Stable Diffusion can run on Intel CPUs through OpenVINO if you don't have a GPU or the funds to rent one online (Google Collab is often used). You still need a decent amount of RAM (running SD takes about 8GB, training seems to run at 6-8GB) so I'd consider 12 or 16GiB of RAM to be a requirement.
There's a huge difference in performance (generating an image takes 10 minutes rather than 10 seconds and training a model would take forever) but with some Python knowledge and a lot of patience it can be done.
Apple's Intel Macbooks are infamous for their insufficient cooling design for the CPUs they chose, which won't help maintaining a high clock speed for extended durations of time; you may want to find a way to help cool the laptop down to give the chip a chance to boost more, and to prevent prolonged high temperatures from wearing down the hardware quicker.
There's a huge difference in performance (generating an image takes 10 minutes rather than 10 seconds and training a model would take forever) but with some Python knowledge and a lot of patience it can be done.
Apple's Intel Macbooks are infamous for their insufficient cooling design for the CPUs they chose, which won't help maintaining a high clock speed for extended durations of time; you may want to find a way to help cool the laptop down to give the chip a chance to boost more, and to prevent prolonged high temperatures from wearing down the hardware quicker.