2012 MacBook Pro vs. 2016 MacBook?

I purchased a MacBook Pro mid 2012 model brand new back when they first came out. I used the computer heavily for at least 3 years. I really started noticing a slow down in 2016. I was looking at purchasing a new MacBook Pro but the general statistics were a little disappointing on processor speed, RAM, and storage space. It is not really like comparing apples to apples since technology changes, however I did not feel that it was worth over 2k to get a new one. I started looking at upgrading my current MacBook Pro. I found the Crucial products, purchased a 1TB SATA SSD and 2 crucial memory sticks, each of 8GB. Most of the old stuff and even Apple itself said the RAM was not upgradable past 8GB. Obviously I was not the first to upgrade this component, so many users online said you could upgrade it. I installed the memory and replaced the storage. So the new upgraded machine is 2.9GHz i7core, 1TB SATA SSD, 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3. Booted that baby up and it was like lightning compared to the old machine. Now the machine is running perfect and super fast. I have some friends who have the new MacBook and we have sat down to compare. The new MacBook may boot about 2-3 secs faster, but login is much quicker on my machine. Overall speed and power of my machine now is way more beneficial than spending 2k for a new machine. I spent about 350 to do all the upgrades and I am very happy with my new machine. Others say you can gain more speed with the RAID setup, but at this point, I don't need it. I would recommend to any person considering a new purchase to consider the upgrade. I do not think you will regret your decision. I did not regret mine.

hey kishorimohan. same here. happily bought the maxed out 2017 kabylake mbp to compare it to my mid 2012 maxed out mbpr. i do a lot of premiere pro and after effects, in fact its the only thing i do 🙂

but comparing two machines with roughly 5 years between them, the 2017 mbpr was barely faster. i couldnt justify to myself the somewhat 4k pricetag just to be marginally faster. i returned the machine and i might be looking elsewhere to get more power, it sure isnt with apple though 😟

I have the same question also...I have the 2012 Macbook pro with an SSD installed in place of the DVD player. I'm running 10.9.5 on it still.

My question is it worth upgrading to the 2017 Macbook pro 13? Looks like the specs are minorly upgraded from 2012? I also have 16 GB of ram installed.

Would installing the latest OS kill my machine and make it super slow?

Would installing the latest OS kill my Adobe CS5 suite? (still not going over to the yearly subscription model.)

Thanks in advance!

Hey! I can understand your fear to upgrading to a new OS, but actually, installing MacOS Sierra onto your Macbook will improve performance (I literally just bought a 2012 Macbook Pro and did this and found a marginal performance boost)! To get the best performance out of your machine, though, you should swap where the SSD and HDD currently are housed. The SATA cable running from the slot that the optical drive doesn't transfer data as quickly as the other one. An HDD's read/write speed is bottlenecked by how fast the disk rotates on it whereas an SSD can achieve well over five times the read/write speed of a 7200 RPM HDD! Thus, you won't see an improvement in how the HDD runs, but you will see an improvement in how the SSD runs due to it being allowed to transfer more data through the Logic Board more efficiently. Also, as long as you just upgrade through iTunes, the Macbook should keep all of your files and applications and not get rid of any.

Regarding upgrading to the latest Macbook Pro, it depends on one thing: your budget. Two versions of the 2017 Macbook Pro have come up -- a cheaper 13-inch model and a more expensive 15-inch model. They gave the 13-inch model a "U" processor (i.e. Intel Core i7-xxxxU) whereas the 15-inch model received an "HQ" processor. If you don't know the difference: a U processor is purposely made to be less powerful in an effort to prolong battery life where an HQ processor is purposely made to consume more energy in an effort to be more powerful.

With this being said, even the U processors in the 13-inch model are still better than the processor you have, the new Macbooks come with PCIe SSDs which are faster than SATA SSDs, and come with much better graphics. The only question is how much you are willing to spend on an upgrade like this. Keep in mind that in the new Macbooks, if something like the SSD or the RAM fail or your battery cycle gets high, you will no longer be able to replace them yourself. Want more storage? Go to Apple. Need a new battery? Go to Apple. It's all up to you, though. My personal recommendation if you choose to get the new Macbook is to purchase the extended Apple Care warranty because literally everything is soldered together and nothing is user-replaceable in it

I just purchased the new 2017 Macbook pro 13" 3.1ghz with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd running Sierra.
I am upgrading from the 2012 Macbook pro 13" 2.5ghz with 8gb ram and 512gb Crucial ssd running Lion.

