MBP 15' late 2013 - vs - MBP 16' 2021

[cool11]

I have mbp 15' late 2013, with i7 cpu, 512gb ssd, and 16 gb ram.
Still a decent machine. But I cannot tell for how long any more...

I am ready to go for an order for
mbp 16' 2021, with m1 pro cpu, 1tb ssd, and 32gb ram.

I know, every subsystem of the new machine is multiple times upgraded and improved since my current machine.

But I want to hear opinions about of what I should expect in terms of user experience and working procedures, when I will have the new mbp.
I want to be psychologically prepared!

 

[lawrencesmac]

I came from the Late 2013 MBP 15" to the 14" M1 Max 24-core GPU.
Expect no worries on connections transitions and dongles, as the ports you used to have in the old machine is continued in the new one. I'm still using HDMI to connect my external, and the MagSafe charging as used to.
One thing you might wanna get used to it is the auto power on in the new MBP. You might get excited the first time you open the lid and powered on automatically, it says "hello" on screen. Auto-power on is the feature on M1 laptops every time you open the lid after shutdown.
Keyboard and trackpads aren't the same as old ones, but they're much better. The keyboard is very comfortable and responsive to type on. Force touch trackpad is great compared to your old one is physical clicks.
Battery will be far better than the old ones, fan is absolutely quiet, temperature keeps cool.

I recommend switching to M1 without Time Machine restore, as to ensure no Intel codings and files are brought to the new system.

 

[throAU]

But I want to hear opinions about of what I should expect in terms of user experience and working procedures, when I will have the new mbp.

For regular use - the big, big thing you will notice is the almost complete lack of fan activity, and thus complete silence. Even under fairly significant load. The only time I've heard my fan crank up was when I was deliberately stressing it with a blender render. And even then it was quieter than an intel Mac running a Zoom call

That and the fact that apps open so fast and the battery life is huge.

If you're not doing lots of video work, those will be the most noticeable things.

TouchID is great, and the 14" enclosure just feels.... nice. Smooth, rounded edges, nice keyboard feel and as above force touch is great.


I transferred over from an intel machine with time machine, nothing too weird to report so far; home-brew was a bit of an ordeal to convert though.

 

[ariel97970505]

Mine is going to be delivered by next Monday; until then, I cannot say much about the comparison. haha

 

[UBS28]

I have mbp 15' late 2013, with i7 cpu, 512gb ssd, and 16 gb ram.
Still a decent machine. But I cannot tell for how long any more...

I am ready to go for an order for
mbp 16' 2021, with m1 pro cpu, 1tb ssd, and 32gb ram.

I know, every subsystem of the new machine is multiple times upgraded and improved since my current machine.

But I want to hear opinions about of what I should expect in terms of user experience and working procedures, when I will have the new mbp.
I want to be psychologically prepared!

Do some research on software. Not everything works great on M1 / M1 Pro / M1 Max.

I would keep an Intel Mac as a backup untill you are sure all your software and plugins work 100% on ARM.

 

[cool11]

I came from the Late 2013 MBP 15" to the 14" M1 Max 24-core GPU.
Expect no worries on connections transitions and dongles, as the ports you used to have in the old machine is continued in the new one. I'm still using HDMI to connect my external, and the MagSafe charging as used to.
One thing you might wanna get used to it is the auto power on in the new MBP. You might get excited the first time you open the lid and powered on automatically, it says "hello" on screen. Auto-power on is the feature on M1 laptops every time you open the lid after shutdown.
Keyboard and trackpads aren't the same as old ones, but they're much better. The keyboard is very comfortable and responsive to type on. Force touch trackpad is great compared to your old one is physical clicks.
Battery will be far better than the old ones, fan is absolutely quiet, temperature keeps cool.

I recommend switching to M1 without Time Machine restore, as to ensure no Intel codings and files are brought to the new system.

All seem so nice!

One thing I am gonna miss, it's the usb-a port that late 2013 model had.
A usb hub seems absolutely necessary.
Is this ok?

Type-C Multi-Port Adapter 4K with Ethernet

The Satechi Type-C Aluminum Multi-Port Adapter adds a plethora of connections to your laptop or desktop, just by using one Type-C port.

satechi.net

Also, if I don't like it, can I disable 'auto-power' feature? Is this easy to be done?

 

[cool11]

For regular use - the big, big thing you will notice is the almost complete lack of fan activity, and thus complete silence. Even under fairly significant load. The only time I've heard my fan crank up was when I was deliberately stressing it with a blender render. And even then it was quieter than an intel Mac running a Zoom call

That and the fact that apps open so fast and the battery life is huge.

If you're not doing lots of video work, those will be the most noticeable things.

TouchID is great, and the 14" enclosure just feels.... nice. Smooth, rounded edges, nice keyboard feel and as above force touch is great.


I transferred over from an intel machine with time machine, nothing too weird to report so far; home-brew was a bit of an ordeal to convert though.

I have an external hard disk, with bootable images taken from my current mbp, with superduper.
I hope that 'migration assistant' will help me transferring my whole environment on the new mbp, easily.
Any ideas about this?

 

[cRzz]

I came from the Late 2013 MBP 15" to the 14" M1 Max 24-core GPU.
Expect no worries on connections transitions and dongles, as the ports you used to have in the old machine is continued in the new one. I'm still using HDMI to connect my external, and the MagSafe charging as used to.
One thing you might wanna get used to it is the auto power on in the new MBP. You might get excited the first time you open the lid and powered on automatically, it says "hello" on screen. Auto-power on is the feature on M1 laptops every time you open the lid after shutdown.
Keyboard and trackpads aren't the same as old ones, but they're much better. The keyboard is very comfortable and responsive to type on. Force touch trackpad is great compared to your old one is physical clicks.
Battery will be far better than the old ones, fan is absolutely quiet, temperature keeps cool.

