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I Switched Back to Intel for a WEEK from the M2 Max Apple Silicon!

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I love my 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro, the best, fastest laptop I’ve owned. So why swap it for a 2018 MacBook Air with a slow Intel chip? After my video about using an iPhone XR for a week went well, I wanted to replicate that with an old MacBook Air. It was also an excuse to see whether an old Intel Mac is really that much slower in 2023, or whether I just think so. I may be one of the only people who bought the M2 Max and still has it, and I’m a glutton for punishment.

Why a 2018 Air

I wanted 2018 because that’s when the Air got the Retina display (I’m not going non-Retina). It also got the butterfly keyboard, and it still looks just like the M1 Air you can buy today. There weren’t real speed improvements on the Intel Airs between 2018 and 2020.

What I bought

On eBay, 2018 Airs were about $300–400. Because I’m vain, I wanted near-mint, and found a base-model listing: a dual-core i5, 128 GB SSD and 8 GB of memory, “Grade A, excellent condition,” with a battery of at least 81%. I rolled the dice and paid $375. It arrived almost pristine: the case, display and keyboard all looked perfect, with just one tiny ding on the bottom and a couple of small scratches around the Thunderbolt ports. The battery was at 91 cycles with more than 93% of its original capacity. I’m not sure you could find a better one at the price.

What I’d lose

The 14-inch’s extra ports, the ProMotion display and the SSD size. I’d use my CalDigit TS4 dock for ports and an external Thunderbolt SSD, since 128 GB isn’t enough for my YouTube stuff. I’d never used a butterfly keyboard for long, either.

Setup problems

I did a full wipe and migrated from my M2 Max, but the SSD was the first big issue: Migration Assistant wanted to move 277 GB of user data, and I had to deselect folders down to 83 GB, with about 21 GB left over.

The first morning had performance problems and weird app issues. Some apps needed reinstalling as Intel versions, but even after removing and reinstalling Final Cut Pro from the App Store, it would bounce in the Dock endlessly, show as running in Activity Monitor, and not open. Day one was almost a complete loss: I wiped the Air and set it up from scratch, reinstalling all my apps by hand, which was painful, with downloads that normally take seconds taking much longer (I left for lunch and came back to a still-downloading app).

Day to day

  • Lag everywhere: nothing is instant. Basic photo edits in Pixelmator Pro take multiple seconds to apply, where the M1 and M2 are instant. Apps take an abnormal time to open and keep bouncing.
  • Fans: running almost all the time, even with a browser and a tab or three, watching YouTube or news sites.
  • The keyboard: a pleasant surprise. It’s the third-generation butterfly design (they kept having problems), with much less key travel than a Magic Keyboard, but after a couple of hours or days you get used to it, and it wasn’t bad. I’d still miss the extra travel.
  • Video editing is impossible. My 4K Sony videos are uneditable: creating proxies for just the first couple of minutes took more than six hours, and performance still wasn’t good enough. Editing is out.
  • Typing lag: opening Safari and Google Docs takes a long time, and there’s major typing lag in a new document, with the fan going crazy and very little open (Safari, Messages, Mail, Calendar, Photos, Notes and Pixelmator Pro with no document).

Day six: away from the desk

I started at 9 a.m. at 100%: email, Teams messages, remote systems, a few browser tabs, a couple of conference calls (a Zoom call stuttered for the first 30 seconds). After about two hours I was at 60%, and after about three hours, about 60% used. There’s no way to get through a full day, maybe four or five o’clock at best. Performance was okay, with only occasional dropped keystrokes. I determined I could do most of my regular work on it, however slow and frustrating, but not my creative work.

On the plus side, the design still looks modern: it’s essentially the same shape and size Apple still sells in the M1 Air, a classic wedge with a black keyboard and silver trackpad. The Retina screen still looks better than most laptops’, though the bezels look large next to the M2 Air.

What I learned

I made it seven days, and it was rough. I didn’t expect regular tasks to be this bad. I knew benchmarks weren’t great and don’t always tell the story, but here they did. My memory of the transition from Intel to Apple silicon was correct: night and day. (I luckily stopped using Macs between 2013 and 2019, so I missed that dark period.) The M1 and newer let me get more than a single full day’s work and not worry about where to plug in. Unlike going from the newest iPhone to one that’s a few years old, this changed how I worked: every single thing was slower, from opening apps to switching Safari tabs to typing in a Google Doc, so I got less done, and I don’t use anything crazy beyond normal office apps (though I multitask constantly). I’m debating reselling the Air or recycling it.

Even the base M1 would be a solid upgrade from this. The Apple silicon transition really was revolutionary. Are you still using an older MacBook and wondering whether to upgrade?

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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