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

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Darkseth said:

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.

If you are an Apple fanboy and you just have to use Safari , I would highly recommend using Ka-Block. It works very well and I have been using it for 2 years and zero issues. You can find it in the Mac App Store. More information can be found here: http://kablock.com/

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, Jeve Stobs said:

If you are an Apple fanboy and you just have to use Safari , I would highly recommend using Ka-Block. It works very well and I have been using it for 2 years and zero issues. You can find it in the Mac App Store. More information can be found here: http://kablock.com/

that's not been updated since 2018, and their website doesn't even use HTTPS. not something i'd want to use. 

[Guest]

Trust me. It is a great adblocker. I haven't been able to find an intrusive ad it cannot block (except YouTube ads of course).

[Ashleyyyy]

1 hour ago, Jeve Stobs said:

Trust me. It is a great adblocker. I haven't been able to find an intrusive ad it cannot block (except YouTube ads of course).

it's horribly out of date and they couldn't even be bothered to use https on their website. i just use something else at that point.

[kaiju_wars]

Shoot, I just use FireFox with adblock plus no issues.

[Ashleyyyy]

6 hours ago, kaiju_wars said:

Shoot, I just use FireFox with adblock plus no issues.

chrome is faster for me, but yeah firefox works too. 

[Darkseth]

20 hours ago, Jeve Stobs said:

If you are an Apple fanboy and you just have to use Safari 

i'm not a Fanboy for anything
But when Battery Life with Chrome is reduced by 30-40% compared to Safari, i wouldn't use Chrome probably. At least, that Number is what almost every Source says.

Friend of mine with his Macbook Pro 13" 2019 for exmaple got like <4 - 4,5 hours battery life with Chrome

Told him to try Safari, he got like 3+ hours extra.

 

I guess, i'll give it a try, and see if it really consumes more power for ME too.

[kaiju_wars]

15 hours ago, Twilight said:

chrome is faster for me, but yeah firefox works too. 

I switched from Chrome actually.  

[Ashleyyyy]

6 hours ago, Darkseth said:

But when Battery Life with Chrome is reduced by 30-40% compared to Safari, i wouldn't use Chrome probably. At least, that Number is what almost every Source says.

Friend of mine with his Macbook Pro 13" 2019 for exmaple got like <4 - 4,5 hours battery life with Chrome

Told him to try Safari, he got like 3+ hours extra.

bullshit. that's impossible. there has to be other variables there like number of tabs open or even keyboard backlight enabled or not. for me it makes absolutely no noticable difference what browser i use in terms of battery life. 

 

2 hours ago, kaiju_wars said:

I switched from Chrome actually.  

there are reasons to not use Chrome, namely privacy, but for me firefox is much slower... 

[Darkseth]

How is that bullshit? Maybe you just don't notice it?

Literaly every User in the whole Internet came to the same conclusion: Chrome drains battery more than Safari.

 

In Fact, you are the only User i have ever found, to claim that there is no difference. And i spend a little while on google for that question.

 

Btw: How could keyboard backlight be any variable? A user has it either on, or off.

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

Btw: How could keyboard backlight be any variable? A user has it either on, or off.

by default it auto-adjusts. 

 

3 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

Literaly every User in the whole Internet came to the same conclusion: Chrome drains battery more than Safari.

 

In Fact, you are the only User i have ever found, to claim that there is no difference. And i spend a little while on google for that question.

everyone said that about Edge too which was bullshit. 

 

[Kilrah]

Safari has always used WAY less power than chrome on my macs. Would expect it to still be the case, otherwise something major would have changed in the past year or so (not using a Mac daily anymore since then).

 

It maybe doesn't make a difference on old machines like yours becasue it doesn't have the power saving features that are used on the later ones.

[Ashleyyyy]

50 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Safari has always used WAY less power than chrome on my macs. Would expect it to still be the case, otherwise something major would have changed in the past year or so (not using a Mac daily anymore since then).

Chrome has changed in that year. it's gotten better for me, even better than it already was. Firefox sorta caught up to it, but then chrome too over in speed again, i forgot in which version.... 

 

51 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

It maybe doesn't make a difference on old machines like yours becasue it doesn't have the power saving features that are used on the later ones.

perhaps. the thing is though, battery life is directly linked to cpu usage and chrome uses way less cpu than Safari on my Mac and it's faster... 