I recommend switching to M1 without Time Machine restore, as to ensure no Intel codings and files are brought to the new system.

What do you mean by switching to M1 without TM restore? Are you referring to the whole process of data transfer from one machine to another? If so, which way is best to transfer?

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

I like to do a fresh setup on a new machine and then manually drag over any files I need from my external hard drive, but that's just me.

 

[throAU]

I hope that 'migration assistant' will help me transferring my whole environment on the new mbp, easily.
Any ideas about this?

I've migrated from Mac to Mac using either TM backup or migration assistant every time for the past decade. I haven't had any real complaints.

Select restore from TM backup in the initial wizard, then take ownership of the backups with the new machine post-restore and it's mostly as if I'm working with my old machine (just needed to reinstall store apps). I was up and running on the new machine inside an hour.

I do wish I used migration assistant and a cable this time about 5 minutes into restoring from my hard-drive based time machine backup this time though - both machines were SSD; it would have been much faster I suspect

 

[ariel97970505]

I do the same thing. I'd like a fresh setup out of the box. Exiting...

 

[1Mark]

I've migrated from Mac to Mac using either TM backup or migration assistant every time for the past decade. I haven't had any real complaints.

I also migrated from my late 2013 15" to my 14".
But I did check manually in activity monitor what apps were still running intel versions, where I knew I had to download the Apple Silicon version manually.

I had to manually replace Chrome. The rest (eg. MS Office) already was fine.

If I were running complex things like homebrew, I would do a clean install.

 

[lawrencesmac]

What do you mean by switching to M1 without TM restore? Are you referring to the whole process of data transfer from one machine to another? If so, which way is best to transfer?

I transfer files one by one instead of just restoring from a TM backup. It's just my feeling with very long ago system and app config files maybe transferred to the new M1 wasting useful disk space, so I'll just manually transfer files from scratch.

 

[Hammie]

I came from a 2013 13" MBP to the new 2021 14" MBP.

For me, the size and weight were the same.

I have a HooToo USB-C dongle similar to the one you showed. I used it for my iPad Pro for the SD card reader. Since the new MBPs already have an HDMI and SD card reader, you might want to find one without those ports and just USB-A and ISB-C ports (not sure if there is even a beast like that yet).

I have all my files saved in MS OneDrive. Desktop and a few other settings were in iCloud Drive. Therefore, I did not have many files saved locally that were not backed up in a cloud somewhere. That way, I could setup as a new computer and then just sync the files I need from the cloud.

Personally, I love the old chicklet style keyboard, but the new one is very smooth. I hated my wife's older butterfly keyboard that she had on her Air. Glad they moved on from that hot mess.

I think it will be a pretty seamless transition and you will greatly enjoy your new machine.

Congrats and good luck!

 

[cool11]

It would be nice if I could have an estimation of the % of better performance,
with the new mac.
Of course approximately, just to have a realistic expectation.

 

[cool11]

----
So, no superduper user here, for telling about the 'migration assistant' procedure,
using the external's hard disk bootable os image?

I did it in the past successfully. But it was almost ten years ago.
You point 'migration assistant' to the external hard disk with the 'bootable image',
and I remember it took everything and transferred it to the new mac.

I am just a little bit worried now,
because we talk about the new 'apple silicon', and also monterey.
I would like to have a good feedback from anyone with such similar experience,
in these brand new tech conditions from apple, with the new macs.

 

[nigameash]

Can you please post a side-by-side photo of both machines if you end up getting the 16" model?

I'm on the same 15" model as yours and would like to get a feel for the new size.

 

[cool11]

I guess my new mac will be in my hands by late January 2022!
What a scheduled delay!

 

[ariel97970505]

Widely delay on production or shipping?

 

[smoking monkey]

It would be nice if I could have an estimation of the % of better performance,
with the new mac.
Of course approximately, just to have a realistic expectation.

What are you doing is the question.
Anyway, I’d say 4 or 5 times better than the late 2013. I have both machines.

 

[cool11]

Widely delay on production or shipping?

I guess both of them.
I was told so, from the beginning, before I put the order in the apple authorised reseller.
So it is not any kind of bad surprise.
But it is rather awful, that in 2021-2 I have to wait about 2,5 months to get my mbp...

 

[cool11]

What are you doing is the question.
Anyway, I’d say 4 or 5 times better than the late 2013. I have both machines.

Wow, this is incredible!
I do all kinds of stuff. Web design, photoshop/graphics, browsers with dozens of tabs, video conversions sometimes, etc

 

[ilikeavocados5893]

I went from a late 2013 15" to an M1 Pro 16" and it blows it out of the water in almost every way. ProRes exporting is like 6-7x faster, CPU tasks are about 2x faster.

 

[solouki]

I don't know if you are still interested, but if you are interested in performance comparisons, it turns out that I just ran some CPU benchmarks (Stockfish) on exactly both of these machines:

Stockfish patch to improve performance on M1 by up to 80%.

Hi all, I've had a couple requests for further information, so I am substituting a PDF document with more details for this post. EDIT: Corrected a left-hand/right-hand mixup. Thanks. EDIT: Recompiled Stockfish 14.1 with PGO to see what difference this makes over the Homebrew Stockfish 14.1...

forums.macrumors.com

It turns out that Stockfish does not fully max out the performance of the Apple Silicon SOCs, while it does max out on the Intel CPUs.

And an earlier post (#73) in the same topic provides some temperature comparisons also.

Solouki

 

[cool11]

What about power consumption? A brief comparison between them?

I am not necessarily talking about battery life, but as I said, how much power each one consumes,
or there are opinions that new mbp can even be powered by bigger powerbanks while this is impossible with the 2013 model, etc.