I don’t know if this VERY LONG Intel farewell will be beneficial to anyone, but I wanted to give the Apple Intel era (for me) a proper send-off. The reason I didn’t make the move sooner was the need for x86 at work and it was just more convenient and pleasant to use a 2019 Intel MBP vs. most of the corporate Dell and Lenovo options presented to me by my employer. Since 2020/2021, I was able to make a VM of my work environment with VPN and basically ran my Windows work environment on my MBP. But now that Win11ARM is a functional alternative for work-related tasks, I figured it was time to make the switch to Apple Silicon.
I recently sold my 2019 16” Intel MBP and 2013 Mac Pro (Trashcan/6,1) but I’m keeping my 2019 15” Intel MBP which can still run Win10 in Bootcamp and runs Mojave, so I’ve got that unit all configured with a dozen or so 32-bit macOS apps/games and my Win7 and WinXP virtual machines for old school games and some ancient apps. It’ll sit on a bookshelf at the ready if I ever feel like reminiscing.
Now for Apple Silicon. Truth be told, I could likely get by with a base M5 with 32GB. But I wanted to replace my aging 16” Intel MBP with another 16” MBP, and I can’t get a base M5 with 32GB in a 16” chassis. The base M5 more or less beat my 16” Intel MBP across the board (except graphics... the M5 base 10-core GPU was on par with the AMD 5500M 8GB GPU in my Intel MBP). But in order to get the 16" display, Apple pushed me into M5 Pro territory and that comes with some significant performance improvements vs the base M5 (more cores, 2x memory bandwidth, 2x SSD speed, WiFi7/BT6/TB5).
While synthetic benchmark results are nice to see, the snappiness and performance of the M5 Pro vs. my older Intel machines is ridiculously obvious. Everything in the GUI is faster and apps launch faster. Everything loads super quick. As an example, Affinity on my 2019 MBP and 2013 Mac Pro take a few seconds and bounce in the dock for a while before launching. On my M5 Pro, Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher bounce once and then it opens.
I have been using a similar workflow the past few years on my 2019 Intel MBP with 32GB. It was doable but there were definitely periods of lag depending on what I was doing. And of course, Teams really spins up the fans on Intel MBPs. As a result, one of the reasons I opted for 64GB with my M5 Pro was just to not have any issues with anything I’m doing now or possibly in the near future. I don’t max out 64GB but having the headroom to load up a bunch of VMs and other apps and have it barely register in Activity Monitor is great. For reference:
-> M5 Pro (18/20) with 64GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 4 Virtual Machines (2% Pressure, 0 Compressed, 50% Used, 0 Swap, 16GB-32GB Cache)
-> M5 Pro (15/16) with 24GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 3 Virtual Machines (55% Pressure, 6GB Compressed, 77% Used, 0 Swap, 1GB-2GB Cache)
-> Intel i9 (8core) with 32GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 4 Virtual Machines (61% Pressure, 140MB Compressed, 84% Used, 0 Swap, 5GB Cached)
Based on these results, I likely could have even gotten by with 24GB of memory. The MBP M5 Pro 24GB didn’t break a sweat but only had enough room to cache 2GB of files and 6GB was compressed. By contrast, my MBP M5 Pro 64GB doesn’t have to compress anything, and it fills up 32GB of unused memory as cache which I think probably contributes to how fast everything opens. When looking at my trusty 2019 Intel MBP 32GB, it did the job, but didn’t compress as much as Apple Silicon although it did more caching than the 24GB MBP.
I also use an Apple Studio Display and at idle in clamshell mode my M5 Pro sits around 31C and usually won’t even budge beyond 35C doing email or watching YouTube (as I’m writing this I have Finder, Safari, Mail, Excel, Word, Preview, and a Parallels VM running and my M5 Pro is 32C no fans). It does spike into the 50s temporarily when launching virtual machines and such, but the fans have not come on using the M5 Pro (except to run 3Dmark Steel Nomad and a Cinebench 10 minute loop). On the other hand, my 2019 Intel MBP with Radeon 5500M 8GB GPU in clamshell mode idled at 44C. And if I wanted to open email or watch YouTube, it would spike into the 70s and remain solidly in the high 50s with some level of constant fan. One thing I did notice that was different between my Intel MBP and M5 Pro… at full speed the M5 Pro fans are actually noticeably louder than the Intel MBP fans: 68.9dbA vs 58.0dbA. Having said that, the M5 Pro fans never come on unless I’m benchmarking. With the Intel MBP, I just needed to open some apps to get the fans going (Teams in a Win11 virtual machine or even just opening the Photos app – speaking of, many times I’d get a “MBP is too hot… Photos will continue syncing once MBP cools down” message in Photos on the Intel MBP, but that never happens on the M5 Pro) and pretty much any graphics benchmark will peg the Intel MBP fans at 100%. Anyhow, it was just something I noticed and noted. I think I still hear ghost fan noises in my right ear though thanks to Intel MBPs lol.
