I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few months. The Intel to Apple Silicon transition has concluded for notebook computers, with only a few key standout Mac desktops still being sold with Intel inside. When looking back on the Macs that we had in the Intel Mac era, there were a lot of really great Macs. I do think, however, that we got somewhat of a raw deal when it came to some of them, particularly the 13-inch MacBook Pros.
Now, before fans of the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros (which I consider myself to be one of) get their pitchforks out and get ready to refute that statement, let me explain this a little bit further:
In the PowerPC era, every Mac had a discrete GPU. The CPUs in the notebooks were of a weaker caliber to the CPUs in the desktops (as it usually is with most computers), and a similar phenomenon occurred with GPUs as well. But, when you bought a 12-inch PowerBook G4, you never felt like you were getting THAT MUCH WEAKER of a system when compared to a 15-inch PowerBook G4. You definitely did get a weaker system. The 12-inch PowerBook G4 notebooks WERE lower-end PowerBook G4 notebooks. But they were never anywhere near the degree of difference in performance that any given Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2010 through 2020 had compared to its contemporary 15-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro. In the case of said sets of 2010 through 2020 Intel MacBook Pros, the differences were night and day. They were entirely different Macs suited for entirely different purposes and, where the 15-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros served the higher-end markets, the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros never were as effective as the 12-inch PowerBook G4s were.
There are a few obvious causes/reasons for this. For one, Apple was constantly trying to make the MacBook Pros thinner and smaller footprint meant less room for airflow and heat dissipation. But I think another reason for this was that it was almost too easy for Apple to continually adopt Intel integrated graphics on the lower end Macs. From 2011 onwards, they were on the same die as the CPU, so that meant using one less heat-generating part. When the PowerPC to Intel transition was underway, you only saw Intel integrated graphics on the MacBooks (which replaced both sizes of iBook G4 as well as the 12-inch PowerBook G4) and the Mac minis. It was still a downgrade in graphics performance from the discrete graphics that their PowerPC predecessors had. But, at least for the lower-end iBooks and the Mac mini, it was an okay concession to be making. These were not billed as high performance Macs in the way the the PowerBook G4s were.
Now, in 2009 when the Aluminum MacBook was rebranded into the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the premise was that the NVIDIA integrated graphics (in the form of the GeForce 9400M and GeForce 320M) were close enough to the discrete GPUs of the era that the performance difference wouldn't be as significant. It was still a huge difference in performance from the 15-inch MacBook Pros that had discrete GPUs and still a larger difference in performance than was had between any given 12-inch PowerBook G4 and its contemporary 15-inch PowerBook G4. But, at least on the CPU side of things, we were still dealing with dual-core Penryn Core 2 Duo CPUs. However, in 2010, the 13-inch stayed behind in Core 2 Duo land while the 15-inch and 17-inch moved up to the first generation Core i5 and Core i7. In 2011, we went back to weaker Intel integrated graphics on the 13-inch MacBook Pros and the 15-inch and 17-inch bumped up to quad-core Core i7 processors while the 13-inch still had dual-core, albeit faster than was in Penryn. From this point onwards, the 13-inch and 15-inch/16-inch MacBook Pros were in two different leagues and it stayed that way until the very end of the Intel era of Mac notebooks.
I'll grant that it wasn't better on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini. But, again, those are lower-end Macs, not positioned to be high-end or performant, but rather the every person's Mac. The Mac you used if you were a student or someone who needed Office, the web, and enough to play music and sync devices. Those Macs were OKAY to have weaker graphics and CPUs. Plus, once the MacBook Air became 100% SSD-only, the low RAM and CPU performance was offset enough to make those Macs perfectly usable, if not enjoyable for those purposes. But, again, it's not like MacBook Airs were billed as Macs that you could do 4K editing on anyway.
But a 13-inch MacBook Pro was positioned to be more than that, and yet it really was the same Mac, relative to the rest of the lineup, as the original MacBook was prior to being rechristened as "13-inch MacBook Pro". It was also priced to be a higher end professional grade "Pro Notebook", and yet, relative to what the rest of the industry considers a "Pro Notebook" it wasn't that. Good competition for the Dell XPS 13, sure. But a notebook designed to be used for high-end resource intensive tasks? No. Pretty much never.
