Buying a new MacBook in 2024?

[tccalvin]

Hey all,

I’m considering buying a new MacBook for Christmas.

I’ve been using a 13" 2015 i5 MacBook Pro since 2016. My primary uses are music production (Logic Pro), audio playback (Spotify and CDs), and video streaming (I’m a bit of a YouTube addict).

I have to admit, my experience with this machine—and MacOS in general—has been mostly terrible. Early on, I noticed that the hardware struggled with even basic tasks, with temperatures quickly soaring into the 100°C range. In an effort to keep their machines quiet while still touting good performance, Apple has tuned MacOS to allow temperatures to climb to concerning levels before the fans kick in. This stands in stark contrast to Apple’s mobile products, like iPhones and iPads, which handle temperatures and clock speeds exceptionally well despite being fanless.

Forget about video editing or gaming—this MacBook drops frames like crazy when streaming 1440p or 4K content from YouTube or Netflix. It heats up as if the fan doesn’t even exist, and it throttles as soon as anything remotely intensive is asked of it. The one saving grace has been installing Macs Fan Control, which allowed me to customize the fan behavior. That software has turned what I consider an awful product (for its price tag) into something “acceptable.”

The only reasons I’ve stuck with this computer are Logic Pro and the seamless integration of music production hardware and software with MacOS. Unfortunately, my model is no longer supported, so it’s time to move on.

I bought this MacBook Pro for €1,500 in early 2016. Since then, prices have only gone up, and it’s no longer possible to get a Pro model for a similar amount. This leaves me with two options:

1. A fanless MacBook Air—which I’m skeptical about.
2. A significantly more expensive 14" MacBook Pro, which, at least on paper, has a more robust thermal system but really stretches my budget.

I remember reading back in 2022 that the M2 MacBook Air had serious temperature issues, with headlines describing it as "catching on fire." That alone makes me lean toward the Pro model. Add to this the fact that Apple’s recent design and UX decisions (like the giant notch in the screen and no USB-A ports) leave much to be desired, and you can understand why I feel more coerced than excited about upgrading.

What do you all think? Has the MacOS temperature situation improved since 2022? Should I risk going fanless to save money, or is the Pro model worth the investment?

Or… should I just ditch Apple entirely and switch to Windows for music production?

 

[voodooless]

Just wait for the M4 Air... It should be available in early 2025, would be the best bang for the buck, and should last for a while. It will do any task you throw at it just fine, except for maybe heavy gaming.

Do you really need a mobile device? If not, the latest Mac Mini might be of interest for around $€ 1000 (with 512GB SSD).

 

[tccalvin]

Just wait for the M4 Air... It should be available in early 2025, would be the best bang for the buck, and should last for a while. It will do any task you throw at it just fine, except for maybe heavy gaming.

Do you really need a mobile device? If not, the latest Mac Mini might be of interest for around $€ 1000 (with 512GB SSD).

Thanks a lot for the advice! Waiting for the M4 Air is definitely an option to consider. It seems like the new Mac Mini is also a solid desktop choice based on what I've seen, but I do need something portable for music production and other tasks, so a laptop works better for me.

I’m still really curious about how the current MacBooks handle thermals, especially the fanless ones like the Air. If anyone has experience using them for things like music production or streaming, I’d love to hear what you think.

 

[ahofer]

Has the MacOS temperature situation improved since 2022?

The non-intel chipsets run much cooler. I have an M1 (using it now). Never felt it even get warm. My wife has a more recent air (13" m4 2024). No temp issues, but it has a persistent display bug: The display goes dark coming out of sleep and the controls don't do anything (you can *just* see the screen). Her hack is to attach and detach it from an external monitor, which seems to clear it, but isn't always available.

 

[TSB]

I have one of the fanless m3 macbook airs, it never gets hot and battery lasts forever. I can highly recommend it if you can live with MacOS..

 

[tccalvin]

Thank you for your inputs @ahofer and @TSB

Have you guys tried monitoring your laptop's CPU temperature? What kind of workloads do you run normally?

 

[voodooless]

My M1 Pro never gets hot while doing normal work. The fan only comes on when doing a bit of gaming, and is then barely audible. The Air should be fine, especially since the new ones are even more efficient.

 

[ahofer]

Thank you for your inputs @ahofer and @TSB

Have you guys tried monitoring your laptop's CPU temperature? What kind of workloads do you run normally?

We don't run heavy workloads (ie graphics or databases or something). But my old intel-based macbook got quite hot, and the fan ran often, and my wife's old air had the fan on constantly. These new chips are the real deal - cool, long battery life, etc.