Minor note on build quality. The 16-inch M5 Pro is a substantial beast. Solid, relatively heavy. Not a complaint or deal-breaker, but I prefer the slimmer Intel MBP chassis (of course, I also appreciate a better keyboard, port selection, and MagSafe with the M5 Pro). And while the notch doesn’t particularly bother me, especially as I run in clamshell mode the majority of the time, it would have been nice if they could figure out a way to incorporate a great camera and thin bezels without a notch. Yeah, I get it… physics and all that, but if some geniuses put their mind to it, I’m sure they could come up with a solution. We just had people fly around the moon. No notch and flush cameras on iPhones isn’t too much to ask is it? 😉 But I digress…
Bottom line: Enough time has passed that if you’re still an Intel holdout, this is a great time to make the jump to Apple Silicon. I found Apple Silicon/ARM versions or equivalents to everything I use. And that also goes for ARM versions of things in my Win11ARM virtual machine. With DOSBox-X I’m even able to run ancient DOS and Win98 games on macOS (Doom 3 and original Unreal are ports that use SDL and run fantastic), and Steam provides a lot of gaming opportunities (enough for me, but I’m not a true gamer so an Intel rig is still a requirement for many AAA titles).
I’ll close out with benchmark results. It’s pretty obvious that the M5/M5 Pro will have no problem besting a 7yo (MBP) and 13yo (MP) machine. If you wait as long as I did to upgrade, you’ll definitely feel/see/notice a difference immediately. As can be seen, the M5 Pro is superior in every way, even when running an Intel graphics benchmark in Rosetta or in x86 emulation in a Parallels Win11 VM, it was still faster than anything native on my Intel MBP. But it isn't until you actually use Apple Silicon that you get a feel for what the numbers mean in real life. While I’ll miss the convenience of having an Intel CPU to run native x86/x64 code, I require that so seldom now that the other 99% of improvements Apple Silicon brings (including no fan noise 99% of the time) will make parting with the Intel convenience a lot easier to handle.
So as Tim Cook and my Intel MBP ride off into the sunset, I'll raise a toast to both, it was a good run.
I recently sold my 2019 16” Intel MBP and 2013 Mac Pro (Trashcan/6,1) but I’m keeping my 2019 15” Intel MBP which can still run Win10 in Bootcamp and runs Mojave, so I’ve got that unit all configured with a dozen or so 32-bit macOS apps/games and my Win7 and WinXP virtual machines for old school games and some ancient apps. It’ll sit on a bookshelf at the ready if I ever feel like reminiscing.
Now for Apple Silicon. Truth be told, I could likely get by with a base M5 with 32GB. But I wanted to replace my aging 16” Intel MBP with another 16” MBP, and I can’t get a base M5 with 32GB in a 16” chassis. The base M5 more or less beat my 16” Intel MBP across the board (
While synthetic benchmark results are nice to see, the snappiness and performance of the M5 Pro vs. my older Intel machines is ridiculously obvious. Everything in the GUI is faster and apps launch faster. Everything loads super quick. As an example, Affinity on my 2019 MBP and 2013 Mac Pro take a few seconds and bounce in the dock for a while before launching. On my M5 Pro, Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher bounce once and then it opens.
