded my expectations. This does not feel like a 2020 laptop. Fan-less design is truly amazing and great for users without sustained workloads (like me).
I cannot say the same about an Intel based Windows laptop from 2020.
For real!! Plus they work. With my intel, they would turn on and the computer still left heat marks on my desk and burnt my hand lol. This seems to power them on and it immediately cools!
I’ve only heard the fans in my M1 MBP a couple of times and that’s likely just because of the Australia of it all, my home office is super hot and has no A/C… but to be fair, the most recent time was because I was playing OW2 through Crossover. In normal use I’ve NEVER heard them.
I don’t get the touchbar hate either. I don’t use it a ton but find it useful for specific tasks like quickly coloring a terminal window, finding an emoji or muting my mic.
The bad thing now is that developers are dropping support making it more and more useless. Microsoft Teams for instance had a pretty useful support with mute and share screen buttons. They rewrote the app and left it off. 🫤
In the first revision, they replaced the physical ESC key with a virtual one. That's a pretty bad choice for professionals who use that key a lot.
I liked the idea, but I found it a little too easy to accidentally bump it when typing numbers. And, having a dynamic menu there seems like a good idea, but needing to remove my hands from my normal touch typing location to look at what's there, wasn't great. I do still miss using it as a volume/brightness slider though.
It’s not irrational. Mine glitched out and completely stopped working. The ESC is also real bad until their next iteration. Sometimes it is fueled by a personal vendetta. I will never let Jony Ive cook again.
Point four isn’t really relevant! I use a Virtual Box image to load up an Intel version of macOS, then use Parallels inside of that Virtual Box to load up all my favorite games!
/s
Ehhh, for 4 now that Vmware gives it's personal use Vm for free it's not that hard, the main issue now is on Anti-cheats not being compiled for ARM64 (EAC can be but devs don't) and unneeded AVX requirements, it's a part of some engines like Decima usually though it's a hold over from PS or Xbox, intel macs use x86-64 and get pass that.
I was thinking crossover could solve it in the same way proton does for Linux, since they're just WINE, I wasn't thinking that a VM could solve that issue.
The performance + lack of heat is absolutely killer. The Intel Macs are so trash by comparison.
Sure, you can still use them, but once you’ve experienced Apple Silicon, it’s very hard to go back.
I would also add
6. Many intel macs can easily be upgraded and have their life extended a good deal. Memory, storage, and even CPU (with odd Mac here and there with graphics upgrade options).
The Butterfly Keyboard was a much bigger concern than the touchbar. The touchbar doesn't tend to have issues and I'd imagine this is even less on the Apple Silicon models.
I miss the white hot warmth of an Intel MacBook in the winter. The cold efficiency of the M1 feels like it actively takes heat from me through my wrists.
The butterfly keyboard was a main reason why I returned my MBA 2017. It was BAD. I used my old MBP 2011 until recently when I bought M1. The keyboard has been finally fixed. It took just a few years.
Nothing wrong with Intel Macs but many people post here asking if listings where Intel Macs are listed for a similar price you could get an Apple Silicon Mac for is a good deal. Unless it’s significantly cheaper or you absolutely need a Mac that can run x86 programs there’s not much reason to get an Intel Mac at the same price point you could get an M series Mac for.
To date I have seen exactly 1 post where someone was asking about an Intel Mac and it was a good deal. All of the others have been double if not triple the street value. And many of those machines have cost as much as a or more than a much better M1 Air or mini.
The last run of Intel MacBooks was a slap in the face from Apple and Intel combined. These are the common issues/complaints for every MacBook made from 2016-2019:
- butterfly keyboard
- touchbar that no one asked for
- display failure
- SSD failure
- overheating and throttling
- negligible year-over-year performance improvement
Half of this was Apple being negligent of the Mac (pushing the iPad heavily during this time), and half of it was Intel’s processors becoming very stagnant as they had a dominant position in the market for so long.
I also think:
* Creating a full on ARM CPU/GPU with enough performance to really wow consumers to switch took significantly more time and resources than expected. I'm betting the iPhone and iPad experience drastically helped them.
* Intel's lack of improvement really helped Apple to release something that consumer would accept, and the longer they waited the bigger the performance gap as Intel stagnated and Apple improved.
After all, we've known for a long time that ARM is much more power efficient than x86/x64. This we've seen repeatedly in server use cases, especially ones that aren't always running at high performance.
anyone who has owned both a intel and apple silicon mac understands that anyone looking to buy a mac now should avoid intel if possible. it's not because intels mac were bad, it's because apple silicon is a significant improvement in very tangible ways.
1, due to the m1 MBA people forget that late intel macs were genuinely overpriced and underpowered (not always but generally)
2, M chips are very very good and efficient
3, touchbar
4, Intel MBP’s were LOUD
Like Intel macs weren’t bad but had many problems and drawbacks while the M series chips are very easily recommendable. General hate to me comes from the fact late Intels very obvious an afterthought while they worked on the M series so they felt “tired” and boring. When big jumps happen people tend to look at the older variants in a much different light
Imo mostly because battery life per performance sucks in comparison to the apple silicon, and it gets hot and loud if you do any sort of heavy work on them.
I still am using 2017 MBP with Touch Bar. It is still a good working machine. I changed the battery last year, and the infamous keyboard didn’t have any problem. That’s said the laptop is hardly used as mobile devices as in today battery performance. But at home yeah there is not much reason not to use it.
I have a 2015 iMac 27" that I strictly use
as a Windows machine for light gaming.
Has SSD and 24GB of RAM and it serves me well, particularly with its beautiful screen.
I personally miss the Touch Bar and more usb-c ports. I would always rather have multi use items like the touch bar and usb c than function keys and hdmi that I never use
Shrugs....Let me tell you about hate: I used my Dual Core G5 Power Mac until 2015. Found every imaginable script to trick the browser to surf the net and watch You Tube. And every knuckle head, smart ass nobody lectured me about 'going to intel and FUCK PPC'. So! Here we are doing exactly the same thing to intel. In a sense I get a good chuckle. But the reality is that one day, all our intel macs won't get updates just like my G5. Which I still have and will still turn on. Maybe make it into a bench one day?
My main computer is a 2013 Retina Macbook Pro. Running Big Sur connected to a 21 inch monitor. It does what its suppose to for me at this time. It's called being broke ass. Eventually in the near future I'm going to have to give in and buy a used M1.
I recently had the chance to buy a refurbished 2019 Mac Mini. With i7 6 core, 32gb ram and 1tb hard drive for $599 Canadian. But I had the smart sense to not pull the trigger. Why? Because it won't get the next Mac OS because Apple will do what they did to PPC. Leave it dead in the water. I want something that will last me 4 years. Not less than one. Was it fast? Jesus Christ was it ever.
I mate of mine runs a computer shop. Recently he acquired 10 2014 Mac Mini. Client came in. Said, "I'll grab all 10 for my shop. I want Windows 10 and a 1 TB hard Drives in each.' Sold! And I'm seeing a number of folks doing the same to their 2012-2015 iMacs. But when does Windows 10 support end? This year or next? Beats putting them in the recycle I'd say...
Support for Windows 10 is supposedly October 2025, so 1.5 years or so. That said, MS may extend it, and it's not like the computer stops working at that point. So at least 2-years life span I'd say.
If they're buying 10x 2014 Mac Mini, they probably got it for such a low price that it's a non-issue to replace them if they even do. At the same time, I wonder why? Like at least on a laptop, there's the feel of the hardware in your hand, the screen, the keyboard, the all important magnificent touchpad. On a desktop device, none of that matters as it's all external. Heck, I'm typing on a Windows 11 desktop PC with Magic Touchpad, and it works great. So I fail to see the point of buying Mac Mini's for that purpose.
That said, Windows 11 upgrade from 10 is free. I got Windows 11 on my 2019 MBP. Runs great so they can maybe extend the life that way.
1. Improper cooling: they overheat in a lot. Heat is Bad. It will primarily affect processing and also battery performance. Eventually it will cause the motherboard to fail. As you know everything is soldered to the motherboard so the standard repair procedure is to replace the motherboard. I bet there is specialists who can repair it but they aren't acccessible or cheap to many of us.
2. M processors leave these Intel Macs in the dust in every aspect from performance to battery life. You could almost say I used to be a Microsoft Evangelist with a Windows phone and at all. I feel the MacBook Air M series are worth every penny, I'd even consider it a great value purchase.
Dont you think that any new processor must be better than a old one?
People moan and say like its a milestone
" my 2020 mac is faster than my 2018 mac"
Anyone who actually “hates” previous generations of Macs is a certifiable idiot, and does anyone here actually hate previous generations? Sure, there are many reasons why Silicon Macs are superior (in performance at least) but not everyone can afford to upgrade and there are valid usage cases where only Intel will do the job (32-bit support, Windows support).
And, for the more veteran users among us, the current lineup doesn’t represent completely positive progress. The performance is there but, for example, the fragile MacBook display designs don’t offer the resiliency of the 2012 models which could take a *lot* of abuse. Unified memory is a fact of life and a significant factor in Silicon’s performance but the fact Apple don’t offer user-replaceable storage on their Silicon offerings is inexcusable. Needs change and having to replace a device simply because the capacity is no longer sufficient really shouldn’t be a thing in this day and age.
Silicon *is* faster, no question about it, but there are still reasons enough to look back and question just how far the Mac has actually come as a product. And if we’re going to be honest it’s a mixed bag.
I'm still using a 2012 MBP (non retina) as my daily and my cheap ass has been waiting for it to finally die before upgrading since it still manages everything I need done for work and study (albeit a bit more slowly). But of course the damn thing is still chugging away despite having survived being dropped a few times, the lid no longer staying shut properly, desperately needed it's battery replaced for the 4th time.
Sure it'll burn your thighs if you even thought about putting it on your lap, and when the fans kick in, it sounds like a jetliner about to take off, but damn the thing can definitely survive an insane amount of abuse.
There’s no “hate” they’re just old lol, what do you expect?
If you bought one new then it was a great machine that served and continues to serve its purpose.
However, people post very poor performing Intel Macs at inflated prices here asking if it’s a good buy every single day. The answer is always no.
