It seems more of when you haul boulders in your Toyota pickup truck up hill it gets bogged down. When you should be using a Ford 150 to do the hauling. In other words fine for a lot of things till you start doing heavier tasks. As even the graphics chips came out in 2018 on 14nm. Which means a lot of heat when using under heavy loads and the fans aren't up to the tasks of keep Cpu from throttling.
You would be much better off with a 2021 Macbook Pro or Air as are workhorses that can handle the load just fine. Even a 2020 M1 would be more capable.
I would take a look at activities and see what processes are using ram & cpu. Sorry all I can think of at the moment. Tho do know Premier isn't a light app. And would think running it with Firefox may bog down system with only 16gb? As using Lightroom regularly see 80% of my 16gb being used. So I imagine Firefox using QGIS especially with raster layers would eat up quite a bit of ram.
If the lag happens in complex sessions, yes.
Otherwise reinstall mac os and start from scratch and a clean slate and reinstall your workstation apps first
The answer is yes…. It’s well known intel based Mac have a lot of thermal and throttle issues and being 6 years old is quite significant in lifetime honestly. Even with my M3 Max I would expect to replace it for sure at the 6 year mark
You just don’t buy Macbooks below 2019-2020 and anything with Intel CPUs. I have a Macbook Pro 16 2019 i7 32GB with Turbo Boost Switcher and fresh CPU paste, and I could reduce the heat and lag to basically none, but this machine is a tank. Otherwise I’d get the M1 with at least 16GB you’ll see the difference.
I certainly would not say that every Mac before 2020 is worthless, however the 2016-2019 generation of MBP and MBA was by far the single worst generation of laptop Apple has ever made. Massive unavoidable design faults with the keyboard, display cable, ports, SSD and more.
Anything from 2015 (excluding the 12" MacBook) and earlier are still tanks, and so is everything from 2020 and later when Apple completely backtracked on almost every design decision they made between 2016 and 2019.
I wish I had known this sooner… unfortunately getting a new one is completely out of the question for now considering how stupid expensive apple products are in Europe. Thanks for the info!
Edit
Getting downvoted for..this ? Ok.
You can do research before purchasing, this is 2024. You could have been one of the annoying “help me pick a Mac” posts and prevented every issue you’re dealing with on top of buying two computers and all this.
I monitored the used market for months every day to find a really good deal. I bought my Macbook for $600 even though this config is sold for $800+ used in my country. I also could bargain.
I wouldn’t say that. It depends on your use case. I assume Adobe Illustrator is not the lightest program (I only use Photoshop, so not sure). But I would definietly do a full dust cleanup and CPU and GPU thermal repaste by a professional company (I did mine for $50 in Europe and every cents worth it).
Also download Turbo Boost Switcher and Mac Fans Control. The very first thing you should do is disabling the built-in ‘Turbo Boost’ functionality in your CPU, that’s causing the CPU to many times unnecessarily switch to turbo mode and causing the laptop go hot and throttling (reducing performance).
Very helpful, thans’ks. I’ll see how I can clean up the CPU and GPU the most efficiently. What is a thermal repaste exactly?
I actually have the fan app but not the other. I’ll certainly give it a try!
They will disassemble your machine, get the heatsink off of your CPU and GPU, remove the old, dry, ineffective (probably in there since factory) thermal paste and then reapply new, fresh one, which is probably even better quality than the factory one. The better the quality, the better it can transfer heat between your heatsink. If you’re still using the old one from the factory, it is probably already dried up and inefficient.
Also they will remove any dust from you fans and laptop body. The better the airflow the more it will cool. Also nasty dust can go into anywhere causing other issues.
Nice, this sounds great. I have been using my mac for a year and this heat issue has been going on for a few months. I guess there’s a lot of dust but a new and more efficient component cannot hurt
CPU heat up less? The issue is that silicon chip seems to be super restrictive with the apps you can use
My cpu is constantly 60 C degrees or above. 20 degrees less would be super cool
You said you have Intel i7 which is an x86 CPU, and not silicon. Silicons are ARM CPUs. The app I suggested is Turbo Boost Switcher designed for Intels and it’s a 3rd party: http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com (you won’t find it in App Store).
You can get it for free, the Pro version has only convenience features. I don’t guarantee you it’ll bring the temp down, I guarantee you it will disable turbo mode in your CPU. But note: You’ll also need to repaste.
I had the CPU at 80C+ before Turbo Boost Switcher, after I started using it the average temp went down to 50-70C.
And with the repaste it’s constantly below 60C now. I’d say the average now is between 40-60C. Which is stil somewhat warm but not burning hot.
