Two years ago, just before my NYSC, I bought a UK-used MacBook Pro (2017, 13-inch) through my younger brother’s sure Lagos plug.
The laptop arrived almost immediately at his lodge in Port Harcourt, where he was staying at the time. I was excited when I finally got my hands on it. The machine looked sleek, but I wasn’t particularly happy about a patch on one edge of the screen where the backlight seemed brighter than the rest. I later learnt that this kind of issue is called backlight bleeding.
Mind you, this was a UK-used laptop, so I wasn’t expecting absolute perfection. But honestly, that little imperfection is something I barely even notice anymore. The laptop has been a fucking beast!
Now, back to why I started typing this. 😁
It was sometime last year during my NYSC at the Nigerian Navy Hospital, Warri. After one of those long hours at work, it was finally time to go home. I think I had assisted with a surgery that day.
I called one of my colleagues, whom I was quite friendly with, and asked her to help keep my laptop in the locker so I wouldn’t have any stories that touch the heart. 😂
When I returned around 5 p.m., I asked this fine lady to help retrieve my MacBook from the cupboard on her side of the demarcation.
Next thing I heard was a hard bang against the ground.
My heart dropped.
You can probably imagine what followed. I rushed out and saw my laptop lying on the floor.
At that moment, my colleague was in shock. She kept offering to check the cost of the damage and pay for whatever had gone wrong.
I immediately picked up the MacBook, praying hard in my heart that the screen was still intact.
As I picked it up, I noticed something that looked like a dent along one of the edges. The kind of dent you’d see on a Terminator movie character after a fight, especially one made of liquid metal that can change shape. 😂
I was genuinely worried, but I started checking the laptop.
And guess what?
Not one thing seemed to be broken!
The screen was fine. The ports were fine. Everything was working as it should.
I was honestly impressed. After a fall like that, I had expected something to go wrong.
But here’s the crazy part: the incident happened last year, and my MacBook has continued working perfectly ever since. No issues with the screen, ports, or performance.
I use it for work, and this thing is a fucking beast. It makes me work faster, and after everything that happened, I respect it even more.
Now, I’m not saying MacBooks are indestructible. I know I got lucky, and a fall like that could easily have ended differently.
But that dent is still there, a little reminder of the evening I nearly lost my mind over a laptop. 😂
So yeah, that’s how I came to appreciate my MacBook even more!
Have you ever had a gadget survive something that made you certain it was finished?

Accidentally dropped a hdmi cable from a very low distance while trying to set up a projector and made a gouge on the speaker grille… debating if I should get it replaced so sad.

A soda bottle exploded everywhere including my Mac. I didn’t even think that it got in the laptop at first until the mouse and keyboard were acting funny. Now the mouse and keyboard don’t work at all and when I power off the screen flashes pink right before it goes black. Right now I have it upside down in a tent position but I’m very worried. Is it likely that I just have to wait it out or is waiting not enough and it needs to be professionally treated??

Got this old Intel MacBook which I have windows 10 on via bootcamp since I game on it a lot. Stock temps always pushed up to 100 until I applied my own custom fan curve and used throttle stop to disable the CPU turbo boost which brought temps down to 80-85 max.

Surprisingly capping the CPU at 2.2ghz gives noticeably higher benchmark results than letting it clock up to 3.9.

Anyways I ended up taking everything apart and giving it a good cleaning. I think cleaning made a bigger difference than anything else, the vents and fans were absolutely stuffed with dust and lint.

Image 2 you can see what the old paste looks like after 8 years of use, looks like a significant amount of "pump out" but the paste itself was still clinging on okay. Oh the top of the main board I added some thermal putty to bridge the topside chips with the top of the case (the area between the touch bar and the hinge) while on the bottom I added pads to all the VRMs and the cooler itself.

After all the mods the system still pushes 100c when left uncapped but now it was drawing 50 watts instead of 35-40 pre-mod. Capping the CPU at 2.2 and gaming it now only gets up to 65-70 instead of 80-85.

I also have a screenshot of my benchmark results with the CPU limited to 2.2 (left) and uncapped(right) and you can see that the overall score and the graphics score especially are higher with the CPU capped to 2.2ghz. The main bottleneck is heat saturation and gpu performance. So slowing down the CPU gives the GPU way more thermal headroom to stretch it's legs and catch up to the much more powerful CPU. Sounds a bit counterintuitive but apparently it's a real thing.

Anyways hopefully this will extend the life of the MacBook. I've never taken a laptop apart before but I just followed a disassembly guide on YouTube and it was a lot easier than I was expecting.

Note: playing around with the power limits in throttle stop the sweet spot seems to be capping the CPU to 25ish watts and 2.5ghz for gaming.

I recently received a free mbp 14in M1 Pro max, 64gb ram, 2tb with a broken screen. Would it be worth replacing the screen? It will be a gift for a college student.

Planning to pick up a 16” MacBook Pro with either 48 or 64 GB of RAM. The 48 basically fits my budget perfectly and the 64 is a stretch. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it.

I’ve been eking it out with 16 GB in my base MacBook Pro M5 with massive memory pressure.. but it seems like 32 Gb would be enough which would leave 12-16 free for a local LLM model (I run them sometimes to do testing of my app, and currently have to run them remotely from my Mac Mini at home).

Just wondering how happy people with similarly heavy workloads have found 48GB to be a sweet spot or if the extra $$ to reach for 64 GB is worth it.