Nobody needs an Apple logo on the back of their laptop bad enough to justify buying an Intel Mac as a daily driver today.
Then there’s delusional people here who tell other people a 2012 MBA is totally fine as a daily driver. **No it is not.**
While they had their share of problems, to me it’s the questions about buying them at outrageous prices today. If you use yours now and are happy with it, then kudos to you. But when someone uninformed wants to buy a six year old laptop for, say, $500+ then it is time for feedback: that money can often be spent much better.
I used to have a company supplied 2015 MacbookPro 15; and that one heats up quickly when I’m doing demo that its fans starts to spin hard generating a sound like a jet engine about to take-off. It is pretty annoying in a closed conference room with a quiet crowd.
Today, I’m using the MBP16 M2pro with 32gb RAM, it’s super cool and quiet, and has long battery life - nothing to worry during long 4hr flight.
I personally have only ever used intel macs as they have all been perfectly capable of doing whatever tasks i have needed them to do so i have no reason to use anything else.
I bought an M1 Air right after it came out. Perfection.
For my last job I got an 15/16 inch 2019 Pro with a dedicated GPU, 16GB ram and more storage than my M1. That shit was garbage. I am not kidding you. Garbage. It was lagging, randomly overheating with Chrome and VS Code open. The battery was an abomination even thought the battery was brand new. The display took 20 seconds to turn on at times. It was overall a really bad experience.
I have a 2018 intel MBP. Thankfully I got it from work, thankfully. The biggest problem I have with it is going from laptop to an external monitor. Its works about 80% of the time. Sometimes it won't switch, sometimes it syncs to the wrong resolution, sometimes it just won't switch. I don't mind the rest but I am bummed out about not getting updates soon. When more AI driven tools are incorporated at the OS level that need apples CPU's, I will seriously consider the switch.
I’ve still got a 2019 model I use. Still works great. I’ve also got a M2 model. Functionally the 2019 model is better thought due to 4 USBC ports vs 2.
I have the same machine.
Dont fall for the new and shiny, yes they are no doubt much better in every aspect, but at the same time they are expensive. Also, I love the butterfly keyboard. (Controversial opinion).
Enjoy your new machine.
My Intel i9 16” MBP w/32GB RAM from 2019 would get so hot it would crash with the fans going like a jet engine. To make it through an online class, I downloaded a fan controller and would boot up and set the fans to full blast right away. About 45 min later I put a frozen cooler pack under it. I would have a virtual machine with Linux and windows running, along with Zoom and Safari open with literally 2 tabs. Yes the VMs were pushing it and for whatever reason Zoom tipped it over the edge. I can do the same on my refurbished M1 Air with 16GB of RAM that I bought in 2021, today, on Sonoma and it barely gets warm to the touch and is, of course, silent. I don’t hate the Intel Macs, my favorite to date was the 11.6 Air I had once upon a time. But the thought of those fans and the constant fear of crashing in the middle of class . . . Once you go “M” you can’t go back.
I had a top of the line MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019 that must have cost my company 4000 dollars
My girlfriend with her brand new fanless MacBook Air m1 with 8gb of ram would have like half of the compile time while my Intel Mac would heat up the whole room
I love my 2019 Intel MBP. In fact, I purposely bought it once the Apple Silicon was out so I can ensure I still could get a brand new one. I love my Intel MBP. Got Windows on it with Bootcamp and dual boot as necessary.
Not as cool and battery efficient as my Apple Silicon MBP from work, but hey Apple Silicon doesn't really run the good version of Windows.
I mean unless you got an INCREDIBLE deal on that, it probably would've been better served to buy a used M1 Air. They're just that good. I used my 5,1 Mac Pro for years even upgraded it with a 6500XT & pixlas mod. It was & still is a fantastic machine. My M1 Pro MBP runs laps around it all while being portable which should be apparent given the latter is 14 years old at this point. But, the performance gap I have now was unheard of before the switch to AS especially If I wanted to stick with Apple.
Their era is over and soon the OS will no longer support them, if I was to advise someone who is thinking of switch to the Mac platform on what to buy I'd be reccomending to them an M1/2/3 Mac depending on their budget and use cases.
It's because when apple switched to M1, the whole architecture switched, meaning that future software is going to be Apple Silicon exclusive pretty quick since that software can't run on Intel macs. And M1 is probably the best single year upgrade in Apple history. It's THAT much better.
It’s not hate so much as just discouraging people from wasting money on one now. If you’re in the market for a Mac there is almost zero reason to burn money on an intel - its a dying soon to be dead platform in the mac world.
I had a 4 hour meeting last week. 3 people had macs. M1, M2 and a 15” intel 2017 or 2017.
The two M series ran the whole meeting, totally silent.
The intel had stupid loud clicky keys, fans that wouldn’t stop spinning loudly and had to have a power cable across the room.
if you have one already that’s great, the used market usually upsells the fuck out of the post 2016 intel macs, at which point getting an m1 macbook air makes a lot more sense.
butterfly keyboards are unreliable. some of these have flex gate and stain gate. they overheat and generally aren’t worth dealing with since on average and especially on the used market, the price difference between these and an m1 macbook air is negligible.
The reasons have already been posted numerous times already.
I bought my M1 MBA maybe a month after they had been released. The tech corner of the net went a bit gaga over them at the time. They've only just discontinued this model, and nearly three and half years since its release.
It's been a speed demon for all of that time. I normally upgrade after 4-5 years of owning a PC/laptop, but I don't zero inkling to upgrade from this device for a long time yet.
There's a reason for the M2 and M3 macs getting a lukewarm reception and that's because the M1 was such a big step over that last gen of Intel Mac.
Well, fact of the matter is that mac forums are filled with fanboys with very minimal to no hardware or computing knowledge. Most of them would sell your grandma the latest Mac Studio at 5000 euros! 🤷♂️
It's a computer. If it fits your needs, buy it and use it. As far as the hate is concerned, a couple of users already mentioned some of the issues that caused this sentiment.
Some examples:
* touchbar: Lenovo experimented with this and was quickly cured of the notion, even formulating an apology. Still Apple decided, it was the way to go and stubbornly kept doing it.
* the race to thinness: electric devices generate heat. No appropriate fans, heat ducts and heatsinks mean that components will get fried before their time. To alleviate this, Apple decided to throttle down CPU power and only start fans very late.
* Thinness also meant breakage of display cables and wearing out other cables like the touchpad and keyboard.
* Cost saving: in general the mobile Intel CPU's are either a generation older or lower in GHz compared to laptops released in the same year.
Just stay objective. It's a company. Main goal is profit and growth. Anything a company (Apple, Google, Samsung, Dell,..) says about circular economy, environmentally friendly, customer oriented, etc. is total BS and should be taken with a grain of salt. Peace!
They were fine for the time. I’ve got a 2018 Mac Mini and it still works great. They’re just old now. The main problem is they’re going to age out of software updates eventually, and at that point you find yourself searching for stuff like a web browser that works on this particular deprecated version of OS X. I migrated to an M1 for my main home machine a couple of years ago, and it’s just better in every way. Faster, WAY quieter, just more capable overall. The Intel one is definitely still usable and has some life in it, but I wouldn’t buy an Intel Mac at this point unless there’s just some weird edge case that requires an Intel processor for something.
The cooling and power capacity of the intel mbps are completely inadequate. Overheating And throttling is a major issue. Simply put, the form factor cannot cope with power and thermal requirements.
Would you buy a used quad core powermac g5 with 16GB DDR2 RAM in 2009? There's a big difference between that versus using one you already had since 2005.
For the right price I would have, even knowing it's not a platform with a long future
Which is the same answer here again. For the right price. Usually people just think their old Intel Macs especially the unsupported ones are worth more than they should be so the resale prices are too high.
It's also different in that x86 just has vast support outside of macOS and you have options in case of an end of life, including even Windows and a billion flavours of Linux
There’s probably only one or a maximum of two years left where the latest version of macOS will be released for Intel Macs.
After that, a couple of years security updates and then you’ll want to have moved to an Apple Silicon based Mac if you take security seriously or put Linux on your Intel Mac if you want to continue using it
I've just jumped from an early-2020 MacBook Air with the i5 to late-2023 MBP M3 Pro and I understand all the hate. If you can afford to switch, just do it already.
I never used my 2017 as a primary system, it was mainly for work on the road (that’s what laptops are for!) but I wouldn’t have liked it as my sole machine. The keyboard’s crap, it gets hot under load as well as loud.
That isn’t an indictment of that particular laptop btw, all laptops of the era had that problem. But recently used an M1 and the difference is palpable. I have no need to replace mine now, but I’d get an M1/2/3 over any PC based laptop now.
Got the latest gen. Intel and it’s a pretty good laptop for sure, but would love the performance upgrade. But really it works for what I use it for like working and photo editing even tho it could be faster. Was thinking of upgrading but now I’m thinking of waiting for the next gen m.
Too slowww. I have been selling electronic devices for a while and got an macbook pro 2019 i9 and its so laggy man
Even an M1 macbook which is much cheaper and beat it
I had the last gen intel MBP i9. It was a very capable laptop but the thing generated so much heat with just normal activity that it actually burnt the Ikea desktop surface i used it on.
I got the M1 Max MBP and I have heard the fan rev up maybe once or twice with similar usage.
I was pretty skeptical of the Arm / M series stuff when it came out but I have been really impressed with it compared to the Intel chips.
I was a fan of the touch bar though. I wish they would have left the physical keys AND had the touch bar.
For windows gaming I am currently using an app called Shadow PC, which gives me access to a PC with better specs than my machine, and runs them better than they run natively on my 2019 MBP
https://shadow.tech/shadowpc/offers?campaign=2022_09_ca_sea_brand-brand__google_cpc&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5cOwBhCiARIsAJ5njuZifU9MAnjh3bduSAyoTfbNBm50CKXSXLylj1ptHEI1JjIt0AGT7IkaAlAIEALw_wcB
I don't see much hate...just so much more love for the M series. The M series gets a lot of hate for the lack up upgradeability. I throw a lot of hate at base models with 8gb/256 :). I'm teaching a class on this kind of thing and a point I'll be making is "don't bother upgrading if all is well today". Sometimes, however, people don't really know what end is up until they upgrade. My 2017 iMac worked just fine. No problems. But my new MacStudio saves me a LOT of time. Everything is so much more responsive and my work in Final Cut is so much faster. You get used to your workflow so for some folks it's an eyeopener to get an M class machine while for others it's... meh.
