I am typing this on an 2017 iMac Pro running Intel, which has been my main work and personal machine for the last 7 years. I do like 90% of my computing on it. Works fine, I kinda love it, and don't want to give it up any time soon.
The 27" 5K iMac form factor has become my favorite form factor, and I'm kind of unwilling to use anything else now.
The newer Apple silicon chips will spank this old Xeon in terms of performance and bang-for-buck. Buuuuut I just can't really bring myself to care and get excited about the newer machines.
It's running macOS 15.7.8 Sequoia, which is far as it will go, and I'm just fine with that. Newer Mac software releases won't support Intel at all. Haven't run in to any that I actually care about.
Virtualization is mediocre. Can't really run more that 2 VMs on it at the same time before it starts to bog down. And the VM experience on it is disappointing even if you're only running one, especially when it comes to UI responsiveness and graphics. But that's kind of a "power user" use case.
Homebrew will be dropping support for macOS 15 soon, if that's something you care about. That one actually will be a bummer.
I still very actively use a Mac Pro 2013 (aka trashcan). It has 64 GB RAM, an 8 core Xeon cpu, and 1TB NVMe. I'm running macOS Monterey (12.7.6) on it. The hardware is still plenty powerful enough to be very useful. Supported software is getting to be more troublesome as the days go by. When the pain gets too great I'll look into installing Linux on it with the goal of continuing to use it.
I've got a 2015 MacBook Pro running Monterey which I can code on. It's offline (no DNS entries) but I can AirDrop[1] stuff to it. I use Dash[2] for offline documentation and Sublime Text[3] for editing.
It's really just an experiment to see how little (software, hardware and internet) I can get away with. We are moving next year and I may not have space for the large desk and monitor I have now.
There's absolutely no way I'm using a gas guzzling 2018 intel clunker with unsupported software issues. Maybe if i need the box to double as a space heater.
Basline mac mini is $800 and gets you into the M4 tier chips. Overkill for web dev and iOS apps. Enough power to carry you for 10+ years of dev work before your next upgrade. I'm still on the M1 mini and plan upgrade at the 10 year mark (2031) or if I need more power sooner (unlikey).
I feel the mini's are price competitive. They say "apple tax" but go on to some linux machine provider, select similar stats, and see the price tag rocket past the mini.
Keep in mind that the rest of the world does not even come close to US salaries. Buying a mac in most countries in the world means giving away multiple monthly salaries. Even in Germany, one of the richest countries in the world, a simple 16" Mac goes way way beyong the average salary.
Still going strong on a 2019 Intel MacBook, just for economic reasons.
The title question is about people doing work on Intel Macs. Working tools for most skilled professions should cost and mostly do cost a couple of monthly salaries. They should pay for themselves reasonably quickly. And people can always buy used. First generation M1 Macs are selling for $400 or below at the moment, and are very capable professional tools.
I remember using an old 2018 Intel MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM about two years ago. That thing was noisy. Every time I tried to compile a larger project or work in Logic, the RAM would fill up and the fans would go full blast. Now I am on an M1 MacBook Pro, also with 8GB. Granted, the RAM is still a bottleneck, but the fan noise is completely gone and the machine always stays at a comfortable temperature.
2018 Mac mini, running Monterey, for webdev and Ruby scripting and it’s still fine. The biggest issue, as ever, is that the OS can only feasibly be upgraded to a certain point and that ultimately limits whether you can run current browsers.
Xcode and Android Studio do, of course, necessitate a more recent Mac.
I use a 2019 27-inch iMac every day.
I replaced its internal drive with a 1TB SSD myself, and it handles all my work needs perfectly.
I use Ghostty for remote server access and Parsec to remotely control my Windows PC.
I have 2 (an i7 MBP and an i9 iMac)and rarely think about it, except when I want to try some local AI idea or do something intensively GPU related. Unless you want to do something like videotranscoding or high-res, high frame rate gaming/simulation/eye candy, they work great.
I have a macbook air from 2017. I use it when I travel, major work being done on a m4 mac mini. The issue is end of support for brew and many of the new/ latest apps not working but otherwise for simple things is works well
macOS 26, Tahoe, is the last supporting Intel Mac. Tahoe will be superseded in 2026. 2 more years for Tahoe updates (unless they change how they support previous os versions (current + 2 versions back))
Intel is very very close to dead now as apple has officially EOLed them and software communities are following suit (eg homebrew and nix). I just picked up an apple silicon because the writing was on the wall that it could be any day that I could no longer get “real work done” on the intel machine
why not? its more like a retro machine nowadays but still a good one. but then i should admit that most power-hungry workloads have now been offloaded to newer machines, alas..
I still have my iMac G3 Bondi Blue in my basement. I had an Intel MacBook but sold it because it only ran up to MacOS 10.7. It worked fine about 10 years ago. Now I doubt it will.
Not sure what year it was produced, but I am running Void Linux on an old Macbook Air. Resume from suspend is buggy, and Linux touchpad support is atrocious (I use synclient to help) but otherwise, I really dig it.
I am typing this on an 2017 iMac Pro running Intel, which has been my main work and personal machine for the last 7 years. I do like 90% of my computing on it. Works fine, I kinda love it, and don't want to give it up any time soon.
The 27" 5K iMac form factor has become my favorite form factor, and I'm kind of unwilling to use anything else now.
The newer Apple silicon chips will spank this old Xeon in terms of performance and bang-for-buck. Buuuuut I just can't really bring myself to care and get excited about the newer machines.
It's running macOS 15.7.8 Sequoia, which is far as it will go, and I'm just fine with that. Newer Mac software releases won't support Intel at all. Haven't run in to any that I actually care about.