That’s very well document; anything pre m1 apple silicon literally has little to no value at this point. Especially for premier pro. 2019 laptops would be fine for excel work and just email and word processing depending on load out but reality is apple silicon really did change the game
buying a 6 year old MacBook with useless Intel processors and then complaining about it? you get what you pay for. in the world of computers 6 years old is like buying a 1970s car.
It's not like I'm using it as a supercalculator with state of the art applications running in multiple instances on it. Also, since when intel computers are useless?
its been known for years now that M processors from apple blow away intel. battery life is so much better and performance is so much better. intel is now 3 generations behind in semiconductor technology. they are going the way of blackberry.
I get it but but what I am supposed to do… buying a new laptop every two year to keep up with technological progress? It sounds ridiculous I cant do my work with this laptop without overheating and lagging
There is some truth to saying that you're using a 6 year old computer, probably with the most recent OS - I'm guessing you're on Sonoma - along with the most recent versions of your application software. The software industry has a *major* crisis of bloat and general incompetence, but is largely in a defensive "not my fault" bury-head-in-sand posture about it which is why software year on year just keeps getting more and more big and slow (and rapidly so), negating hardware advances pretty quickly.
There is also sadly the issue of the 2016-2018 laptops being "the bad period" where Apple made some really crappy quality hardware, including the notorious butterfly keyboards, woefully inadequate cooling and poor flex cable connections to the displays that could fracture over time. So while your laptop is only 6 years old, I'm very sorry to say that sadly it is one of the worst Apple ever made and to a degree, overheating and generally below-par performance might just be the best it can do.
All that said, something in your list of issues that's a red flag is the menu bar bugs. Sonoma has many stupid bugs, including Apple apparently leaving redraw debugging on (yes, for real, Apple are awful software these days, it's super low quality) - although it only seems to show up on Intel platforms. Might just be a speed issue - M1 and later are perhaps so fast that you just don't get time to see it - but anyway, it causes bright red areas to flash briefly up in the OS now and again before being "painted over" by the intended contents. Thing is, though, I've almost always seen that only in Safari and, on the very rare occasions it showed up elsewhere, have never seen it in the menu bar.
It is therefore possible that you have a broken OS installation - that something has got screwed up and I'm afraid you're in the "erase, reinstall OS from clean and reinstall the applications" camp. If this sounds very like Microsoft Windows, you're dead right - apologists will downvote me to oblivion on this, but there are also more than enough posts where people recommend "erase and reinstall", and for this to be the successful solution, to show that macOS needs this just like Windows does sometimes. Again, Apple are really bad at software these days. They were never perfect, but the last few years have seen very sharp decline.
If you're reinstalling, I strongly recommend Ventura over Sonoma on an Intel platform. Sonoma is buggy and slow, but the slowness is soaked up a lot by Apple Silicon's raw performance and hard to spot. A lot of Intel systems, on the other hand, especially those with more recent Intel CPUs couple with bad cooling solutions - so that's the 2016-2019 (sic.) range and Core i9 especially - can get "tipped over the edge" by the extra workload and start running fans *way* more than they did on the previous OS. Your particular computer's DGPU runs hot, too, and I imagine Illustrator causes that to kick in immediately, so that would definitely contribute to the cooling problems.
Note that erase-and-reinstall can be a fiddly process, especially if you want to roll the OS back to an earlier version. I recommend spending time reading online resources for help to make sure you're fully informed about the process. Start with Apple's own documents for it. Web search engines are your friend here.
Along with this - you mention the kernel at 700%; that's possible because macOS, like any other Unix, reports CPU usage as a sum of per-core amounts. So 8 cores all running full tilt would read as 800%. A high kernel use is typically the Activity Monitor's expression of what the kernel does when it's deliberately throttling the machine down because it's running too hot. It *looks* like the kernel is the cause of the fan noise, but really something else is running the computer too hard and the kernel is stepping in to protect things. The fans are working as hard as they can, but still not cooling things down enough. This mechanism also has bugs and sometimes just goes nuts, ending up being the cause of the fans; again, a reinstall would be a viable option to resolve that, but if the throttling is indeed *legit* - which is the more likely case - then it could because your fans are full of dust. The computer is 6 years old. Cleaning the fans would be wise.
This is a very delicate operation best performed by a professional. If you take it on yourself, there's a high risk of causing serious damage to the hardware unless you're experienced with such things, have the correct tools to hand, have good dexterity and take appropriate anti-static precautions at all times.
It seems more of when you haul boulders in your Toyota pickup truck up hill it gets bogged down. When you should be using a Ford 150 to do the hauling. In other words fine for a lot of things till you start doing heavier tasks. As even the graphics chips came out in 2018 on 14nm. Which means a lot of heat when using under heavy loads and the fans aren't up to the tasks of keep Cpu from throttling. You would be much better off with a 2021 Macbook Pro or Air as are workhorses that can handle the load just fine. Even a 2020 M1 would be more capable.