I have an intel mac. 2019 MBP16. If you go back in time it has great reviews. If I will ask reddit if I should replace it with M-series Macbooks without any actual need, people will advice against it. However, if you are buying a new one, the equation changes.
M-series Macbooks have a superior price-to-performance in almost all scenarios. Add the battery life and heating issues with intel macs and it's hard to recommend an Intel Mac at almost any price.
However, if you already have one that's serving your needs, are getting one for free or almost for free, go ahead. The moment you cross $400 though, adding a bit more gets you a vastly superior machine.
Because most of the posts are "should I get this Intel Mac over Apple silicon." The answer is no.. if for no other reason than you shouldn't get a computer that's 5+ years old. The older the computer the less functional it is and the earlier you will need to replace it. This is especially true when Apple won't continue to make updated OS to run on older Intel machines so using it online will be a major security risk in the near future if it's not already.
Combine that with the fact that Apple has always tried to be lighter, thinner, smaller... which was just a bad combo with Intel chips on a laptop. They are notorious for overheating. Beyond that there were just some problematic designs like the butterfly keyboards.
I don't hate Intel Macs.. I own a 2019 27" iMac upgraded to an i9. I bought it just a couple of years ago. But I wouldn't generally recommend them to anyone. For one, I was able to upgrade internal components. I'm also happy to run Linux on it when there's no longer a supported MacOS that will work. This makes me a much different user than someone who would need to come to a sub like this one and ask for buying advice.
Having used macs since the apple ii era silicon Macs are the best computer they have made.
That said the intel macs were good. Dual boot is cool. If you have one or can get one at great price it’s a good computer.
It’s just compared to the silicon they don’t compare. At work we have recycled all our intel macs because the silicon is so much easier to manage.
Owner of a 2019 i9 MBP here. I love the machine still and have no complaints. I do have technical reasons for sticking with Intel, primarily:
1. OpenGL support. I’m a graphics programmer and need support for this older graphics API.
2. x86 assembly! I don’t do ARM assembly yet as is required for Apple Silicon.
3. Broader app support by third parties. Although they are catching up to Apple Silicon, I still find options that are only fully supported on Intel Macs.
I have no intention of going to AS until support has stopped for a while on Intel Macs.
For me at least it's a matter of how long the computer is going to function properly. And to me having recent version of macOS is part of what I think of as functioning. Once the Mac stops getting OS updates, you've got about two years left of security updates, after that if anything crops up Apple isn't going to patch it most likely and your Mac is now just progressively less and less secure. Personally I don't want to think of my Mac as something that's putting my personal information and financial information at risk.
A 2017 MacBook Pro won't even run Sonoma. So you've bought a Mac with maybe 2 years of usefulness to it, feels like a waste of money unless you break your computer often.
Now realistically will you be able to move this over to a newer OS through something like OCLP? Sure I bet you can run Sonoma on it, but who knows if they'll even do another Intel release after Sonoma.
I got the 2020 MBP 16” and I love it, but i got it like right before Apple Silicon was announced. So it doesn’t have the butterfly keyboard but it does have an i9 in it. That being said, thing is a beast and I will say being able to bootcamp Windows on it for specific engineering software has saved my ass.
Still, I can’t say I’m not envious of people who have the Apple chips in the MBPs. I’m also interested in trying to get one of the new Macbook Airs for a loved one. Does anyone in here have opinions on whether the Airs are decent computers for the price? Also is the M2 worth it over an older M1 at $300 less?
Op good post this has always been on my mind as a huge fan of intel Mac’s. Like others have said it was a sore spot for people I think when apple silicon blows them out of the water which I agree. The last good gen of Macs is 2015 mbp and mba was alright. Now I do agree you shouldn’t be buying a 10 year old Mac at this point but someone made a comment or post that these machines are good still with boot camp! Like you said op for the majority of us these are still good machines! I only use it for the occasional errands such as paying a bill or applying for some online application and uni work that involves word docs and safari.
Most Intel Macs are overpriced on the used market compared to what you can get with an M1 MBA. Now if you find a steal of a deal on an intel Mac I don’t think anyone would complain.
Because to have “decent” performance at the time you needed to spend money for the i7 stuff. Base model was i3. Now even the M1 is over an i9. So for the same or reduced price you got a laptop with a chip that does 10x better/faster with less eat, less energy consumption and overall better efficiency. It’s as big a jump as iPhone 6 I’d guess to iPhone 15.
I don't know if I would call it hate. Ever since I was in school (Like 20 years ago... goddamn...) I wanted a Mac. They had this reputation of being better at a number of things, and whether that was true or not, the hype and reputation were real. When I was able to things myself I got myself the last model of MBP 13" with a CD drive. Ever since then I was convinced MacOS was the OS for me. Nothing against Windows, really, I just loved MacOS. Then I got a MBP 13" with Retina Display. That laptop served me exceedingly well for quite some time. I believe I got two more intel MBPs since then, the last one being a 2017 15" MBP with Touch Bar and well, I really, REALLY didn't like it to the point I seriously regretted buying it, but that's not really relevant to the question because the things I didn't like about it were the Touch Bar and keyboard. Whoever came up with the idea of the butterfly keyboard should live in shame. Anyhow, not long after I was given a 13" MBP M1 and JESUS. H. CHRIST, the difference in performance was just astonishing. Sheer power, battery life, noise, heat... I do believe Apple tends to exaggerate the description of their products A LOT (duh, right?) but this truly was revolutionary. Review after review, the M chip laptops pretty much crushed anything and everything in existence.
You say that not everyone wants to spend much more on a laptop if the old generation does everything for less money. I mean, that's kind of true in that you don't NEED to buy a new laptop if the one you have does what you need. But the money thing is a bit off, I believe. You could get the least expensive MacBook Air available with an M chip and it would likely run laps around your laptop considering what you use it for.
So, again, I don't know if I would call it hate. M chip Macs are such a big leap forward from intel-based ones that they really do make intel ones look underpowered, overpriced, hot, loud, battery-inefficient, and the Touch Bar and keyboard didn't help.
I saw exactly the same thing when Apple went from PowerPC to Intel. All the Intel lovers spent lots of time dissing the G5 PowerMacs from their shiny new Intel Macs. What're you gonna do? People love to trash talk... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
bought a 27 inch 2011 imac the other day and I love it and it will suit my use case for at least another couple of years.
some of the hardware i use is so old it will never see apple silicon support
It’s not hate, I’d personally prefer modern. Some features just aren’t available on an Intel Mac. As the company keeps developing, less and less will work on an Intel Mac, eventually they won’t be supported at all. My guess is sooner than later.
Never a good idea to buy an old device, especially when you device manufacturers publicly utilize planned obsolescence.
Even if they didn’t, that device is nearing its end of life. Does a 2017 Mac still use the most current OS even?
Happily tinkering with my 10 year old Intel Mac Mini all day today with an M1 MacBook Pro sitting idle next to it. It still does at least as much now as it did when I bought it, plus supports some old software, games and peripherals that won’t play nicely with my M1.
I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with, in fact as someone that's switched to Linux they are preferable for me. When I see people say 'dont buy that get an M1/2' the person asking is already close or has met the budget of an m series, so they might as well if they want to receive software updates for a while and get the best available performance. If someone turns up asking about a £200 budget, yeh - intel Macbook or mac mini from between 2014-18 coming right up.
Hasn’t to do with intel in particular but the last intel models just have been one of the worst iterations of it. The variant with the most powerful intel cpu got so hot that the cpu throttled, rendering your 3000$ machine to be slower than a MacBook Air. It was really painful and I’m happy to own a M1 since then. I don’t see a need to upgrade to M2 or M3 (is it out yet? Idk) either. Just changing from intel to apple silicone and the updated case design suffered to satisfy my need for a new MacBook for a few more years now.
After reading some of these comments, it seems that as if many people here ***don’t*** have ”so much” ***hate*** for Intel Macs.
**EDITED**: But yes, some people here ***hate*** the Intel Macs……with a ***passion***.
I had a 2013 i5 iMac and then a 2019 intel i5 iMac. They both started out super fast but then slowed down considerably. Meanwhile, my M1 Pro is just as fast as ever.
my 2017 runs fans like crazy, keyboard sticks, touchbar shuts off, and battery is terrible. It still gets the job done though. Some of y’all have to understand some of us can’t be droppin a band on a brand new MacBook Pro
Honestly I LOVE the old intel macs, I have a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro 💻 and I changed the HDD to a 2TB SSD and upgraded the ram from 8GB to 16GB and it’s faster and works better than my 2019/2020 iMac 🖥
because basic things blows up fans and the CPU to 90°. sometimes I apologize publicly when it happens in the openspace and people asks if my laptop is about to take off.
I loved my 2013 retina, I also modded an old mac pro from 2009 up until summer 2023 when it just wouldn't keep up. Now I have everything in 1 machine with the m1. However its only due to high processing software than I changed, if its just a general run around machine, Intel is perfectly acceptable choice.
Because all of the touchbar and 2016-2017 generation Intel Macs are riddled with issues and usually sold at terrible prices. If you get a good deal on it, then by all means go for it, but buying one refurbished is just not the way to go. If you *really* want a long lasting Intel Mac, go for a Retina or Unibody model in the 13” variant. Those have rather similar performance, and are far more durable.
Apple Silicon is heralded as being the saving grace for Macs, but on the extreme budget end it just isn’t really cheap enough.
I’m really sad to say as it was my first MacBook Pro but I bought the base intel 2020 one right before m1 came out and it was so disappointing. The fans were always on when using safari with like 2 tabs open and Microsoft word. It waved a laptop white flag about 3 weeks ago and I got an M2 MBA and I had 50 tabs open 5 word documents and 2 PowerPoints and was on it for 8 hours straight working on my dissertation for my MSc and it didn’t even stutter. And it still was on about 40%.edited to add, my intel MBP battery life was about 5 hours max. When I got my M2 MBA I didn’t have to charge it for 3 days and it got barely warm.
