MacBook Pro 13" Mid-2012 Review - Still Usable In 2020?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Can you use an 8 year old laptop in 2020? Today i'll hopefully be answering that question. 

 

The 13" Non-Retina MacBook Pro is the last "great" 13" MacBook Pro. It's very user-upgradable and it's generally a very reliable machine. 

i upgraded mine to 16GB of Ram and a 500GB SSD. i also replaced the thermal paste to help with thermals. 

 

1. looks

i personally believe the 2012 MacBooks still look great, despite the original design coming out in like 2008... it's relatively thin,

(compared here to a "New 2DS XL". i have a case on my Mac but my point still stands)

the all metal chassis still looks premium and i personally don't mind the bezels at all. 

 

 

2. The Display

it's total crap. not joking. the 1280x800 resolution is unusable. it's too cramped to do anything. 

happily however there is a solution. there are various apps available to scale the screen, which makes it a lot more usable. i scale it to 1680x1050 usually. the downside of this is that it makes text and other things slightly blurry, but text is still readable. 

 

here are some screenshots comparing 1280x800 to 1680x1050 and then you know what i mean. 

 

it's especially noticable trying to multitask. 

 

The display is still usable, but only when scaled to a higher resolution. 

 

 

3. Keyboard and Trackpad

 

The keyboard and trackpad are simply amazing. i don't really need to say more. the trackpad especially is amazing and it's better than any Windows laptop i've ever owned. 

 

 

4. Performance

Performance is acceptable in general. i can watch 1080p 60fps youtube video's no problem, editing 1080p video in iMovie is totally fine, although rendering is a little slow. 

 

the one thing that really hits this aging dualcore really hard is web browsing without an adblocker.... some sites like the LTT forum are totally fine, but other sites with really obnoxious ads take forever to load and pin the cpu to 100%... 

 

another thing that's sorta slow is VM's. i used to run a Windows VM for some applications and performance was acceptable in general, but when the Windows VM would update without me asking it to (ugh windows) it would really slow down. 

 

 

5. Conclusion

This device is still perfectly usable, if you adjust your expectations. an adblocker is a must on most websites which is annoying, since i believe in supporting creators but 100% cpu and the fan ramping up everytime i load a site is unacceptable... 

 

Also the screen scaling is a must. 1280x800 is waaay too cramped to do anything. but, in general it's still a nice machine. 

 

it's available on the cheap now, if you want macOS it's still a good machine to buy in my opinion. there's no telling how long software support will last, but if you don't mind selling it if the support gets dropped then i'd say it's a nice device if you want to play around with macOS. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Ultrasnoop said:

i'm very surprised apple made something that works for once. 

their 13" devices are very reliable in general up to 2016. 2016 and later models have the keyboard issue, but 2015 and earlier are very reliable. the only issue i've had with mine was the drive cable that failed but i can see that being my fault since i forgot a drive was still plugged in once and tried to take it out, and in the process pulled quite hard on the cable. even still, it was a €10 problem that took me 20 minutes to fix. 

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, Ultrasnoop said:

i'm very surprised apple made something that works for once. other than there phones that would still work if i didn't break em all BECAUSE THEY GOT RID OF THE AUX JACK.

hey this was back when they did.

up 2015 apple didn't fuck up to bad.

I've used a 2015 13in and a 2013 15in. both are great machines with the 15 having dual GPUs it edits very well.

 

the display is what always seemed silly on these. apple put nice screens on everything but they didn't care about me.

nice review.

[meal.stub.8888]

I'm still using a hand-me-down MacBook Pro Mid-2010. It was very slow but improved a lot after I swapped out the drive for an SSD one. Still saving up for additional RAM, tho. It's great when I'm just browsing or listening to music.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, meal.stub.8888 said:

I'm still using a hand-me-down MacBook Pro Mid-2010. It was very slow but improved a lot after I swapped out the drive for an SSD one. 

yeah, modern versions of macOS really need an ssd. on a harddrive they are insanely slow

[TempestCatto]

Whilst Apple can always go suck a fat one - I am here commenting because I love your choice of desktop background. Mind sharing it?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

13 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Whilst Apple can always go suck a fat one - I am here commenting because I love your choice of desktop background. Mind sharing it?

no. not after that. i dislike this attitude immensely. every company makes good things and bad things. i hate some things microsoft makes like Windows, and i lve some things they make like Visual Studio Code. i hate some things apple makes like modern iphones but i love some other things they make like macOS and some models of Mac. this attitude of yours doesn't contribute to my review at all and if you wanted the wallpaper you should have just DM'd me about it. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

45 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

the display is what always seemed silly on these. 

well it was the budget model and back when this was released PC laptops didn't do much better, at that time 1366x768 was the norm and i perfonally prefer 1280x800 over that because of the 16:10 aspect ratio. the Retina Mac's were revolutionary when they came out and that display added a lot of cost at the time, which is probably why Apple continued to sell this model until 2016, they needed to have an entry level SKU. 