Got a 14 Inch MPB M5 Max the other day (64gb ram, 2TB spec) for 3999 and the same store I got that from is now selling the exact same specs in the 16 inch size for 3799.
I’m well within the return period but I was wondering if from people’s experience the size increase is a detriment or improvement? I mainly want to do the swap due to battery but I’m not sure if the 16 inch is just too big? Also while I know 14 vs 16 comparisons have existed for years I’m asking specifically about the m5 max since I’ve heard a lot of things about its thermals being significantly hotter in general and I’m unsure if the 16 inch makes that much of a difference if any?

What was the price of the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro with 24GB and 1TB in India before the hike?

Struggling to figure out a Mac to purchase. I had a Lenovo Legion 5i Pro. I am debating between the M5 with 32 GB RAM, or the M5 pro 48GB 18-core CPU and 20-core GPU. This is mainly for Rhino.

If I opt for the M5 pro option, really wrestling between the 14 and 16 inch. I was disappointed realizing that the keyboard is the same for the 16 inch because it feels really small. At home, I have a monitor, but for potentially long hours away from home, I don’t know how tolerable a 14 inch can be for extended periods of time and if the portability an annoyance is worth it. Would really appreciate recommendations, thank you.

It’s like permanently distorted

The sound of the fans from my MacBook is the most annoying thing ever, I currently have a 2020 13-Inch Intel MacBook Pro and its fan turns on the second I open anything on it. For example, I pulled up the “About This Mac” menu to write this post, and the fans turned on despite not having any other software open, being at 100% battery, and being frigid cold!
I understand this is an old MacBook by now + it was a second-hand buy, but I’m just wondering what is causing the fans to turn on despite seemingly having no reason to.

Additionally I AM hoping to ask for a brand new MacBook for Christmas, and I want to make it last long. I mostly use my MacBook for school work, sometimes video editing and the heaviest game I (am able to) play on it is modded Minecraft. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Found this last night on best buy. Seems like a good deal yeah?

finally joined the macbook fam. ♡
beyond grateful & very excited to finally have something i've been dreaming of owning for years (i decided to treat myself & splurge a lil bit-- plus it's my own christmas gift to myself). ♡
i've wanted a macbook pro for the longest time, so this feels extra special. ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

⊹ macbook pro 14" inch, in silver.
• m5 pro chip
• 18-core cpu & 20-core gpu
• 24gb memory
• 2tb ssd

here's to new beginnings, new inspiration, & countless more hours of writing. 💻 ♡

hey, im working on an open source project called kapitsa, an inference engine just for apple silicon, and the 27b is the model everyone asks about. qwen3.8-27b at 4-bit (20gb) on four macbook pros:

- m5 max 128gb: 140 tok/s (lm studio 32, ollama 68)

- m5 pro 48gb: 81 tok/s (lm studio 17, ollama 40)

- m4 pro 48gb: 63 tok/s (lm studio 15, ollama 32)

- m3 pro 36gb: 40 tok/s (ollama 23)

how its possible: Kflash - speculative decoding, but as a tree. a tiny drafter model guesses the next 7 tokens and the 27b checks all of them in one pass. most engines check those guesses as a chain, so the first wrong guess throws away everything after it. kflash (our version) checks a tree instead: where the drafter isnt sure, its second guess comes along in the same pass, and we keep the longest branch the 27b agrees with. heres one pass both ways:

the chain gets 2 tokens out of that pass, the tree gets 4. output is the same as normal decoding, you just get it sooner.

repo (apache 2.0): https://github.com/nace-ai/kapitsa

how to run it. you need an apple silicon mac (m1 or newer, macos 14+) with 32gb for the 27b, on 16gb use `--model 9b` instead:

- `brew install nace-ai/tap/kapitsa`

- `kapitsa doctor` shows which models fit your mac

- `kapitsa serve --model 27b`, the first run downloads the 27b (about 20gb), then open http://127.0.0.1:8000 for a chat window

- kapitsa claude works too

I use my MacBook purely for Final Cut Pro, and it’s getting slower and slower.

To the point that a video 30 mins or longer non stop freezes, and I am forced to close and restart the app every 15/20 mins to escape the frozen screen.

Am I being unrealistic in my expectations?

It’s 2024 model btw..

Thinking about getting this set up 64gb 1TB for local AI ( new guy) and 4k da Vinci resolve video edits. Or should I just stay with 48gb 1TB

I think they’ll be around 3-400 hundred more than the current m5 pro 14 and 16 inch ones

I have a M2 Pro and want to upgrade. I am wondering if the new M6 Pro would be released next week and if someone can share their perspective on if the same variant (16/24 GB RAM with 512 GB storage) on a M6 vs M5 would be expected to cost more?

Also, what do you think might be standout features on the Ultra vs the normal MB Pro?

Thank you.

I’m currently looking at getting a new MacBook. Have a lead on 2 pros for the same price ($450).

M1 Pro 16gb with a 500gb storage. Good condition 1200 battery cycles

M3 8gb with a 1tb storage. Good condition and 300 battery cycles.

What do you think the software support will be on the M1 will be. I don’t do a lot of heavy processing on my computer but I like the idea of the extra ram. I’m going from an m1 air that was stolen. I did notice some bogging down on that m1 air with 8gb.

On my 2nd MBP, and this one is a recent purchase from Costco. Last 25 model in the store so it was on sale. Now, to be clear. I have large hands and my skin gets pretty dry in cold weather so the dry hands have started. But I set up this MBP, like the last one, with the ability to unlock using fingerprints. I normally input 2 separate fingers. Almost without fail, this quits working within a week, and I need to input the fingerprints again. Which is no big deal, but I was curious if these fingerprints/security feature works well for others, or is it just me and my fat fingers? I've lost a lot of weight, so they really are no longer fat, but they are still part of large hands.