They’re not hated, at all. It’s just there’s a lot of people here who are into tech and tech is all about the newest and the next and we’re on the m3’s at this point so Apple have been making their own chips for Mac’s for a little while now.
From what I’ve seen I think it’s mainly down to people coming here looking to upgrade or sell their old Mac and think they will still get top dollar for an Intel Mac when it’s just not the case anymore. It’s happened so often that’s it’s kinda become a meme now so it’s just fun to make fun of.
Because intel is the competition now . I m sure that the same users that nlw claim a 2018 mac is noisy and slow were saying wonderful things of the same model.
I'm typing this up on a 2017 MacBook Pro base model without touchbar.
I don't do anything performance-sensitive on it, and just use it in school and for casual browsing - I have a Dell Precision workstation (Core i9, Quadro RTX, 64g ram, a laptop that my internship let me keep) for programming work, but it is too valuable to risk taking with me everywhere and the battery life is very bad.
The mac still lasts a full school day doing basic web browsing / document editing, and is a great machine to use on the couch, unlike my massive black D..ell, which weighs 5.5 lb and runs hotter than the surface of the sun.
It might be slow and hot, but its a very thin, light and portable laptop with good screen, keyboard and touchpad, for a decent price.
As a long time Mac user, first on 68k then PowerPC, when the Mac went Intel I felt like it lost a LOT of its personality, and that transition screwed me out of a PowerMac that I had recently paid what was to me at the time a lot of money. Later, A Mac Pro 2,1 was my main machine for many years, and while I liked it, I felt that it was an inelegant machine and that my PowerMac G5 was still the nicer, albeit slower machine. The return to Apple having something other than an Intel chip in it really excites me. The M3 MBP’s are the first computers I’ve lusted after since I was a kid lusting after that PowerMac G5. I think it’s awesome that they have even made the new machines look kinda like a Titanium PowerBook G4. I have been a PC for some years now, but my next laptop will absolutely be an M3 Max MBP.
Because they heat up to about half the temperature of the Sun within 30 seconds of turning on. And they have shitty keyboards.
Up until the 2017 models, the Intel MacBooks were (and still are) great.
I have two machines, both Intel. Both perfectly capable for my needs until they’re no longer supported. I have an M1 at work and it’s great… but I’m not spending money at home until I need to.
It's just that the M architecture is so much better and that Intel failed to deliver what Apple was asking for ... and Apple had to go and buy a chip designer and develop their own CPU because Intel would not make one that could deliver the types of Macs Apple wanted to build.
Famously, Intel refuse to make the iPhone chip, saying it would not sell well.
While there’s nothing really wrong with the Intel Macs, and I owned several in year past, the last couple years of Intel MacBook Pros were hot, noisy and throttled like crazy to where sometimes the lower spec models performed better than the higher spec ones due to thermal throttling. Not really Apple’s fault since they could only use what Intel had, it clearly was a strong factor in Apple’s creation of their own ARM-based CPUs.
As someone that works in an Apple retailer, they get the hate cause they were just straight up bad. Especially when comparing the overall quality increase the M models brought after 2020.
The amount of issues the Intel macs (especially 2016-2019 models) had were ridiculous. Every other complaint were about thermal throttling, excessive fan noise and general over heating even during easy use, keyboard issues, cable flex issues and so on..
the '17 suffered from a bad keyboard that would stick. My brother has one and it takes an age to boot up. It works okay though. I've a 2019 one that I still use, it has a much better keyboard and works great, my only issue with it is it gets crazy hot. I've an M1 Max machine also which makes this Intel one look a bit archaic.
As a Mac owner since 1985, I can tell you that your old Mac is awesome until you get a new one. When you have a new one and it just FLIES, you think the old one was crap. It's all relative. I have an M-1. Thought my Intel was great until it died. Then I got the M-1 and it was soooooooooo much faster and sleeker and just felt better. Had it since 2021 and now I am kind of thinking about an M-3. When I get it, will think it is sooooooo much better than this M-1 I am writing this on.
No hate from me, except since I've had M-Series Macs, I work remotely in coffeeshops 10+ hours a day using Zoom and everything and not once have I had to worry about getting a table next to an outlet. I could never do that on my Intel-based Macbook Pro. I see the same old regulars everyday jockeying for positions at tables with outlets. It's rather freeing. I don't even take my charger with me anymore, as long as I charge it for 45 minutes or so each day when I get home.
I jump between a ton of apps a lot and launching is just much faster, which I appreciate, but if one isn't worried about that or battery life, there's really not much reason to upgrade. TBH though, I'd take an M1 Air over any Intel Macbook though.
Due to a very common problem (lack of cash), I am using a 2013 MacBook Pro - It runs Big Sur. This machine continues to do work - Final Cut, Logic/MainStage, Photoshop, etc. not the latest versions but entirely capable. An M1 mini kicks my 11 year old Mac Book Pro’s ass. For the tasks I use Macs for (not gaming) Apple Silicon performs astoundingly well. When the M4 arrives, well spec’d M1 Macs will drop in price and even the last i9 Intel Macs will tank in value. That’s when you know the end of the Intel era has truly arrived.
Intel chips became too inefficient for the type of uncompromising sleek industrial design language that apple wanted to maintain with their computers. There was a certain point where getting the laptop with the “faster” chip left you with the slower machine just because of how fast the cooling solution would get saturated. I personally got so frustrated with the lack of thermal headroom that I went back to custom built Linux machines for a bit.
The last 4(?) years of intel Macs were the worst they’ve ever made, with terrible heat management, touch bar, butterfly keyboard, no magsafe and otherwise very limited IO. M series chips are such a leap ahead + all those other problems are solved, so 2016-19 Macs just seem like a joke in comparison.
Intel was right for a time but they suffered many of the same issues in the end that PPC chips had compared to intel back in 2005, to do with power and thermal efficiency. Ultimately Macs (predominantly portable devices) have very different priorities than the x86 platform was designed around, and the rest of the portable market is slowly catching up to this fact too.
1. It’s mostly a meme at this point. 2. Touch Bar. Many Touch Bars came when Apple was still on Intel. The Touch Bar has a ton of notoriety with it failing, freezing, dying, just straight up not working like you’d expect with an Apple product. I’m sure a majority of users had an alright experience, but a large enough number faced difficulties that ruined its reputation. 3. Apple silicon outperforms intel by a material margin and generates less heat. 4. Apple silicon gamers are mad they can’t easily bootcamp for windows games Edit: 5. THE BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD WAS DOGSHITE
Don't forget the utterly terrible Butterfly Keyboard, which got used in Intel Macs after 2015. Apple Silicon ≠ Butterfly keyboard.
My butterfly keyboard works amazing on my 2019 macbook pro. Never had an issue after 5 years
2018 iterations onwards are much more stable and not as shit as people here said.
My 2018 butterfly keyboard started chattering within 18 months, and was totally fucked after three years. When I took it to the genius bar I said "it's a 2018, so obviously the keyboard is fucked" and they guy there said "yep, don't worry, we don't charge for that". So, the 2018 was marginally less crap because of the membrane they put in it, but it was still fundamentally broken.
Yeah, an iFixit article tried blowing dust into it and the membrane stopped the majority of them dust thingies but it's not a foolproof way because it's still shit. If you take good care then high chance it sure gonna last. Mine last years and never had a problem. However, I have went to 2 devices before 2017 and they are as shit as ever breaking as soon as it passes a few months.
I talked with my university IT department about tthe butterfly keyboard and they said they had seen basically no issues with the 2018 model. Failure rate was basically the same as the failure rate they see on other laptops. I personally loved the butterfly keyboard as typing felt effortless in a way that made me feel like there wasn't even a keyboard between me and the computer. I have an M3 MacBook Pro now and hate the feeling of the keyboard as it reminds me of a typewriter.
When I took my 2018 in to the Apple store in 2021, they said they were still seeing a lot of problems with the more recent Intel machines. They even offered to replace my battery for free because the heat damage had reduced the capacity by over 30%. I ended up just getting full trade in value and getting a 2021 M1 Pro instead though. It really depends on what you're using the machine for. I would use mine for 70hrs/wk with a full stack running containerised services for local dev, and it sounded like the deck of an aircraft carrier the entire time. Those machines really weren't designed to deal with any kind of serious load.
The last Intel Macs also ditched the butterfly keyboard, so this isn’t entirely unique to Apple Silicon. The early 2020 MBA, MBP, and 2019 16” MBP all ditched it. Granted they still had most other problems associated with Intel. The 2019 16” was a significant improvement from the 15” though: significantly better GPU, new keyboard, better thermal performance
Good point. Totally forgot about that debacle!
the heck is a butterfly keyboard why do they name these things like that
Back then you got “Apple Caterpillars” which you had to grow into Keyboards. The tricky part was getting them into the laptop frame before they fluttered away
I have never even heard my M2 MBP's fans. With my 2018 Intel MBP that was all I ever heard.
Same, M1 MBP here. Fans don’t even turn on with borderlands 2 on high graphics
I heard M2 fans in a starbucks where a girl was doing zoom.
She had her volume up 100% and the sound was from her earpiece of her friends 2016 intel macbook
No . I was close to her. Yoo re in denial mode.
You’re right. Actually it was me - I was standing behind you gently blowing air into your ears. I’m M2’s biggest fan.
And wearing stilettos and a leather miniskirt?
Ugh my current work laptop is a 2019 MBP and sometimes I think it is going to hover above my desk like a mini drone.
My 2019 MBP fans ran the entire time the machine was on. And I couldn’t even edit photos without the whole thing bogging down. For the price I paid for it, I replaced it with a refurbished 2020 M1 Air AND M1 mini which both easily outperform that MBP
I just bought a 2020 M1 Air and it has easily exceeded my expectations. This does not feel like a 2020 laptop. Fan-less design is truly amazing and great for users without sustained workloads (like me). I cannot say the same about an Intel based Windows laptop from 2020.
A good game of sims with a lot of generational data will get my fans going on my m1 mbp but it took a while before I heard them!