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, Twilight said:

well it was the budget model and back when this was released PC laptops didn't do much better, at that time 1366x768 was the norm and i perfonally prefer 1280x800 over that because of the 16:10 aspect ratio. the Retina Mac's were revolutionary when they came out and that display added a lot of cost at the time, which is probably why Apple continued to sell this model until 2016, they needed to have an entry level SKU. 

they easily could have changed out the panel in 2014 or 2015. costs had shrank a lot by then.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

they easily could have changed out the panel in 2014 or 2015. costs had shrank a lot by then.

correct, they could have, however that could have confused matters. why would they update a 2-3 year old model with just a better screen but other than that the exact same internal specifications? if they had done that people would have been like well put a better cpu in it too etc etc etc. 

 

i agree it's possible they could have done it but i assume they kept selling it to have a low spec low price option at the time, and that most of them were manufactured in 2012 to 2014 and that they just kept selling the leftover inventory, but that's a guess. 

[GDRRiley]

Just now, Twilight said:

correct, they could have, however that could have confused matters. why would they update a 2-3 year old model with just a better screen but other than that the exact same internal specifications? if they had done that people would have been like well put a better cpu in it too etc etc etc. 

 

i agree it's possible they could have done it but i assume they kept selling it to have a low spec low price option at the time, and that most of them were manufactured in 2012 to 2014 and that they just kept selling the leftover inventory, but that's a guess. 

it is apple I'm sure they would have figured out a way to market it.

 

I'd doubt they would have over produced that much.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, GDRRiley said:

it is apple I'm sure they would have figured out a way to market it.

probably, but then you'd have all the youtubers with titles being like Apple RELEASED a 3 YEAR OLD computer TODAY??!!1!1 and that wouldn't have been good for them. afaik apple tries to avoid publications like that. 

 

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I'd doubt they would have over produced that much.

i mean you can see it too with that recent LTT video where they bought the 2017 Air. Apple has already replaced it yet it's still available brand new at a discount. 

 

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

can confirm, i upscale my w10 bootcamp to 1920 in width, and would rather live with inconsistent soft line edges than a UI for 80-year-olds ._.

yeah exactly. 720p (or the 16:10 equicelant) is just painful now. it was fine back in the day but now that 99% of the web is either an ad or clickbait web browsing with so little space is painful. 

[TempestCatto]

23 minutes ago, Twilight said:

no. not after that. i dislike this attitude immensely. every company makes good things and bad things. i hate some things microsoft makes like Windows, and i lve some things they make like Visual Studio Code. i hate some things apple makes like modern iphones but i love some other things they make like macOS and some models of Mac. this attitude of yours doesn't contribute to my review at all and if you wanted the wallpaper you should have just DM'd me about it. 

Whatever man.

Not every company makes good things though. Roland can't make a good keyboard for shit. Their piano sounds are better left muted.

The only good things Apple makes are their phones and tablets. Beyond that, I don't see much use for their stuff.

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Twilight said:

probably, but then you'd have all the youtubers with titles being like Apple RELEASED a 3 YEAR OLD computer TODAY??!!1!1 and that wouldn't have been good for them. afaik apple tries to avoid publications like that. 

 

i mean you can see it too with that recent LTT video where they bought the 2017 Air. Apple has already replaced it yet it's still available brand new at a discount. 

 

remember 2015 didn't go clickbate crazy.

right but that is 2 or 3 years old and wasn't a super popular model. especial the base. 4gb of ram sucked then

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

right but that is 2 or 3 years old and wasn't a super popular model. especial the base. 4gb of ram sucked then

in 2015 the 2012 was 3 years old so a similar situation. 

 

4GB was fine in 2015. the web wasn't all advertisements that eat a bunch of ram. in 2015 i used a 2009 macbook with a core 2 duo and 4gb of ram and it was totally usable, even using multiple tabs and multiple apps was fine. not great, but i was on a tight budget and for what i needed it for (school) it was completely fine. 

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, Twilight said:

in 2015 the 2012 was 3 years old so a similar situation. 