I'll cut Apple a little bit of slack. In 2016, Apple was very clearly flirting with ditching the "MacBook Air" line, so they took the Mac that should've succeeded the Early 2015 model of MacBook Air and made a 2 USB-C port variant of the 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro that was otherwise, for all intents and purposes, a true successor to the 2011-2015 MacBook Air that had a Retina display. The Intel versions of 2-port 13-inch MacBook Pros were basically a continuation of that iteration of MacBook Air more than they were "MacBook Pros" down to the 2020 model that eventually got replaced with the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro that we have today. Again, those were the Macs for the every person. No one ever bought one intending on doing serious high-end video editing. But when you get to the price bracket that the final 4-port Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro commanded, you weren't getting a Mac that was even in the same league as the contemporary Intel 16-inch MacBook Pro. You got something with 2/3 to 1/2 the core count, and graphics that were better than what all previous Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros had before, but still laughably subpar compared to any other Mac with the word "Pro" in its title. You needed an eGPU to make up the difference in graphics horsepower and a second 13-inch MacBook Pro stapled next to it to make up the difference in CPU horsepower.
Now that Apple Silicon is in every current model of Mac notebook, even the MacBook Air is capable of editing a 4K film. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 holds its own against Intel 16-inch MacBook Pros; and, maybe with the exception of the High Power mode in the M1 Max based 16-inch MacBook Pro, you have the exact same processor and graphics options that are available in the 16-inch MacBook Pro now also available in the 14-inch MacBook Pro. We're back to a period where size DOESN'T matter the way it pretty much did for the entirety of the Intel era.
Now, again, that's not to say that the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros were at all bad Macs. They weren't at all. I'm particularly fond of the Mid 2010, Mid 2012 unibody models, the Early 2015 Retina, and the 2020 4-port versions. But even those were perfectly representative of the fact that these weren't among Apple's stronger Macs, but rather among their weaker ones. Hell, the 2020 4-port model I mention here was the third slowest Intel Mac prior to the launch of the first M1 Macs, second only to the 2-port model and the MacBook Air (and both of those were lousy value propositions). If you wanted serious performance, your only options were iMac (or iMac Pro), 16-inch MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro. In the PowerPC era, they were all billed as being plenty performant (save for maybe the iBooks and the Mac mini).
The point of this wasn't to bash the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros. More to say that I've realized that, while the Intel era had some pretty powerful Macs, the lower end of the line was definitely sold short with underperforming graphics and processors that felt way worse than the higher-end, a disparity that never seemed to exist in the PowerPC era and doesn't seem to exist in the Apple Silicon era either.
Now, before fans of the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros (which I consider myself to be one of) get their pitchforks out and get ready to refute that statement, let me explain this a little bit further:
In the PowerPC era, every Mac had a discrete GPU. The CPUs in the notebooks were of a weaker caliber to the CPUs in the desktops (as it usually is with most computers), and a similar phenomenon occurred with GPUs as well. But, when you bought a 12-inch PowerBook G4, you never felt like you were getting THAT MUCH WEAKER of a system when compared to a 15-inch PowerBook G4. You definitely did get a weaker system. The 12-inch PowerBook G4 notebooks WERE lower-end PowerBook G4 notebooks. But they were never anywhere near the degree of difference in performance that any given Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2010 through 2020 had compared to its contemporary 15-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro. In the case of said sets of 2010 through 2020 Intel MacBook Pros, the differences were night and day. They were entirely different Macs suited for entirely different purposes and, where the 15-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros served the higher-end markets, the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros never were as effective as the 12-inch PowerBook G4s were.
There are a few obvious causes/reasons for this. For one, Apple was constantly trying to make the MacBook Pros thinner and smaller footprint meant less room for airflow and heat dissipation. But I think another reason for this was that it was almost too easy for Apple to continually adopt Intel integrated graphics on the lower end Macs. From 2011 onwards, they were on the same die as the CPU, so that meant using one less heat-generating part. When the PowerPC to Intel transition was underway, you only saw Intel integrated graphics on the MacBooks (which replaced both sizes of iBook G4 as well as the 12-inch PowerBook G4) and the Mac minis. It was still a downgrade in graphics performance from the discrete graphics that their PowerPC predecessors had. But, at least for the lower-end iBooks and the Mac mini, it was an okay concession to be making. These were not billed as high performance Macs in the way the the PowerBook G4s were.