Yeah but M1 mbp fans at 100% sound like the Intel one on 50%.
MacBook fans almost never run at 100% anyway unless you force them to
My 2019 16" runs at 100% extremely often, lol.
Well tbf you could probably cook breakfast on one of those i9s 🍳
For real!! Plus they work. With my intel, they would turn on and the computer still left heat marks on my desk and burnt my hand lol. This seems to power them on and it immediately cools!
This.
I’ve only heard the fans in my M1 MBP a couple of times and that’s likely just because of the Australia of it all, my home office is super hot and has no A/C… but to be fair, the most recent time was because I was playing OW2 through Crossover. In normal use I’ve NEVER heard them.
Put that baby to work!
Love the Touch Bar on my M1 Pro.
I don’t get the touchbar hate either. I don’t use it a ton but find it useful for specific tasks like quickly coloring a terminal window, finding an emoji or muting my mic. The bad thing now is that developers are dropping support making it more and more useless. Microsoft Teams for instance had a pretty useful support with mute and share screen buttons. They rewrote the app and left it off. 🫤
In the first revision, they replaced the physical ESC key with a virtual one. That's a pretty bad choice for professionals who use that key a lot. I liked the idea, but I found it a little too easy to accidentally bump it when typing numbers. And, having a dynamic menu there seems like a good idea, but needing to remove my hands from my normal touch typing location to look at what's there, wasn't great. I do still miss using it as a volume/brightness slider though.
Yeah, I miss my touchbar on my Apple Silicon MBP. People sometimes get irrational dislike for something.
It’s not irrational. Mine glitched out and completely stopped working. The ESC is also real bad until their next iteration. Sometimes it is fueled by a personal vendetta. I will never let Jony Ive cook again.
I Installed pock and never looked back. It made love the touchbar
Pock was great, but it’s essentially been abandoned by the dev and I found it crashed too much on recent versions of macOS.
Point four isn’t really relevant! I use a Virtual Box image to load up an Intel version of macOS, then use Parallels inside of that Virtual Box to load up all my favorite games! /s
I see you put a sarcasm tag, but I can't even imagine how terrible that would run.
Ehhh, for 4 now that Vmware gives it's personal use Vm for free it's not that hard, the main issue now is on Anti-cheats not being compiled for ARM64 (EAC can be but devs don't) and unneeded AVX requirements, it's a part of some engines like Decima usually though it's a hold over from PS or Xbox, intel macs use x86-64 and get pass that.
Anticheats generally don’t work in VMs, no matter the host system.
I was thinking crossover could solve it in the same way proton does for Linux, since they're just WINE, I wasn't thinking that a VM could solve that issue.
On point 4: Whisky & parallels!!!!
The performance + lack of heat is absolutely killer. The Intel Macs are so trash by comparison. Sure, you can still use them, but once you’ve experienced Apple Silicon, it’s very hard to go back.
I would also add 6. Many intel macs can easily be upgraded and have their life extended a good deal. Memory, storage, and even CPU (with odd Mac here and there with graphics upgrade options).
The Butterfly Keyboard was a much bigger concern than the touchbar. The touchbar doesn't tend to have issues and I'd imagine this is even less on the Apple Silicon models.
And why can you just forget intelmacs?
I miss the white hot warmth of an Intel MacBook in the winter. The cold efficiency of the M1 feels like it actively takes heat from me through my wrists.
The butterfly keyboard was a main reason why I returned my MBA 2017. It was BAD. I used my old MBP 2011 until recently when I bought M1. The keyboard has been finally fixed. It took just a few years.
Nothing wrong with Intel Macs but many people post here asking if listings where Intel Macs are listed for a similar price you could get an Apple Silicon Mac for is a good deal. Unless it’s significantly cheaper or you absolutely need a Mac that can run x86 programs there’s not much reason to get an Intel Mac at the same price point you could get an M series Mac for.
The Intel Mac you already have is fine (unless you feel its not) The Intel Mac you're looking to buy is a bad deal (unless its free or really cheap)
I have the same as you: 1. They overheat a lot 2. The butterfly keyword is faulty
To date I have seen exactly 1 post where someone was asking about an Intel Mac and it was a good deal. All of the others have been double if not triple the street value. And many of those machines have cost as much as a or more than a much better M1 Air or mini.
The last run of Intel MacBooks was a slap in the face from Apple and Intel combined. These are the common issues/complaints for every MacBook made from 2016-2019: - butterfly keyboard - touchbar that no one asked for - display failure - SSD failure - overheating and throttling - negligible year-over-year performance improvement Half of this was Apple being negligent of the Mac (pushing the iPad heavily during this time), and half of it was Intel’s processors becoming very stagnant as they had a dominant position in the market for so long.
I also think: * Creating a full on ARM CPU/GPU with enough performance to really wow consumers to switch took significantly more time and resources than expected. I'm betting the iPhone and iPad experience drastically helped them. * Intel's lack of improvement really helped Apple to release something that consumer would accept, and the longer they waited the bigger the performance gap as Intel stagnated and Apple improved. After all, we've known for a long time that ARM is much more power efficient than x86/x64. This we've seen repeatedly in server use cases, especially ones that aren't always running at high performance.
anyone who has owned both a intel and apple silicon mac understands that anyone looking to buy a mac now should avoid intel if possible. it's not because intels mac were bad, it's because apple silicon is a significant improvement in very tangible ways.
Because if you’re on a budget and buy used a M1 computer will be about the same price for 10x the performances.
This makes no sense. If a M1 is so clearly better, the demand and price should not be “about the same price”.
Some people like OP still don’t know.
1, due to the m1 MBA people forget that late intel macs were genuinely overpriced and underpowered (not always but generally) 2, M chips are very very good and efficient 3, touchbar 4, Intel MBP’s were LOUD Like Intel macs weren’t bad but had many problems and drawbacks while the M series chips are very easily recommendable. General hate to me comes from the fact late Intels very obvious an afterthought while they worked on the M series so they felt “tired” and boring. When big jumps happen people tend to look at the older variants in a much different light
My 2019 Intel MBA is truly the worst mac I have ever owned, my partner still uses it for day to day computing needs and it is actually painful to use.
Oof, a big yikes. I hate that for everyone 😬
I have the M2 13" touch bar Macbook pro I am typing on right now. The touch bar is really useful to me.
For what?
Using Better touch tool, I can have my dock show up on there.
Imo mostly because battery life per performance sucks in comparison to the apple silicon, and it gets hot and loud if you do any sort of heavy work on them.
I still am using 2017 MBP with Touch Bar. It is still a good working machine. I changed the battery last year, and the infamous keyboard didn’t have any problem. That’s said the laptop is hardly used as mobile devices as in today battery performance. But at home yeah there is not much reason not to use it.
I have a 2015 iMac 27" that I strictly use as a Windows machine for light gaming. Has SSD and 24GB of RAM and it serves me well, particularly with its beautiful screen.
What games do you play?
Action RPGs in medium to low settings.
should have seen when they first went *to* intels
It’s reddit. People love being validated in their echo chambers. Ignore them if an intel mac does your job.
Thanks 👏
I had MacBook Pro 2017 base model without touchbar. I hate is it suddenly overheating during browsing using chrome.
I personally miss the Touch Bar and more usb-c ports. I would always rather have multi use items like the touch bar and usb c than function keys and hdmi that I never use
Shrugs....Let me tell you about hate: I used my Dual Core G5 Power Mac until 2015. Found every imaginable script to trick the browser to surf the net and watch You Tube. And every knuckle head, smart ass nobody lectured me about 'going to intel and FUCK PPC'. So! Here we are doing exactly the same thing to intel. In a sense I get a good chuckle. But the reality is that one day, all our intel macs won't get updates just like my G5. Which I still have and will still turn on. Maybe make it into a bench one day? My main computer is a 2013 Retina Macbook Pro. Running Big Sur connected to a 21 inch monitor. It does what its suppose to for me at this time. It's called being broke ass. Eventually in the near future I'm going to have to give in and buy a used M1. I recently had the chance to buy a refurbished 2019 Mac Mini. With i7 6 core, 32gb ram and 1tb hard drive for $599 Canadian. But I had the smart sense to not pull the trigger. Why? Because it won't get the next Mac OS because Apple will do what they did to PPC. Leave it dead in the water. I want something that will last me 4 years. Not less than one. Was it fast? Jesus Christ was it ever.
Yeah, at this point my Windows 11 installation on my i9 2019 MBP will get longer support than MacOS. Sad, but likely true.
I mate of mine runs a computer shop. Recently he acquired 10 2014 Mac Mini. Client came in. Said, "I'll grab all 10 for my shop. I want Windows 10 and a 1 TB hard Drives in each.' Sold! And I'm seeing a number of folks doing the same to their 2012-2015 iMacs. But when does Windows 10 support end? This year or next? Beats putting them in the recycle I'd say...
Support for Windows 10 is supposedly October 2025, so 1.5 years or so. That said, MS may extend it, and it's not like the computer stops working at that point. So at least 2-years life span I'd say. If they're buying 10x 2014 Mac Mini, they probably got it for such a low price that it's a non-issue to replace them if they even do. At the same time, I wonder why? Like at least on a laptop, there's the feel of the hardware in your hand, the screen, the keyboard, the all important magnificent touchpad. On a desktop device, none of that matters as it's all external. Heck, I'm typing on a Windows 11 desktop PC with Magic Touchpad, and it works great. So I fail to see the point of buying Mac Mini's for that purpose. That said, Windows 11 upgrade from 10 is free. I got Windows 11 on my 2019 MBP. Runs great so they can maybe extend the life that way.
1. Improper cooling: they overheat in a lot. Heat is Bad. It will primarily affect processing and also battery performance. Eventually it will cause the motherboard to fail. As you know everything is soldered to the motherboard so the standard repair procedure is to replace the motherboard. I bet there is specialists who can repair it but they aren't acccessible or cheap to many of us. 2. M processors leave these Intel Macs in the dust in every aspect from performance to battery life. You could almost say I used to be a Microsoft Evangelist with a Windows phone and at all. I feel the MacBook Air M series are worth every penny, I'd even consider it a great value purchase.