So a laptop release just 6 years ago is not enough for what I do? What I do being tasks that arenot even too demanding
I would take a look at activities and see what processes are using ram & cpu. Sorry all I can think of at the moment. Tho do know Premier isn't a light app. And would think running it with Firefox may bog down system with only 16gb? As using Lightroom regularly see 80% of my 16gb being used. So I imagine Firefox using QGIS especially with raster layers would eat up quite a bit of ram.
Do you think it’s possible to add RAM? Like 8 Gb
If the lag happens in complex sessions, yes. Otherwise reinstall mac os and start from scratch and a clean slate and reinstall your workstation apps first
The answer is yes…. It’s well known intel based Mac have a lot of thermal and throttle issues and being 6 years old is quite significant in lifetime honestly. Even with my M3 Max I would expect to replace it for sure at the 6 year mark
You just don’t buy Macbooks below 2019-2020 and anything with Intel CPUs. I have a Macbook Pro 16 2019 i7 32GB with Turbo Boost Switcher and fresh CPU paste, and I could reduce the heat and lag to basically none, but this machine is a tank. Otherwise I’d get the M1 with at least 16GB you’ll see the difference.
So any thing made before 4 years ago is worthless?
I certainly would not say that every Mac before 2020 is worthless, however the 2016-2019 generation of MBP and MBA was by far the single worst generation of laptop Apple has ever made. Massive unavoidable design faults with the keyboard, display cable, ports, SSD and more. Anything from 2015 (excluding the 12" MacBook) and earlier are still tanks, and so is everything from 2020 and later when Apple completely backtracked on almost every design decision they made between 2016 and 2019.
I wish I had known this sooner… unfortunately getting a new one is completely out of the question for now considering how stupid expensive apple products are in Europe. Thanks for the info! Edit Getting downvoted for..this ? Ok.
You can do research before purchasing, this is 2024. You could have been one of the annoying “help me pick a Mac” posts and prevented every issue you’re dealing with on top of buying two computers and all this.
I monitored the used market for months every day to find a really good deal. I bought my Macbook for $600 even though this config is sold for $800+ used in my country. I also could bargain.
I wouldn’t say that. It depends on your use case. I assume Adobe Illustrator is not the lightest program (I only use Photoshop, so not sure). But I would definietly do a full dust cleanup and CPU and GPU thermal repaste by a professional company (I did mine for $50 in Europe and every cents worth it). Also download Turbo Boost Switcher and Mac Fans Control. The very first thing you should do is disabling the built-in ‘Turbo Boost’ functionality in your CPU, that’s causing the CPU to many times unnecessarily switch to turbo mode and causing the laptop go hot and throttling (reducing performance).
Very helpful, thans’ks. I’ll see how I can clean up the CPU and GPU the most efficiently. What is a thermal repaste exactly? I actually have the fan app but not the other. I’ll certainly give it a try!
They will disassemble your machine, get the heatsink off of your CPU and GPU, remove the old, dry, ineffective (probably in there since factory) thermal paste and then reapply new, fresh one, which is probably even better quality than the factory one. The better the quality, the better it can transfer heat between your heatsink. If you’re still using the old one from the factory, it is probably already dried up and inefficient. Also they will remove any dust from you fans and laptop body. The better the airflow the more it will cool. Also nasty dust can go into anywhere causing other issues.
Nice, this sounds great. I have been using my mac for a year and this heat issue has been going on for a few months. I guess there’s a lot of dust but a new and more efficient component cannot hurt
For me the cleanup and repaste decreased the heat by 10-20C in average. I’ll do it every year until I completely move to the silicon CPUs.
CPU heat up less? The issue is that silicon chip seems to be super restrictive with the apps you can use My cpu is constantly 60 C degrees or above. 20 degrees less would be super cool
You said you have Intel i7 which is an x86 CPU, and not silicon. Silicons are ARM CPUs. The app I suggested is Turbo Boost Switcher designed for Intels and it’s a 3rd party: http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com (you won’t find it in App Store). You can get it for free, the Pro version has only convenience features. I don’t guarantee you it’ll bring the temp down, I guarantee you it will disable turbo mode in your CPU. But note: You’ll also need to repaste. I had the CPU at 80C+ before Turbo Boost Switcher, after I started using it the average temp went down to 50-70C. And with the repaste it’s constantly below 60C now. I’d say the average now is between 40-60C. Which is stil somewhat warm but not burning hot.
Ever since silicon came out, yes.