[Kilrah]

If I remember well the difference was mainly at idle. Leaving 10 tabs open in Chrome in the background while I was doing something else would constantly use 5-10% CPU, while Safari used basically nothing unless it was actively being interacted with.

[Ashleyyyy]

18 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

If I remember well the difference was mainly at idle. Leaving 10 tabs open in Chrome in the background while I was doing something else would constantly use 5-10% CPU, while Safari used basically nothing unless it was actively being interacted with.

there was an update to chrome (version 57) that introduced a feature that limits cpu to background tabs. this argument made sense 5 years ago but it's long been fixed in chrome. 

 

https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-disable-background-tabs-throttling-feature-in-google-chrome-and-opera-web-browsers/

[Kilrah]

Well it's 1% per tab, times 10 it's still 10%...

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Well it's 1% per tab, times 10 it's still 10%...

safari does this too. you cannot just kill off a tab completely, that'll crash whatever is running in it. as i said before, safari uses more cpu than chrome for me, way more. and i'm a tab hoarder... 

[Kilrah]

Just dug out my mac and had a look again, both Safari (Mojave) and Chrome 80 with the same 8 tabs open, doing the same things in both for a while, then putting both of them in the background - Chrome keeps continually using about 20%, Safari about 10%.

 

OSX's "energy" page gives about 60 for average energy impact for Safari and 90 for Chrome.

So Chrome still uses around 50% more, no change at least in my use case. Safari is also more responsive. 

 

So I'm still not going to use Chrome on a portable Mac even if I'd prefer to since I'm using it everywhere else.

[Ashleyyyy]

13 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Just dug out my mac and had a look again, both Safari (Mojave) and Chrome 80 with the same 8 tabs open, doing the same things in both for a while, then putting both of them in the background - Chrome keeps continually using about 20%, Safari about 10%.

 

OSX's "energy" page gives about 60 for average energy impact for Safari and 90 for Chrome.

So Chrome still uses around 50% more, no change at least in my use case. Safari is also more responsive. 

 

So I'm still not going to use Chrome on a portable Mac even if I'd prefer to since I'm using it everywhere else.

very interesting. i just look at cpu usage not at the energy impact thing, but fine. i'll switch to safari which i haven't done in like a year and see how it goes...

[Ashleyyyy]

19 hours ago, Kilrah said:

So Chrome still uses around 50% more, no change at least in my use case. Safari is also more responsive. 

safari is still slower and i haven't noticed a change in power usage... maybe it's because my laptop is old i dunno....

[Ashleyyyy]

On 3/6/2020 at 1:53 AM, 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 ._.

how do you do this? i just put bootcamp on my macbook but i can't figure out how to do that on Windows...

[FakeCIA]

I am not a fan of Apple, but I did briefly use this device back when it was released. I think it's good as an entry device for people who don't use computers that often, need something slightly more powerful than a tablet, or are new to the computing space. I switched back to a Dell workstation because I needed something far more powerful for folding and SolidWorks. Windows is better for engineering. If you sell this specific device, I could see it being used by a younger audience, possibly in a classroom, but not much else nowadays.

[Ashleyyyy]

2 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

i think you might need a third party custom resolution utility for that. for mine i'm using the nvidia control panel for custom resolutions

ah you have a 15" with an nvidia card. I don't have that  

[Ashleyyyy]

8 hours ago, FakeCIA said:

Windows is better for engineering.

because?

 

8 hours ago, FakeCIA said:

I switched back to a Dell workstation because I needed something far more powerful for folding and SolidWorks.

you can't compare a base model 13" MBP to a dell workstation lmao. the 15" version of this Mac is MUCH faster than the 13"...

 

8 hours ago, FakeCIA said:

If you sell this specific device, I could see it being used by a younger audience, possibly in a classroom, but not much else nowadays.

probably, because it's old by now. 

 

8 hours ago, FakeCIA said:

I think it's good as an entry device for people who don't use computers that often, need something slightly more powerful than a tablet, or are new to the computing space.

it's good for much more than that. I can run VM's, edit 1080p video, do coding, etc etc. it's just as fast as an elitebook or Thinkpad from the era.