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Comment by feifan | Hacker News Reader

Empirically, the 2016–2020 MacBook Pros seem to be relatively unreliable. My 2016 would frequently have wake-from-sleep problems, occasional kernel panics, and fried its logic board with a pop after about 3 years. My 2019 thermal-throttles every day, kernel panics a few times a month, and has a battery that just gives up under load.

Meanwhile my 2019 Mac Pro (tower) is probably the most rock-solid reliable computer I've ever used. Months of uptime, never has sleep/wake problems, and only one kernel panic in the 1.5 years I've had it.

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My MBP Retina 2013 has been going strong in various environments, not babied at all.

Same here. It's what I'm typing this on. The only thing I've done is replace the battery about a year ago. 7 years was a good run. Works 100% as well as the day I bought it and the last Apple product I've purchased. Took 10 minutes from walk-in to walk-out at a non-Apple branded Mac repair store for 70% of the price using the identical official replacement battery. No appointment.

Yeah, I have a 2013 MBP as well, and it has been problem-free. The battery still lasts hours! I think it's because I almost always used it plugged-in, so the battery has a very very low cycle count. I am SUPER impressed with how well the machine has lasted, considering my heavy usage of it!

I, too, have a late 2013 MBP, and just today replaced the battery a second time due to swelling; first time was mid-2018. I also leave my MBP plugged into power all the time, and rarely use it as a laptop apart from my desk, and suspect this may be contributing to lowered battery lifetime. However, 4.5+ years on the factory installed one, and 3 years on the first replacement seemed OK, given the machine has given me no other issues at all in the 8 years I've had it. Both battery repairs were done myself using the excellent iFixit replacement kit and instructions. While I know I have to replace this MBP eventually I'd rather wait until the post-M1 availability shakes out, and I feel confident a replacement MBP won't have the issues that have plagued each years' models from 2015 onward.

Yea, my 2012 is going strong.

I've been meaning to put a ssd in it, but procrastinating.

Love the screws Apple.

I strongly recommend this if you can install it. I did it for my tech-illiterate partner for his 2014ish MBP, installed 1/2 TB SDD. It is snappy than before and the FaceTime finally works on his MBP. Before then, his MBP will not get the FT call notification until the last ringing and then it will send the notification but it is too late. I am not sure how spinning rust have a impact on FT from loading. He is not screen recording or anything, it just will struggle so hard to load FT and often failed on spinning rust. Now on SDD, it load normally without issue. Strange behavior. I tried to find info about this but I couldn't find any information about this. Looks like it is one-off deal thing.

SSDs are relatively cheap right now. I upgraded my 2009 mbp with one and it was definitely worth it.

Can't run newer releases of osx (err macOS) anymore, though, right? Only a matter of time before there's no more updates to an unsupported platform.

Regarding the Mac Pro. I think the addon cards are a taste of things to come. They remind me of the old Acorn Archimedes slices on the RISC PC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risc_PC - you could add CPUs (ARM - this is where ARM started!, x86 and DSPs).

They definitely took inspiration from that, and I think they’re going to reveal a game changer with the next Mac Pro. I suspect it’ll be similar. Imagine being able to add loads of M-spec CPU daughterboards & a few AMD ryzen ones for your virtualisation antics?

Exactly the same. My Mac Pro literally hasn't crashed one time I think. I have it loaded up with the 2 HDD mount, 1 NVME SSD for scratch, a capture card, W5700X MPX, and a Wacom attached. No issues in Blender, Clip Studio, nothing. I thought I'd regret the purchase but it's probably my favorite computer ever (makes a good footrest too)

Nice! I got my MP to replace my 2016 as my personal computer after the latter died, but that was a few months before the W5700X was available. I kinda wish I waited to get that; oh well.

It is a good size for being a footrest! IMO the aluminum and sharp edges don't make it a particularly comfortable footrest though haha

My 2011 MBA needed a new battery a few years ago, but still works amazingly well as a daily-driver computer for my wife

I think the obession with 'thin' laptop that crept in towards 2015 onwards has something to do with it

My pet theory is that the thinner 2016 chassis (and/or hotter chips around that time) crossed some thermal/entropy threshold and the heat is causing a lot of the software flakiness … although I have no way to prove that

I agree, though i've had some minor issues with big sur and third party (OWC) SSD PCIE devices on my mac pro. Once I removed the cards things were solid. Prior to big sur no issues were abound. Once I upgraded i found sleep didn't work appropriately and bootcamp was a non-starter as well.

I work on a 2019 16" MBP and have had no issues other than the space gray finish wearing off of the hand rest on the keyboard. The CPU definitely runs warmer than my 2015 MBP retina, though. I'm looking forward to a worth M1X/M2 16inch to run a lot cooler.

My mid-2015 Macbook Pro that I use extensively has only had to replace the battery this year.

Other than that I had never had to repair anything for it. It still runs very well.

In terms of value for money I'd say that's pretty good.

Agreed... 2019 MBP here and the touchbar went toast in less than a year. At this point I'll never purchase an Apple product for personal use unless my hands are tied.

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