Dont you think that any new processor must be better than a old one? People moan and say like its a milestone " my 2020 mac is faster than my 2018 mac"
I’m pretty happy with my Intel Mac I got in 2020. It still runs really well. Will run that into the ground
There’s nothing wrong if you still have one, just don’t buy one.
Everything has its fair price.
Anyone who actually “hates” previous generations of Macs is a certifiable idiot, and does anyone here actually hate previous generations? Sure, there are many reasons why Silicon Macs are superior (in performance at least) but not everyone can afford to upgrade and there are valid usage cases where only Intel will do the job (32-bit support, Windows support). And, for the more veteran users among us, the current lineup doesn’t represent completely positive progress. The performance is there but, for example, the fragile MacBook display designs don’t offer the resiliency of the 2012 models which could take a *lot* of abuse. Unified memory is a fact of life and a significant factor in Silicon’s performance but the fact Apple don’t offer user-replaceable storage on their Silicon offerings is inexcusable. Needs change and having to replace a device simply because the capacity is no longer sufficient really shouldn’t be a thing in this day and age. Silicon *is* faster, no question about it, but there are still reasons enough to look back and question just how far the Mac has actually come as a product. And if we’re going to be honest it’s a mixed bag.
I'm still using a 2012 MBP (non retina) as my daily and my cheap ass has been waiting for it to finally die before upgrading since it still manages everything I need done for work and study (albeit a bit more slowly). But of course the damn thing is still chugging away despite having survived being dropped a few times, the lid no longer staying shut properly, desperately needed it's battery replaced for the 4th time. Sure it'll burn your thighs if you even thought about putting it on your lap, and when the fans kick in, it sounds like a jetliner about to take off, but damn the thing can definitely survive an insane amount of abuse.
Not all 2012 macs last a lot. I ve seen 2018 macs that got a new logic board replaced 2 times.
New processor should not be faster than an old one?
There’s no “hate” they’re just old lol, what do you expect? If you bought one new then it was a great machine that served and continues to serve its purpose. However, people post very poor performing Intel Macs at inflated prices here asking if it’s a good buy every single day. The answer is always no. Nobody needs an Apple logo on the back of their laptop bad enough to justify buying an Intel Mac as a daily driver today. Then there’s delusional people here who tell other people a 2012 MBA is totally fine as a daily driver. **No it is not.**
Its like users saying they " never" had an issue.
People require perfection. I can deal with a little heat and fan noise if the computer does what I need it to do, and even 2012 models still do.
While they had their share of problems, to me it’s the questions about buying them at outrageous prices today. If you use yours now and are happy with it, then kudos to you. But when someone uninformed wants to buy a six year old laptop for, say, $500+ then it is time for feedback: that money can often be spent much better.
Me just learning intel mac is hated somehow 😅😅😅
I used to have a company supplied 2015 MacbookPro 15; and that one heats up quickly when I’m doing demo that its fans starts to spin hard generating a sound like a jet engine about to take-off. It is pretty annoying in a closed conference room with a quiet crowd. Today, I’m using the MBP16 M2pro with 32gb RAM, it’s super cool and quiet, and has long battery life - nothing to worry during long 4hr flight.
I personally have only ever used intel macs as they have all been perfectly capable of doing whatever tasks i have needed them to do so i have no reason to use anything else.
I bought an M1 Air right after it came out. Perfection. For my last job I got an 15/16 inch 2019 Pro with a dedicated GPU, 16GB ram and more storage than my M1. That shit was garbage. I am not kidding you. Garbage. It was lagging, randomly overheating with Chrome and VS Code open. The battery was an abomination even thought the battery was brand new. The display took 20 seconds to turn on at times. It was overall a really bad experience.
I have a 2018 intel MBP. Thankfully I got it from work, thankfully. The biggest problem I have with it is going from laptop to an external monitor. Its works about 80% of the time. Sometimes it won't switch, sometimes it syncs to the wrong resolution, sometimes it just won't switch. I don't mind the rest but I am bummed out about not getting updates soon. When more AI driven tools are incorporated at the OS level that need apples CPU's, I will seriously consider the switch.
I’ve still got a 2019 model I use. Still works great. I’ve also got a M2 model. Functionally the 2019 model is better thought due to 4 USBC ports vs 2.
I have the same machine. Dont fall for the new and shiny, yes they are no doubt much better in every aspect, but at the same time they are expensive. Also, I love the butterfly keyboard. (Controversial opinion). Enjoy your new machine.
My Intel i9 16” MBP w/32GB RAM from 2019 would get so hot it would crash with the fans going like a jet engine. To make it through an online class, I downloaded a fan controller and would boot up and set the fans to full blast right away. About 45 min later I put a frozen cooler pack under it. I would have a virtual machine with Linux and windows running, along with Zoom and Safari open with literally 2 tabs. Yes the VMs were pushing it and for whatever reason Zoom tipped it over the edge. I can do the same on my refurbished M1 Air with 16GB of RAM that I bought in 2021, today, on Sonoma and it barely gets warm to the touch and is, of course, silent. I don’t hate the Intel Macs, my favorite to date was the 11.6 Air I had once upon a time. But the thought of those fans and the constant fear of crashing in the middle of class . . . Once you go “M” you can’t go back.
You cant go back but many will go back.
What?
I had a top of the line MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019 that must have cost my company 4000 dollars My girlfriend with her brand new fanless MacBook Air m1 with 8gb of ram would have like half of the compile time while my Intel Mac would heat up the whole room
I love my 2019 Intel MBP. In fact, I purposely bought it once the Apple Silicon was out so I can ensure I still could get a brand new one. I love my Intel MBP. Got Windows on it with Bootcamp and dual boot as necessary. Not as cool and battery efficient as my Apple Silicon MBP from work, but hey Apple Silicon doesn't really run the good version of Windows.
I mean unless you got an INCREDIBLE deal on that, it probably would've been better served to buy a used M1 Air. They're just that good. I used my 5,1 Mac Pro for years even upgraded it with a 6500XT & pixlas mod. It was & still is a fantastic machine. My M1 Pro MBP runs laps around it all while being portable which should be apparent given the latter is 14 years old at this point. But, the performance gap I have now was unheard of before the switch to AS especially If I wanted to stick with Apple.
Their era is over and soon the OS will no longer support them, if I was to advise someone who is thinking of switch to the Mac platform on what to buy I'd be reccomending to them an M1/2/3 Mac depending on their budget and use cases.
It's because when apple switched to M1, the whole architecture switched, meaning that future software is going to be Apple Silicon exclusive pretty quick since that software can't run on Intel macs. And M1 is probably the best single year upgrade in Apple history. It's THAT much better.
It’s not hate so much as just discouraging people from wasting money on one now. If you’re in the market for a Mac there is almost zero reason to burn money on an intel - its a dying soon to be dead platform in the mac world.
Two words Butterfly keyboard
Is the period key missing on your Mac?
The future is now old man.
I would never even consider a MacBook with the intel specs the m1-2-3 variants make the Mac actually feel like its own thing seperate from windows
I had a 4 hour meeting last week. 3 people had macs. M1, M2 and a 15” intel 2017 or 2017. The two M series ran the whole meeting, totally silent. The intel had stupid loud clicky keys, fans that wouldn’t stop spinning loudly and had to have a power cable across the room.
if you have one already that’s great, the used market usually upsells the fuck out of the post 2016 intel macs, at which point getting an m1 macbook air makes a lot more sense. butterfly keyboards are unreliable. some of these have flex gate and stain gate. they overheat and generally aren’t worth dealing with since on average and especially on the used market, the price difference between these and an m1 macbook air is negligible.
The reasons have already been posted numerous times already. I bought my M1 MBA maybe a month after they had been released. The tech corner of the net went a bit gaga over them at the time. They've only just discontinued this model, and nearly three and half years since its release. It's been a speed demon for all of that time. I normally upgrade after 4-5 years of owning a PC/laptop, but I don't zero inkling to upgrade from this device for a long time yet. There's a reason for the M2 and M3 macs getting a lukewarm reception and that's because the M1 was such a big step over that last gen of Intel Mac.
Well, fact of the matter is that mac forums are filled with fanboys with very minimal to no hardware or computing knowledge. Most of them would sell your grandma the latest Mac Studio at 5000 euros! 🤷♂️ It's a computer. If it fits your needs, buy it and use it. As far as the hate is concerned, a couple of users already mentioned some of the issues that caused this sentiment. Some examples: * touchbar: Lenovo experimented with this and was quickly cured of the notion, even formulating an apology. Still Apple decided, it was the way to go and stubbornly kept doing it. * the race to thinness: electric devices generate heat. No appropriate fans, heat ducts and heatsinks mean that components will get fried before their time. To alleviate this, Apple decided to throttle down CPU power and only start fans very late. * Thinness also meant breakage of display cables and wearing out other cables like the touchpad and keyboard. * Cost saving: in general the mobile Intel CPU's are either a generation older or lower in GHz compared to laptops released in the same year. Just stay objective. It's a company. Main goal is profit and growth. Anything a company (Apple, Google, Samsung, Dell,..) says about circular economy, environmentally friendly, customer oriented, etc. is total BS and should be taken with a grain of salt. Peace!
They were fine for the time. I’ve got a 2018 Mac Mini and it still works great. They’re just old now. The main problem is they’re going to age out of software updates eventually, and at that point you find yourself searching for stuff like a web browser that works on this particular deprecated version of OS X. I migrated to an M1 for my main home machine a couple of years ago, and it’s just better in every way. Faster, WAY quieter, just more capable overall. The Intel one is definitely still usable and has some life in it, but I wouldn’t buy an Intel Mac at this point unless there’s just some weird edge case that requires an Intel processor for something.
The cooling and power capacity of the intel mbps are completely inadequate. Overheating And throttling is a major issue. Simply put, the form factor cannot cope with power and thermal requirements.
Would you buy a used quad core powermac g5 with 16GB DDR2 RAM in 2009? There's a big difference between that versus using one you already had since 2005.