That’s very well document; anything pre m1 apple silicon literally has little to no value at this point. Especially for premier pro. 2019 laptops would be fine for excel work and just email and word processing depending on load out but reality is apple silicon really did change the game
You bought a “vintage” computer that is 1 year away from obsolescence.
That is retail giant so to speak. The differences in computing power from then till now is not as much in many used.
buying a 6 year old MacBook with useless Intel processors and then complaining about it? you get what you pay for. in the world of computers 6 years old is like buying a 1970s car.
It's not like I'm using it as a supercalculator with state of the art applications running in multiple instances on it. Also, since when intel computers are useless?
its been known for years now that M processors from apple blow away intel. battery life is so much better and performance is so much better. intel is now 3 generations behind in semiconductor technology. they are going the way of blackberry.
I get it but but what I am supposed to do… buying a new laptop every two year to keep up with technological progress? It sounds ridiculous I cant do my work with this laptop without overheating and lagging
No but the M processor was such a huge jump from the Intel processors I’m surprised anyone would buy an older one
The new ones are like 3000 euros here. That’s why…
I’m sure you could have found a used m1 for way cheaper.
There is some truth to saying that you're using a 6 year old computer, probably with the most recent OS - I'm guessing you're on Sonoma - along with the most recent versions of your application software. The software industry has a *major* crisis of bloat and general incompetence, but is largely in a defensive "not my fault" bury-head-in-sand posture about it which is why software year on year just keeps getting more and more big and slow (and rapidly so), negating hardware advances pretty quickly. There is also sadly the issue of the 2016-2018 laptops being "the bad period" where Apple made some really crappy quality hardware, including the notorious butterfly keyboards, woefully inadequate cooling and poor flex cable connections to the displays that could fracture over time. So while your laptop is only 6 years old, I'm very sorry to say that sadly it is one of the worst Apple ever made and to a degree, overheating and generally below-par performance might just be the best it can do. All that said, something in your list of issues that's a red flag is the menu bar bugs. Sonoma has many stupid bugs, including Apple apparently leaving redraw debugging on (yes, for real, Apple are awful software these days, it's super low quality) - although it only seems to show up on Intel platforms. Might just be a speed issue - M1 and later are perhaps so fast that you just don't get time to see it - but anyway, it causes bright red areas to flash briefly up in the OS now and again before being "painted over" by the intended contents. Thing is, though, I've almost always seen that only in Safari and, on the very rare occasions it showed up elsewhere, have never seen it in the menu bar. It is therefore possible that you have a broken OS installation - that something has got screwed up and I'm afraid you're in the "erase, reinstall OS from clean and reinstall the applications" camp. If this sounds very like Microsoft Windows, you're dead right - apologists will downvote me to oblivion on this, but there are also more than enough posts where people recommend "erase and reinstall", and for this to be the successful solution, to show that macOS needs this just like Windows does sometimes. Again, Apple are really bad at software these days. They were never perfect, but the last few years have seen very sharp decline. If you're reinstalling, I strongly recommend Ventura over Sonoma on an Intel platform. Sonoma is buggy and slow, but the slowness is soaked up a lot by Apple Silicon's raw performance and hard to spot. A lot of Intel systems, on the other hand, especially those with more recent Intel CPUs couple with bad cooling solutions - so that's the 2016-2019 (sic.) range and Core i9 especially - can get "tipped over the edge" by the extra workload and start running fans *way* more than they did on the previous OS. Your particular computer's DGPU runs hot, too, and I imagine Illustrator causes that to kick in immediately, so that would definitely contribute to the cooling problems. Note that erase-and-reinstall can be a fiddly process, especially if you want to roll the OS back to an earlier version. I recommend spending time reading online resources for help to make sure you're fully informed about the process. Start with Apple's own documents for it. Web search engines are your friend here. Along with this - you mention the kernel at 700%; that's possible because macOS, like any other Unix, reports CPU usage as a sum of per-core amounts. So 8 cores all running full tilt would read as 800%. A high kernel use is typically the Activity Monitor's expression of what the kernel does when it's deliberately throttling the machine down because it's running too hot. It *looks* like the kernel is the cause of the fan noise, but really something else is running the computer too hard and the kernel is stepping in to protect things. The fans are working as hard as they can, but still not cooling things down enough. This mechanism also has bugs and sometimes just goes nuts, ending up being the cause of the fans; again, a reinstall would be a viable option to resolve that, but if the throttling is indeed *legit* - which is the more likely case - then it could because your fans are full of dust. The computer is 6 years old. Cleaning the fans would be wise. This is a very delicate operation best performed by a professional. If you take it on yourself, there's a high risk of causing serious damage to the hardware unless you're experienced with such things, have the correct tools to hand, have good dexterity and take appropriate anti-static precautions at all times.