 

[EERecordist]

Apple gets quite a premium for the Pro (disk and memory too), but the Pro has more high speed ports and supports more displays. So you might take that into account in your decision.

 

[blueone]

I'm currently using a 2018 Mac Mini with an Intel i7 CPU and 16GB of DRAM. It never used to run warm, but lately it does. I used to just put it to "sleep" overnight, but sometimes in the morning when I went to use the Mini, I noticed the case was very warm. An analysis of the CPU utilization the Activity Monitor showed that a MacOS process called "Window Server" was using a lot of CPU time. Drilling down on the process statistics, I see that Window Server has done many millions of Mach system calls. (Mach is micro-kernel OS which underlies the BSD Unix layer in the MacOS, and it is used for low-level hardware control, including inter-process communication, real memory control, and CPU scheduling). This means whatever Window Server is doing, it engages the Mach kernel a lot.

My hypothesis was that either Safari or Chrome (I use both extensively) browsers were causing the Window Server process to use more CPU time and memory based on the number of open tabs. So I ran an experiment. I brought up both Chrome and Safari with a lot of tabs open, monitored the CPU utilization, and then terminated either the Safari or Chrome OS process. The Window Server hog is Chrome.

@tccalvin, are you using the Chrome browser with many open tabs? Safari, even with 15 open tabs, uses essentially no CPU time in Window Server. Hmmm.

 

[mkt]

I went from a 2019 intel i9 macbook pro whose fans seldom paused and that doubled as a coffee cup warmer to a M4 that is gloriously cool and quiet.

I also used a M1 Air for 2 weeks while the intel was getting a new battery. Also a vast improvement over the intel and no apparent performance problems.

So if budget is an issue, wait for the M4 Air or get a M3 Air if they are on sale now, as they are in the US.

 

[tccalvin]

@tccalvin, are you using the Chrome browser with many open tabs? Safari, even with 15 open tabs, uses essentially no CPU time in Window Server. Hmmm.

I do use Chrome as my browser, but I’m very conservative with my tabs. I usually keep 2 or 3 open, and I rarely go over 5. I also turn off my Mac whenever I can, rarely letting it go into standby. Unfortunately, the machine I own is just poorly designed from an engineering perspective.

Over the years, it has slowed down significantly—likely due to OS updates and because tasks have gradually become more demanding for its old and underpowered processor. For instance, I can’t even run a 1080p60 video on YouTube anymore without severe stuttering, even though I’m pretty sure it handled that just fine when it was newer. I’d also argue that the screen resolution (2560x1600) is too high for the Intel integrated graphics to manage effectively.

I recently stumbled across this video by chance:

I don't get why Apple lets their processors reach such insane temperatures—116°C—before throttling. Is it really just so they can boast about higher performance numbers? To me, this doesn’t seem like much of a departure from the Intel days. Sure, the chassis stays cooler and the fans are quieter compared to older Intel Macs, but that seems to be all most reviewers care about.

I have a different mindset: I don’t care if the chassis gets a bit warmer (as long as it doesn’t burn me), and I don’t mind if the fans sound like a jet engine (as long as they don’t take off). But I do care if my laptop reaches 100°C or above. Even if the processor cores are technically designed to handle those temperatures (and I’m not entirely convinced they are), the same cannot be said for adjacent components.

Most importantly, I wouldn’t mind having a slightly slower computer if that meant it could stay under 100°C most of the time.

As it stands, it seems my best option is to go for a Pro model and carefully balance things—manually adjusting fan speeds and using low power mode whenever possible.

EDIT: I initially wrote that 108°C was the peak temperature of the CPU cores, but after looking closer at the video, I caught it reaching 116°C...

 

[mcdn]

@tccalvin use a fan speed utility like TG Pro and you can make the fans ramp up much quicker

 

[voodooless]

I don't get why Apple lets their processors reach such insane temperatures—116°C—before throttling. Is it really just so they can boast about higher performance numbers? To me, this doesn’t seem like much of a departure from the Intel days.

With the things you’re doing, you will never reach those temps. This is with a sustained, full core load. Normal users will very rarely do this. Compared to the Intel days, it’s quite different, because the Intel would slow down significantly, while the M series CPUs barely throttle down under load. Besides, these much newer and smaller TSMC process nodes are more resilient to high temps.

Your new MacBook will be 4x as fast in single-core and 10x as fast in multi-core tasks vs your aging 2015 model. The performance difference will be night and day! It already was with the M1, now it’s just insane!