I have been using a similar workflow the past few years on my 2019 Intel MBP with 32GB. It was doable but there were definitely periods of lag depending on what I was doing. And of course, Teams really spins up the fans on Intel MBPs. As a result, one of the reasons I opted for 64GB with my M5 Pro was just to not have any issues with anything I’m doing now or possibly in the near future. I don’t max out 64GB but having the headroom to load up a bunch of VMs and other apps and have it barely register in Activity Monitor is great. For reference:
-> M5 Pro (18/20) with 64GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 4 Virtual Machines (2% Pressure, 0 Compressed, 50% Used, 0 Swap, 16GB-32GB Cache)
-> M5 Pro (15/16) with 24GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 3 Virtual Machines (55% Pressure, 6GB Compressed, 77% Used, 0 Swap, 1GB-2GB Cache)
-> Intel i9 (8core) with 32GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 4 Virtual Machines (61% Pressure, 140MB Compressed, 84% Used, 0 Swap, 5GB Cached)
Based on these results, I likely could have even gotten by with 24GB of memory. The MBP M5 Pro 24GB didn’t break a sweat but only had enough room to cache 2GB of files and 6GB was compressed. By contrast, my MBP M5 Pro 64GB doesn’t have to compress anything, and it fills up 32GB of unused memory as cache which I think probably contributes to how fast everything opens. When looking at my trusty 2019 Intel MBP 32GB, it did the job, but didn’t compress as much as Apple Silicon although it did more caching than the 24GB MBP.
I also use an Apple Studio Display and at idle in clamshell mode my M5 Pro sits around 31C and usually won’t even budge beyond 35C doing email or watching YouTube (as I’m writing this I have Finder, Safari, Mail, Excel, Word, Preview, and a Parallels VM running and my M5 Pro is 32C no fans). It does spike into the 50s temporarily when launching virtual machines and such, but the fans have not come on using the M5 Pro (except to run 3Dmark Steel Nomad and a Cinebench 10 minute loop). On the other hand, my 2019 Intel MBP with Radeon 5500M 8GB GPU in clamshell mode idled at 44C. And if I wanted to open email or watch YouTube, it would spike into the 70s and remain solidly in the high 50s with some level of constant fan. One thing I did notice that was different between my Intel MBP and M5 Pro… at full speed the M5 Pro fans are actually noticeably louder than the Intel MBP fans: 68.9dbA vs 58.0dbA. Having said that, the M5 Pro fans never come on unless I’m benchmarking. With the Intel MBP, I just needed to open some apps to get the fans going (Teams in a Win11 virtual machine or even just opening the Photos app – speaking of, many times I’d get a “MBP is too hot… Photos will continue syncing once MBP cools down” message in Photos on the Intel MBP, but that never happens on the M5 Pro) and pretty much any graphics benchmark will peg the Intel MBP fans at 100%. Anyhow, it was just something I noticed and noted. I think I still hear ghost fan noises in my right ear though thanks to Intel MBPs lol.
Minor note on build quality. The 16-inch M5 Pro is a substantial beast. Solid, relatively heavy. Not a complaint or deal-breaker, but I prefer the slimmer Intel MBP chassis (of course, I also appreciate a better keyboard, port selection, and MagSafe with the M5 Pro). And while the notch doesn’t particularly bother me, especially as I run in clamshell mode the majority of the time, it would have been nice if they could figure out a way to incorporate a great camera and thin bezels without a notch. Yeah, I get it… physics and all that, but if some geniuses put their mind to it, I’m sure they could come up with a solution. We just had people fly around the moon. No notch and flush cameras on iPhones isn’t too much to ask is it? 😉 But I digress…
Bottom line: Enough time has passed that if you’re still an Intel holdout, this is a great time to make the jump to Apple Silicon. I found Apple Silicon/ARM versions or equivalents to everything I use. And that also goes for ARM versions of things in my Win11ARM virtual machine. With DOSBox-X I’m even able to run ancient DOS and Win98 games on macOS (Doom 3 and original Unreal are ports that use SDL and run fantastic), and Steam provides a lot of gaming opportunities (enough for me, but I’m not a true gamer so an Intel rig is still a requirement for many AAA titles).
I’ll close out with benchmark results. It’s pretty obvious that the M5/M5 Pro will have no problem besting a 7yo (MBP) and 13yo (MP) machine. If you wait as long as I did to upgrade, you’ll definitely feel/see/notice a difference immediately. As can be seen, the M5 Pro is superior in every way, even when running an Intel graphics benchmark in Rosetta or in x86 emulation in a Parallels Win11 VM, it was still faster than anything native on my Intel MBP. But it isn't until you actually use Apple Silicon that you get a feel for what the numbers mean in real life. While I’ll miss the convenience of having an Intel CPU to run native x86/x64 code, I require that so seldom now that the other 99% of improvements Apple Silicon brings (including no fan noise 99% of the time) will make parting with the Intel convenience a lot easier to handle.
So as Tim Cook and my Intel MBP ride off into the sunset, I'll raise a toast to both, it was a good run.
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