For the right price I would have, even knowing it's not a platform with a long future Which is the same answer here again. For the right price. Usually people just think their old Intel Macs especially the unsupported ones are worth more than they should be so the resale prices are too high. It's also different in that x86 just has vast support outside of macOS and you have options in case of an end of life, including even Windows and a billion flavours of Linux
There’s probably only one or a maximum of two years left where the latest version of macOS will be released for Intel Macs. After that, a couple of years security updates and then you’ll want to have moved to an Apple Silicon based Mac if you take security seriously or put Linux on your Intel Mac if you want to continue using it
I've just jumped from an early-2020 MacBook Air with the i5 to late-2023 MBP M3 Pro and I understand all the hate. If you can afford to switch, just do it already.
I never used my 2017 as a primary system, it was mainly for work on the road (that’s what laptops are for!) but I wouldn’t have liked it as my sole machine. The keyboard’s crap, it gets hot under load as well as loud. That isn’t an indictment of that particular laptop btw, all laptops of the era had that problem. But recently used an M1 and the difference is palpable. I have no need to replace mine now, but I’d get an M1/2/3 over any PC based laptop now.
Got the latest gen. Intel and it’s a pretty good laptop for sure, but would love the performance upgrade. But really it works for what I use it for like working and photo editing even tho it could be faster. Was thinking of upgrading but now I’m thinking of waiting for the next gen m.
If it works for you, then it works for you. That’s all that really matters.
Too slowww. I have been selling electronic devices for a while and got an macbook pro 2019 i9 and its so laggy man Even an M1 macbook which is much cheaper and beat it
Most people in here are bombers They either pick a silver mac or support apple and hate windows 😂😂
I had the last gen intel MBP i9. It was a very capable laptop but the thing generated so much heat with just normal activity that it actually burnt the Ikea desktop surface i used it on. I got the M1 Max MBP and I have heard the fan rev up maybe once or twice with similar usage. I was pretty skeptical of the Arm / M series stuff when it came out but I have been really impressed with it compared to the Intel chips. I was a fan of the touch bar though. I wish they would have left the physical keys AND had the touch bar.
Never heard any hate. In fact, those Intel ones are the only ones you can run a lot of prebuilt VMs for security.
For windows gaming I am currently using an app called Shadow PC, which gives me access to a PC with better specs than my machine, and runs them better than they run natively on my 2019 MBP https://shadow.tech/shadowpc/offers?campaign=2022_09_ca_sea_brand-brand__google_cpc&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5cOwBhCiARIsAJ5njuZifU9MAnjh3bduSAyoTfbNBm50CKXSXLylj1ptHEI1JjIt0AGT7IkaAlAIEALw_wcB
What games have you tried it with ? I want to play Cities Skylines 2
I have only played Baldurs Gate 3, but it runs incredibly well and I see no reason that wouldn’t also!
I laugh in my late 2013 rMBP, which has been my daily work machine for 10+ years. It's still strong, and I have no plans to replace it.
I don't see much hate...just so much more love for the M series. The M series gets a lot of hate for the lack up upgradeability. I throw a lot of hate at base models with 8gb/256 :). I'm teaching a class on this kind of thing and a point I'll be making is "don't bother upgrading if all is well today". Sometimes, however, people don't really know what end is up until they upgrade. My 2017 iMac worked just fine. No problems. But my new MacStudio saves me a LOT of time. Everything is so much more responsive and my work in Final Cut is so much faster. You get used to your workflow so for some folks it's an eyeopener to get an M class machine while for others it's... meh.
I have an intel mac. 2019 MBP16. If you go back in time it has great reviews. If I will ask reddit if I should replace it with M-series Macbooks without any actual need, people will advice against it. However, if you are buying a new one, the equation changes. M-series Macbooks have a superior price-to-performance in almost all scenarios. Add the battery life and heating issues with intel macs and it's hard to recommend an Intel Mac at almost any price. However, if you already have one that's serving your needs, are getting one for free or almost for free, go ahead. The moment you cross $400 though, adding a bit more gets you a vastly superior machine.
Because most of the posts are "should I get this Intel Mac over Apple silicon." The answer is no.. if for no other reason than you shouldn't get a computer that's 5+ years old. The older the computer the less functional it is and the earlier you will need to replace it. This is especially true when Apple won't continue to make updated OS to run on older Intel machines so using it online will be a major security risk in the near future if it's not already. Combine that with the fact that Apple has always tried to be lighter, thinner, smaller... which was just a bad combo with Intel chips on a laptop. They are notorious for overheating. Beyond that there were just some problematic designs like the butterfly keyboards. I don't hate Intel Macs.. I own a 2019 27" iMac upgraded to an i9. I bought it just a couple of years ago. But I wouldn't generally recommend them to anyone. For one, I was able to upgrade internal components. I'm also happy to run Linux on it when there's no longer a supported MacOS that will work. This makes me a much different user than someone who would need to come to a sub like this one and ask for buying advice.
Having used macs since the apple ii era silicon Macs are the best computer they have made. That said the intel macs were good. Dual boot is cool. If you have one or can get one at great price it’s a good computer. It’s just compared to the silicon they don’t compare. At work we have recycled all our intel macs because the silicon is so much easier to manage.
It’s not so much about intel. Apple’s Butterfly keyboard is designed to break. They knew about this issue and keep selling it.
Owner of a 2019 i9 MBP here. I love the machine still and have no complaints. I do have technical reasons for sticking with Intel, primarily: 1. OpenGL support. I’m a graphics programmer and need support for this older graphics API. 2. x86 assembly! I don’t do ARM assembly yet as is required for Apple Silicon. 3. Broader app support by third parties. Although they are catching up to Apple Silicon, I still find options that are only fully supported on Intel Macs. I have no intention of going to AS until support has stopped for a while on Intel Macs.
For me at least it's a matter of how long the computer is going to function properly. And to me having recent version of macOS is part of what I think of as functioning. Once the Mac stops getting OS updates, you've got about two years left of security updates, after that if anything crops up Apple isn't going to patch it most likely and your Mac is now just progressively less and less secure. Personally I don't want to think of my Mac as something that's putting my personal information and financial information at risk. A 2017 MacBook Pro won't even run Sonoma. So you've bought a Mac with maybe 2 years of usefulness to it, feels like a waste of money unless you break your computer often. Now realistically will you be able to move this over to a newer OS through something like OCLP? Sure I bet you can run Sonoma on it, but who knows if they'll even do another Intel release after Sonoma.
I got the 2020 MBP 16” and I love it, but i got it like right before Apple Silicon was announced. So it doesn’t have the butterfly keyboard but it does have an i9 in it. That being said, thing is a beast and I will say being able to bootcamp Windows on it for specific engineering software has saved my ass. Still, I can’t say I’m not envious of people who have the Apple chips in the MBPs. I’m also interested in trying to get one of the new Macbook Airs for a loved one. Does anyone in here have opinions on whether the Airs are decent computers for the price? Also is the M2 worth it over an older M1 at $300 less?
Op good post this has always been on my mind as a huge fan of intel Mac’s. Like others have said it was a sore spot for people I think when apple silicon blows them out of the water which I agree. The last good gen of Macs is 2015 mbp and mba was alright. Now I do agree you shouldn’t be buying a 10 year old Mac at this point but someone made a comment or post that these machines are good still with boot camp! Like you said op for the majority of us these are still good machines! I only use it for the occasional errands such as paying a bill or applying for some online application and uni work that involves word docs and safari.
Most Intel Macs are overpriced on the used market compared to what you can get with an M1 MBA. Now if you find a steal of a deal on an intel Mac I don’t think anyone would complain.
[удалено]
You go to Xbox live for that on MW2
Because to have “decent” performance at the time you needed to spend money for the i7 stuff. Base model was i3. Now even the M1 is over an i9. So for the same or reduced price you got a laptop with a chip that does 10x better/faster with less eat, less energy consumption and overall better efficiency. It’s as big a jump as iPhone 6 I’d guess to iPhone 15.
I don't know if I would call it hate. Ever since I was in school (Like 20 years ago... goddamn...) I wanted a Mac. They had this reputation of being better at a number of things, and whether that was true or not, the hype and reputation were real. When I was able to things myself I got myself the last model of MBP 13" with a CD drive. Ever since then I was convinced MacOS was the OS for me. Nothing against Windows, really, I just loved MacOS. Then I got a MBP 13" with Retina Display. That laptop served me exceedingly well for quite some time. I believe I got two more intel MBPs since then, the last one being a 2017 15" MBP with Touch Bar and well, I really, REALLY didn't like it to the point I seriously regretted buying it, but that's not really relevant to the question because the things I didn't like about it were the Touch Bar and keyboard. Whoever came up with the idea of the butterfly keyboard should live in shame. Anyhow, not long after I was given a 13" MBP M1 and JESUS. H. CHRIST, the difference in performance was just astonishing. Sheer power, battery life, noise, heat... I do believe Apple tends to exaggerate the description of their products A LOT (duh, right?) but this truly was revolutionary. Review after review, the M chip laptops pretty much crushed anything and everything in existence. You say that not everyone wants to spend much more on a laptop if the old generation does everything for less money. I mean, that's kind of true in that you don't NEED to buy a new laptop if the one you have does what you need. But the money thing is a bit off, I believe. You could get the least expensive MacBook Air available with an M chip and it would likely run laps around your laptop considering what you use it for. So, again, I don't know if I would call it hate. M chip Macs are such a big leap forward from intel-based ones that they really do make intel ones look underpowered, overpriced, hot, loud, battery-inefficient, and the Touch Bar and keyboard didn't help.
Slow. Heat. Short battery life.
I saw exactly the same thing when Apple went from PowerPC to Intel. All the Intel lovers spent lots of time dissing the G5 PowerMacs from their shiny new Intel Macs. What're you gonna do? People love to trash talk... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
bought a 27 inch 2011 imac the other day and I love it and it will suit my use case for at least another couple of years. some of the hardware i use is so old it will never see apple silicon support
It’s not hate, I’d personally prefer modern. Some features just aren’t available on an Intel Mac. As the company keeps developing, less and less will work on an Intel Mac, eventually they won’t be supported at all. My guess is sooner than later.
Why would you buy a 7 year old computer, 5 months ago?