Now, in 2009 when the Aluminum MacBook was rebranded into the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the premise was that the NVIDIA integrated graphics (in the form of the GeForce 9400M and GeForce 320M) were close enough to the discrete GPUs of the era that the performance difference wouldn't be as significant. It was still a huge difference in performance from the 15-inch MacBook Pros that had discrete GPUs and still a larger difference in performance than was had between any given 12-inch PowerBook G4 and its contemporary 15-inch PowerBook G4. But, at least on the CPU side of things, we were still dealing with dual-core Penryn Core 2 Duo CPUs. However, in 2010, the 13-inch stayed behind in Core 2 Duo land while the 15-inch and 17-inch moved up to the first generation Core i5 and Core i7. In 2011, we went back to weaker Intel integrated graphics on the 13-inch MacBook Pros and the 15-inch and 17-inch bumped up to quad-core Core i7 processors while the 13-inch still had dual-core, albeit faster than was in Penryn. From this point onwards, the 13-inch and 15-inch/16-inch MacBook Pros were in two different leagues and it stayed that way until the very end of the Intel era of Mac notebooks.
I'll grant that it wasn't better on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini. But, again, those are lower-end Macs, not positioned to be high-end or performant, but rather the every person's Mac. The Mac you used if you were a student or someone who needed Office, the web, and enough to play music and sync devices. Those Macs were OKAY to have weaker graphics and CPUs. Plus, once the MacBook Air became 100% SSD-only, the low RAM and CPU performance was offset enough to make those Macs perfectly usable, if not enjoyable for those purposes. But, again, it's not like MacBook Airs were billed as Macs that you could do 4K editing on anyway.
But a 13-inch MacBook Pro was positioned to be more than that, and yet it really was the same Mac, relative to the rest of the lineup, as the original MacBook was prior to being rechristened as "13-inch MacBook Pro". It was also priced to be a higher end professional grade "Pro Notebook", and yet, relative to what the rest of the industry considers a "Pro Notebook" it wasn't that. Good competition for the Dell XPS 13, sure. But a notebook designed to be used for high-end resource intensive tasks? No. Pretty much never.
I'll cut Apple a little bit of slack. In 2016, Apple was very clearly flirting with ditching the "MacBook Air" line, so they took the Mac that should've succeeded the Early 2015 model of MacBook Air and made a 2 USB-C port variant of the 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro that was otherwise, for all intents and purposes, a true successor to the 2011-2015 MacBook Air that had a Retina display. The Intel versions of 2-port 13-inch MacBook Pros were basically a continuation of that iteration of MacBook Air more than they were "MacBook Pros" down to the 2020 model that eventually got replaced with the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro that we have today. Again, those were the Macs for the every person. No one ever bought one intending on doing serious high-end video editing. But when you get to the price bracket that the final 4-port Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro commanded, you weren't getting a Mac that was even in the same league as the contemporary Intel 16-inch MacBook Pro. You got something with 2/3 to 1/2 the core count, and graphics that were better than what all previous Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros had before, but still laughably subpar compared to any other Mac with the word "Pro" in its title. You needed an eGPU to make up the difference in graphics horsepower and a second 13-inch MacBook Pro stapled next to it to make up the difference in CPU horsepower.
Now that Apple Silicon is in every current model of Mac notebook, even the MacBook Air is capable of editing a 4K film. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 holds its own against Intel 16-inch MacBook Pros; and, maybe with the exception of the High Power mode in the M1 Max based 16-inch MacBook Pro, you have the exact same processor and graphics options that are available in the 16-inch MacBook Pro now also available in the 14-inch MacBook Pro. We're back to a period where size DOESN'T matter the way it pretty much did for the entirety of the Intel era.
Now, again, that's not to say that the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros were at all bad Macs. They weren't at all. I'm particularly fond of the Mid 2010, Mid 2012 unibody models, the Early 2015 Retina, and the 2020 4-port versions. But even those were perfectly representative of the fact that these weren't among Apple's stronger Macs, but rather among their weaker ones. Hell, the 2020 4-port model I mention here was the third slowest Intel Mac prior to the launch of the first M1 Macs, second only to the 2-port model and the MacBook Air (and both of those were lousy value propositions). If you wanted serious performance, your only options were iMac (or iMac Pro), 16-inch MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro. In the PowerPC era, they were all billed as being plenty performant (save for maybe the iBooks and the Mac mini).
The point of this wasn't to bash the Intel 13-inch MacBook Pros. More to say that I've realized that, while the Intel era had some pretty powerful Macs, the lower end of the line was definitely sold short with underperforming graphics and processors that felt way worse than the higher-end, a disparity that never seemed to exist in the PowerPC era and doesn't seem to exist in the Apple Silicon era either.