Virtualization is mediocre. Can't really run more that 2 VMs on it at the same time before it starts to bog down. And the VM experience on it is disappointing even if you're only running one, especially when it comes to UI responsiveness and graphics. But that's kind of a "power user" use case.
Homebrew will be dropping support for macOS 15 soon, if that's something you care about. That one actually will be a bummer.
I still very actively use a Mac Pro 2013 (aka trashcan). It has 64 GB RAM, an 8 core Xeon cpu, and 1TB NVMe. I'm running macOS Monterey (12.7.6) on it. The hardware is still plenty powerful enough to be very useful. Supported software is getting to be more troublesome as the days go by. When the pain gets too great I'll look into installing Linux on it with the goal of continuing to use it.
Any plans for upgrading to cheese grater Mac Pro 2019? :)
wow, got 64G ram in 2013, that was very nice at that time.
how much you paid for the MBP ?
I wonder how well a coding agent could be out Apple silicon programs to older Intel chips.
I've got a 2015 MacBook Pro running Monterey which I can code on. It's offline (no DNS entries) but I can AirDrop[1] stuff to it. I use Dash[2] for offline documentation and Sublime Text[3] for editing.
It's really just an experiment to see how little (software, hardware and internet) I can get away with. We are moving next year and I may not have space for the large desk and monitor I have now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirDrop
[2] https://kapeli.com/dash
[3] https://www.sublimetext.com
My friend has the macbook pro with that Touch Bar... apparently he bought it just a month before M1 dropped. Silly guy!
But I see him still using it and when the fans are on, it's like a jet engine.
There's absolutely no way I'm using a gas guzzling 2018 intel clunker with unsupported software issues. Maybe if i need the box to double as a space heater.
Basline mac mini is $800 and gets you into the M4 tier chips. Overkill for web dev and iOS apps. Enough power to carry you for 10+ years of dev work before your next upgrade. I'm still on the M1 mini and plan upgrade at the 10 year mark (2031) or if I need more power sooner (unlikey).
I feel the mini's are price competitive. They say "apple tax" but go on to some linux machine provider, select similar stats, and see the price tag rocket past the mini.
Keep in mind that the rest of the world does not even come close to US salaries. Buying a mac in most countries in the world means giving away multiple monthly salaries. Even in Germany, one of the richest countries in the world, a simple 16" Mac goes way way beyong the average salary.
Still going strong on a 2019 Intel MacBook, just for economic reasons.
The title question is about people doing work on Intel Macs. Working tools for most skilled professions should cost and mostly do cost a couple of monthly salaries. They should pay for themselves reasonably quickly. And people can always buy used. First generation M1 Macs are selling for $400 or below at the moment, and are very capable professional tools.
OCLP.
I still use a macbook pro 2012 (lubuntu).
It's the longest lasting machine I've ever bought.
The build quality is fantastic. I use it as a backend to my Hermes Agent and it works fine.
I remember using an old 2018 Intel MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM about two years ago. That thing was noisy. Every time I tried to compile a larger project or work in Logic, the RAM would fill up and the fans would go full blast. Now I am on an M1 MacBook Pro, also with 8GB. Granted, the RAM is still a bottleneck, but the fan noise is completely gone and the machine always stays at a comfortable temperature.
I've got my old Intel MacBook in my workshop. It works great for Fusion 360 which is fairly intense. I don't code on it anymore though.
Having run massive code bases on average laptops before, I think you'd be fine. It might just take longer to index and compile.
2018 Mac mini, running Monterey, for webdev and Ruby scripting and it’s still fine. The biggest issue, as ever, is that the OS can only feasibly be upgraded to a certain point and that ultimately limits whether you can run current browsers.
Xcode and Android Studio do, of course, necessitate a more recent Mac.
Still on intel Monterey 2015 mbp and emacs 30 something. Switched to macports in 2024 and no complaints.
I use a 2019 27-inch iMac every day. I replaced its internal drive with a 1TB SSD myself, and it handles all my work needs perfectly. I use Ghostty for remote server access and Parsec to remotely control my Windows PC.
I have 2 (an i7 MBP and an i9 iMac)and rarely think about it, except when I want to try some local AI idea or do something intensively GPU related. Unless you want to do something like videotranscoding or high-res, high frame rate gaming/simulation/eye candy, they work great.
I have a macbook air from 2017. I use it when I travel, major work being done on a m4 mac mini. The issue is end of support for brew and many of the new/ latest apps not working but otherwise for simple things is works well
Never had one, but I might pick one up on ebay if I ever need to support Intel Mac users.
macOS 26, Tahoe, is the last supporting Intel Mac. Tahoe will be superseded in 2026. 2 more years for Tahoe updates (unless they change how they support previous os versions (current + 2 versions back))
Not much longer for supported versions.
I've heard it rumored (maybe on this site??) that it's wise to avoid upgrading to Tahoe, on intel macs, but I don't have any evidence to back this up.
I have one as a backup machine, but nothing important is really supposed to happen on it unless something catastrophic has happened.
Intel is very very close to dead now as apple has officially EOLed them and software communities are following suit (eg homebrew and nix). I just picked up an apple silicon because the writing was on the wall that it could be any day that I could no longer get “real work done” on the intel machine
why not? its more like a retro machine nowadays but still a good one. but then i should admit that most power-hungry workloads have now been offloaded to newer machines, alas..
It'll run Linux if you want, but they're fairly functional. What do you need to do on it?
I still have my iMac G3 Bondi Blue in my basement. I had an Intel MacBook but sold it because it only ran up to MacOS 10.7. It worked fine about 10 years ago. Now I doubt it will.
Not sure what year it was produced, but I am running Void Linux on an old Macbook Air. Resume from suspend is buggy, and Linux touchpad support is atrocious (I use synclient to help) but otherwise, I really dig it.