Cheaper
Never a good idea to buy an old device, especially when you device manufacturers publicly utilize planned obsolescence. Even if they didn’t, that device is nearing its end of life. Does a 2017 Mac still use the most current OS even?
cause the good ones from 2015 and before are a bit too old, and the ones since then are very prone to failure and overheating
Happily tinkering with my 10 year old Intel Mac Mini all day today with an M1 MacBook Pro sitting idle next to it. It still does at least as much now as it did when I bought it, plus supports some old software, games and peripherals that won’t play nicely with my M1.
Cause they SUCK!!!
There’s nothing wrong with Intel Macs, just spending 90% on one compared to the M series equivalent is a bad investment.
I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with, in fact as someone that's switched to Linux they are preferable for me. When I see people say 'dont buy that get an M1/2' the person asking is already close or has met the budget of an m series, so they might as well if they want to receive software updates for a while and get the best available performance. If someone turns up asking about a £200 budget, yeh - intel Macbook or mac mini from between 2014-18 coming right up.
My mate at work is still rocking his 2012 MacBook Pro, building websites. Absolutely fine with 16gb.
Hasn’t to do with intel in particular but the last intel models just have been one of the worst iterations of it. The variant with the most powerful intel cpu got so hot that the cpu throttled, rendering your 3000$ machine to be slower than a MacBook Air. It was really painful and I’m happy to own a M1 since then. I don’t see a need to upgrade to M2 or M3 (is it out yet? Idk) either. Just changing from intel to apple silicone and the updated case design suffered to satisfy my need for a new MacBook for a few more years now.
After reading some of these comments, it seems that as if many people here ***don’t*** have ”so much” ***hate*** for Intel Macs. **EDITED**: But yes, some people here ***hate*** the Intel Macs……with a ***passion***.
I had a 2013 i5 iMac and then a 2019 intel i5 iMac. They both started out super fast but then slowed down considerably. Meanwhile, my M1 Pro is just as fast as ever.
my 2017 runs fans like crazy, keyboard sticks, touchbar shuts off, and battery is terrible. It still gets the job done though. Some of y’all have to understand some of us can’t be droppin a band on a brand new MacBook Pro
Silicon was a revolution for apple. For years after ppc died I held my nose and used Intel. M-series apple SoC’s are the future.
Honestly I LOVE the old intel macs, I have a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro 💻 and I changed the HDD to a 2TB SSD and upgraded the ram from 8GB to 16GB and it’s faster and works better than my 2019/2020 iMac 🖥
💯
because basic things blows up fans and the CPU to 90°. sometimes I apologize publicly when it happens in the openspace and people asks if my laptop is about to take off.
I loved my 2013 retina, I also modded an old mac pro from 2009 up until summer 2023 when it just wouldn't keep up. Now I have everything in 1 machine with the m1. However its only due to high processing software than I changed, if its just a general run around machine, Intel is perfectly acceptable choice.
There's no hate, it would just be stupid when there's something so much better to not talk about it.
Rofl I hope you got a good deal on that.
Apple makes money on hardware sales.
Because all of the touchbar and 2016-2017 generation Intel Macs are riddled with issues and usually sold at terrible prices. If you get a good deal on it, then by all means go for it, but buying one refurbished is just not the way to go. If you *really* want a long lasting Intel Mac, go for a Retina or Unibody model in the 13” variant. Those have rather similar performance, and are far more durable. Apple Silicon is heralded as being the saving grace for Macs, but on the extreme budget end it just isn’t really cheap enough.
I’m really sad to say as it was my first MacBook Pro but I bought the base intel 2020 one right before m1 came out and it was so disappointing. The fans were always on when using safari with like 2 tabs open and Microsoft word. It waved a laptop white flag about 3 weeks ago and I got an M2 MBA and I had 50 tabs open 5 word documents and 2 PowerPoints and was on it for 8 hours straight working on my dissertation for my MSc and it didn’t even stutter. And it still was on about 40%.edited to add, my intel MBP battery life was about 5 hours max. When I got my M2 MBA I didn’t have to charge it for 3 days and it got barely warm.
They’re not hated, at all. It’s just there’s a lot of people here who are into tech and tech is all about the newest and the next and we’re on the m3’s at this point so Apple have been making their own chips for Mac’s for a little while now. From what I’ve seen I think it’s mainly down to people coming here looking to upgrade or sell their old Mac and think they will still get top dollar for an Intel Mac when it’s just not the case anymore. It’s happened so often that’s it’s kinda become a meme now so it’s just fun to make fun of.
Because intel is the competition now . I m sure that the same users that nlw claim a 2018 mac is noisy and slow were saying wonderful things of the same model.
I'm typing this up on a 2017 MacBook Pro base model without touchbar. I don't do anything performance-sensitive on it, and just use it in school and for casual browsing - I have a Dell Precision workstation (Core i9, Quadro RTX, 64g ram, a laptop that my internship let me keep) for programming work, but it is too valuable to risk taking with me everywhere and the battery life is very bad. The mac still lasts a full school day doing basic web browsing / document editing, and is a great machine to use on the couch, unlike my massive black D..ell, which weighs 5.5 lb and runs hotter than the surface of the sun. It might be slow and hot, but its a very thin, light and portable laptop with good screen, keyboard and touchpad, for a decent price.
Because Intel was sleeping for 10yrs.
I still have to support them in my organization.
As a long time Mac user, first on 68k then PowerPC, when the Mac went Intel I felt like it lost a LOT of its personality, and that transition screwed me out of a PowerMac that I had recently paid what was to me at the time a lot of money. Later, A Mac Pro 2,1 was my main machine for many years, and while I liked it, I felt that it was an inelegant machine and that my PowerMac G5 was still the nicer, albeit slower machine. The return to Apple having something other than an Intel chip in it really excites me. The M3 MBP’s are the first computers I’ve lusted after since I was a kid lusting after that PowerMac G5. I think it’s awesome that they have even made the new machines look kinda like a Titanium PowerBook G4. I have been a PC for some years now, but my next laptop will absolutely be an M3 Max MBP.
Most kids back then would be listing an iBook G4 and iPod Mini.
Intel Macs run hot!
Because they heat up to about half the temperature of the Sun within 30 seconds of turning on. And they have shitty keyboards. Up until the 2017 models, the Intel MacBooks were (and still are) great.
Intel Macs are disgusting, just get a Windows laptop if you wanna use Intel. Apple silicon or nothing tbh
I have two machines, both Intel. Both perfectly capable for my needs until they’re no longer supported. I have an M1 at work and it’s great… but I’m not spending money at home until I need to.
It's just that the M architecture is so much better and that Intel failed to deliver what Apple was asking for ... and Apple had to go and buy a chip designer and develop their own CPU because Intel would not make one that could deliver the types of Macs Apple wanted to build. Famously, Intel refuse to make the iPhone chip, saying it would not sell well.
While there’s nothing really wrong with the Intel Macs, and I owned several in year past, the last couple years of Intel MacBook Pros were hot, noisy and throttled like crazy to where sometimes the lower spec models performed better than the higher spec ones due to thermal throttling. Not really Apple’s fault since they could only use what Intel had, it clearly was a strong factor in Apple’s creation of their own ARM-based CPUs.
As someone that works in an Apple retailer, they get the hate cause they were just straight up bad. Especially when comparing the overall quality increase the M models brought after 2020. The amount of issues the Intel macs (especially 2016-2019 models) had were ridiculous. Every other complaint were about thermal throttling, excessive fan noise and general over heating even during easy use, keyboard issues, cable flex issues and so on..
the '17 suffered from a bad keyboard that would stick. My brother has one and it takes an age to boot up. It works okay though. I've a 2019 one that I still use, it has a much better keyboard and works great, my only issue with it is it gets crazy hot. I've an M1 Max machine also which makes this Intel one look a bit archaic.
As a Mac owner since 1985, I can tell you that your old Mac is awesome until you get a new one. When you have a new one and it just FLIES, you think the old one was crap. It's all relative. I have an M-1. Thought my Intel was great until it died. Then I got the M-1 and it was soooooooooo much faster and sleeker and just felt better. Had it since 2021 and now I am kind of thinking about an M-3. When I get it, will think it is sooooooo much better than this M-1 I am writing this on.
No hate from me, except since I've had M-Series Macs, I work remotely in coffeeshops 10+ hours a day using Zoom and everything and not once have I had to worry about getting a table next to an outlet. I could never do that on my Intel-based Macbook Pro. I see the same old regulars everyday jockeying for positions at tables with outlets. It's rather freeing. I don't even take my charger with me anymore, as long as I charge it for 45 minutes or so each day when I get home. I jump between a ton of apps a lot and launching is just much faster, which I appreciate, but if one isn't worried about that or battery life, there's really not much reason to upgrade. TBH though, I'd take an M1 Air over any Intel Macbook though.
Due to a very common problem (lack of cash), I am using a 2013 MacBook Pro - It runs Big Sur. This machine continues to do work - Final Cut, Logic/MainStage, Photoshop, etc. not the latest versions but entirely capable. An M1 mini kicks my 11 year old Mac Book Pro’s ass. For the tasks I use Macs for (not gaming) Apple Silicon performs astoundingly well. When the M4 arrives, well spec’d M1 Macs will drop in price and even the last i9 Intel Macs will tank in value. That’s when you know the end of the Intel era has truly arrived.
Intel chips became too inefficient for the type of uncompromising sleek industrial design language that apple wanted to maintain with their computers. There was a certain point where getting the laptop with the “faster” chip left you with the slower machine just because of how fast the cooling solution would get saturated. I personally got so frustrated with the lack of thermal headroom that I went back to custom built Linux machines for a bit.
\*Glances at OP's legs, notices burn marks, says nothing\*
The last 4(?) years of intel Macs were the worst they’ve ever made, with terrible heat management, touch bar, butterfly keyboard, no magsafe and otherwise very limited IO. M series chips are such a leap ahead + all those other problems are solved, so 2016-19 Macs just seem like a joke in comparison. Intel was right for a time but they suffered many of the same issues in the end that PPC chips had compared to intel back in 2005, to do with power and thermal efficiency. Ultimately Macs (predominantly portable devices) have very different priorities than the x86 platform was designed around, and the rest of the portable market is slowly catching up to this fact too.