MacBook Pro Retrospective
Due to some generous gifts over the holidays (and with possible tariffs looming), I bought an M4 Pro Mac Mini. I’ll write more about it soon, but first let’s talk about the MacBook Pro that is being retired[1].
Let’s structure this like the retrospective I did years ago for the Surface Book: What will I miss? And what won’t be missed?
What I’ll Miss
To be honest, I won’t miss much, but only because what I’m moving to is just so much better. This laptop served me well for almost 5 years.
The main loss in moving to a Mac Mini is portability. But even then, I’m not someone who travels or works on the go. This laptop has effectively become a desktop. I’ve even been running it exclusively in “clamshell” mode with multiple external monitors for the last year or more.
I’ll also say that while Apple Silicon is wonderful and works for (almost) every use case I have, I will miss not having to even think about software compatibility. More on that in the future Mac Mini post.
Keyboard? Trackpad? TouchBar? Ports?
I’m not sure I really need to cover these, but just to be thorough:
- Apple laptops have the best trackpads. Hands down, no discussion necessary.
- Since they fixed their terrible laptop keyboards back in 2019/2020, they also have the best laptop keyboards.
- The TouchBar is helpful in a few circumstances but otherwise inoffensive.
- USB-C ports are pretty great. I never really had any problems with them.
What I Won’t Miss
The fucking fans.
I was happy about them when I got the laptop because the Surface Book didn’t have any fans to cool the CPU. But 5 years later, keeping the MacBook cool has become a problem.
For whatever reason— be it dust, age, or the increasing demands of software[2]— the fans would be running more and more. Running Windows (and Visual Studio) inside a Parallels VM pushes the CPU to over 90ºC easily. It throttles constantly. Basically while I’m working during the day, it won’t shut up. I’m so happy when I can switch over to a project that doesn’t require Windows and can be done exclusively from the macOS side. It’s so much quieter.
Until I start an iOS simulator…
Apple laptops at the end of the Intel era were all like this. Way too thin to allow the necessary airflow to cool chips that ran too hot. It’s no wonder why Apple dropped Intel as soon as they could make their own chips work outside of phones and tablets.