Half a year with the new MacBook Pro — life with Apple’s best Mac notebook ever

A six month review of my 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro processor.

It might come across as yawn-inducing to see me write that the newest MacBook Pro is the best portable Mac ever. I mean, of course it is, right? Isn’t every new Mac the best Mac ever? Well, yes and no. When Apple introduced the M1 processor in the summer of 2020, it ended an era in which many worried that Apple was no longer committed to the Mac as a platform. If anything, the Apple of 2022 is as dialed into delivering great Mac hardware as the company ever has been.

I wasn’t as down on the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro as many in the tech writing community were. I didn’t hate the Touch Bar (in fact, I quite liked it), and I understood what Apple was trying to do by moving to all USB-C/Thunderbolt ports. In fact, I think the tech press’s complaints about that era of MacBook Pro were more about the fears that Apple no longer cared about the Mac than they were about any specific perceived shortcoming of those devices.

Where they really fell short for me was with what was under the hood. Apple and Intel weren’t well-optimized for each others’ hardware. The 2016 MacBook Pro I used for several years had a lot going for it, but its Intel chip ran red hot, and it was frequently running its fans up to max and draining the battery quickly.

The M1 family of chips changes all of that. Although I rarely need to worry about all-day battery life, it’s there for the rare times I need it. Consistently. My M1 Pro-powered MacBook Pro never gets hot. Ever. The only time I’ve heard the fans come on was a brief spike during a kernel panic. (This is the kind of thing that can happen when you’re running developer betas and testing a wide range of software tools.)

The 14-inch form factor is perfect for me too. A single inch shouldn’t make a difference. On paper it’s nothing. But the 13-inch MacBook Pro was too small for my needs and the 15-inch and 16-inch models are too large, particularly for portability. Like Goldilocks I can declare that, for me, this one is just right. Whereas my old 15-inch MacBook Pro was so big, and so prone to overheating, that I carried an iPad everywhere, I’m back to carrying my Mac with me everywhere.

Part of what makes the new 14-inch MacBook Pro so perfect, is that the display truly stretches out to the edges of the display housing. No long black bar above the display. Make no mistake, the “notch” is a compromise, but the right one given the variables. It’s far better to have a black tab in the middle of the menu bar than to lose all of space at the top of the display in the name of uniformity. When you first look at the new MacBook Pro, the notch is all you can see. But you quickly come to ignore it. (I actually almost forgot to mention it in this piece.)

As far as the ports go, I’m glad they’re back for those who need them. Frankly I almost never do. The only thing that’s regularly connected to my Mac is a Thunderbolt cable that connects to two external LG displays. I think I’ve personally used the included MagSafe charger once or twice. (You can see why I was never militant on either end of that debate with the previous generation MacBook Pro.)

I mentioned the notch as being something that you notice right away when you first approach the new MacBook Pro. The other thing you’re likely to notice is how chonky these machines are, particularly compared with the previous generation MacBook Pro. I wouldn’t say that impression totally goes away. After all, these machines feel like they have some heft and substance to them. But it does become something you adjust to pretty quickly.

In terms of performance, it’s all I ever need with plenty of headroom left over. I’m not the stereotypical “pro user” that far too much ink gets spilled over. For my computing needs, the base M1 Pro processor is more than enough. Trust me, I’m as excited for the upcoming M2 family of chips as anyone. I can’t wait to see what top-end power those machines deliver to high-end users. But I’m not at all pining for more power personally. I have a feeling this Mac is going to feel as snappy in five years as it did when I got it nearly half a year ago. That’s not something that could have been said of a Mac in the Intel era. (Let’s revisit this in 2026.)

The MacBook Pro is better now than it’s ever been, and Apple has murdered the idea that it’s not committed to the Mac. What more needs to be said?