 

4GB was fine in 2015. the web wasn't all advertisements that eat a bunch of ram. in 2015 i used a 2009 macbook with a core 2 duo and 4gb of ram and it was totally usable, even using multiple tabs and multiple apps was fine. not great, but i was on a tight budget and for what i needed it for (school) it was completely fine. 

the 2012 were super popular

2017 mac books not really.

 

I never had to deal with a laptop or desktop on 4gb except Chromebooks at school.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, GDRRiley said:

the 2012 were super popular

2017 mac books not really.

the 2017 Air is the best selling laptop on Amazon according to that LTT video. the Air in general is still a very popular device. 

 

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

I never had to deal with a laptop or desktop on 4gb except Chromebooks at school.

i've had a bunch of laptops and systems with 4gb. in 2015 it was a lot more managable than it is now. i have a Windows tablet with 4gb of ram and even using 2 tabs fills it up quickly, while in 2015 i was able to have a bunch of tabs and a school report open running completely fine on that 2009 macbook. 

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Twilight said:

the 2017 Air is the best selling laptop on Amazon according to that LTT video. the Air in general is still a very popular device. 

 

i've had a bunch of laptops and systems with 4gb. in 2015 it was a lot more managable than it is now. i have a Windows tablet with 4gb of ram and even using 2 tabs fills it up quickly, while in 2015 i was able to have a bunch of tabs and a school report open running completely fine on that 2009 macbook. 

right but amazon isn't the end all of sellers.

it is near the top on their.

[kaiju_wars]

I like my 2012 MacBook Pro.  I use it more than my gaming laptop, as my gaming laptop, while not heavy or thick for a gaming laptop, is a 15.6" screen.  At that size, I find laptops more cumbersome in general.

What do you use to to scale the resolution up?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 hour ago, kaiju_wars said:

What do you use to to scale the resolution up?

I use an app called Retina display Manager. it's a free application. 

https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM

 

you just launch it, set the resolution like this:

and then you can quit the app if you want. this setting survives even reboots as long as you don't plug in an external display or change it in system preferences. I have noticed that sometimes the color profile I set in system preferences reverts back for some reason, so double check if you enabled one that it's still there if you change it. 

 

if you want to run the app on boot which I do because I often switch between sales 1050p and 900p you can do that in system preferences, the app doesn't have a setting for it itself. 

[kaiju_wars]

3 minutes ago, Twilight said:

I use an app called Retina display Manager. it's a free application. 

https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM

 

you just launch it, set the resolution like this:

and then you can quit the app if you want. this setting survives even reboots as long as you don't plug in an external display or change it in system preferences. I have noticed that sometimes the color profile I set in system preferences reverts back for some reason, so double check if you enabled one that it's still there if you change it. 

 

if you want to run the app on boot which I do because I often switch between sales 1050p and 900p you can do that in system preferences, the app doesn't have a setting for it itself. 

Thank you so much.  I'll definitely be installing it when I get home.

[kaiju_wars]

Holy shit, I downloaded it and it makes the display so much more usable.  Will take some getting used to for the small letters.  If it becomes that much of an issue, I could always set it to 1440x900.  Still much more usable than 1280x800

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

2 hours ago, kaiju_wars said:

Holy shit, I downloaded it and it makes the display so much more usable.  Will take some getting used to for the small letters.  If it becomes that much of an issue, I could always set it to 1440x900.  Still much more usable than 1280x800

I know right, it's unusable at 1280x800 for me since I regularly have 50 to 100 tabs open along with a bunch of other stuff and it just doesn't fit on 800p... 

[Darkseth]

On 3/6/2020 at 12:40 AM, Twilight said:

the one thing that really hits this aging dualcore really hard is web browsing without an adblocker.... some sites like the LTT forum are totally fine, but other sites with really obnoxious ads take forever to load and pin the cpu to 100%... 

Speaking of which, can you recommend a good working adblocker for Safari? Anything that works better than Adblock Plus?

I'm usually a Chrome user (also having many things synced through Chrome + Google account, as i use Android), but i tried not to use it on the Mac, because of battery Life.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

8 hours ago, Darkseth said:

Speaking of which, can you recommend a good working adblocker for Safari? Anything that works better than Adblock Plus?

nope. safari is garbage. 

 

8 hours ago, Darkseth said:

I'm usually a Chrome user (also having many things synced through Chrome + Google account, as i use Android), but i tried not to use it on the Mac, because of battery Life.

just use chrome. the battery life is the same on both browsers for me, the only difference between the 2 is that chrome loads websites much faster than safari does.