The new one is beautiful and slim but, unfortunately, a little bit slower than my 2012. Yes. Slower. It is noticeable.
Perhaps Sierra with a Retina screen is a lot more power intensive. Or Lion with a 1080p screen and ssd is less power intensive.

Also, there is no possibility to upgrade the new one. Whereas, there is a way to superspeed the 2012 Macbook pro with Raiding together two ssds. (Raid 0 Stripe using optical drive space with adapter for second ssd). Supposedly, it will become much faster than it already is.

One would think that a technology that is much newer, much more expensive, and with increased specs would also show massively increased speeds.

Oh well, I'm stuck with it now.

Hi Simon!

In quick words:

There is a huge different between the older one an newer ones.

They all use i5 and i7, but the Generation is a lot more new - new Generation = more power, less heat.

Apple doesn't bother the consumer with these kind of specs of the Generation that much ;-)

Also, in the newer models with a retina display, there isn't a HDD - there is Flash (in some kinds known as SSD).

HDD = big space, very slow. Flash is super fast, but quite expensive, therefore it is less space, so the Mac is (quite) affordable).

If you have the Budget, you can get a MacBook Pro Retina with 1TB Flash.

The new MacBook will be a bit slower than your previous on in pure computing power, but with Flash, it feels a lot more faster.

If you don't do Graphic work, Games, Video cutting and that kind of professional stuff, you will be happy with the new MacBook.

Hope i could help, Sven

Well, I have a similar question BUT I have a mid-2012 15" Retina 16GB 2.7 i7 WITH an SSD. I don’t care about the OLED bar (and it remains to be seen if application developers will DO anything with it).

So unless anyone can explain what the “turbo boost to 3.6GHz” means in practical terms, I’m sticking with my 2012. Which is too bad, because I was REALLY excited about getting something better. Oh well.

Turbo boost indicates a processor is capable of automatically overclocking itself in response to higher loads to trade energy efficiency for performance. All cores can be accelerated to a limited extent, but the maximum turbo (ex 3.6GHz) can generally only be achieved on a single core due to thermal limits.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/forced-induction-intel-turbo-boost-works-technology -explained/

2016 Macbook is not a work horse but your Macbook Pro 2012 is. Macbooks are designed to cater to the Macbook Air customer base but then again compared to Macbook Air it still lags in sheer computing power mainly due to its Intel M processor. In fact an M processor lags in performace even when compared to an i3 processor which is two notches down your current.

As for SSDs Macbooks (all airs and pros included) now use PCIe SSDs (solid state drives) these are perhaps 20x times faster than a traditional SATA HDD or an SSD used in older generations. But the tricky part with 2016 Macs (or 2015s for that matter) is that unless you customise your product at the time of purchase to increase capacity of your ssd you are stuck with what you buy till the end of the lifespan of the product because an upgrade is out of the question. So if you are buying its always better to go for a higher capacity perhaps 256GB at least. SSDs are much more reliable than a HDD because they dont have any movable parts ( a PCIe ssd is something that looks like your RAM module). But there are pros and cons all you need to consider is the capacity because when it comes to SSDs more capacity means speed and endurance as much as the space you are given to work with.

Finally if you are looking for a work horse with high end performance then your macbook pro 2012 can only be beaten by another macbook pro from a later generation nothing else. Unfortunately 2016 models are rediculously expensive. Therefore, in case you feel that you want to replace your current machine just because its getting slower then try replacing your HDD with a SATA SSD (personally recommend Samsung EVO 850 for which you can safely enable TRIM under OS Sierra ) you will be very surprised with the performance boost it will add and you are good to go for another 3 or 4 years.

I could be wrong, but it seems that Simon actually was talking about tthe new Pro, at least in part: “...but [I] was surprised to find the current range of MacBook Pro's using i5 or i7 processors still and the same 8Gb of RAM.”

Which pretty much brings us back to the original point: there doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason to upgrade from a 4-year old machine to one of the new ones.

I also have the mid 2012 retina i7; looking @ geekbench the 2016 retina i7 gets 13627 multicore; the 2012 retina i7 gets 11706; not serious improvement

How noticable was the speed difference? Did you check your read/write speeds of your 2012 mac compared to the newer model?