Macbook pro Mid 2012 (Non Retina)

Not really

virajkp92 said:

Does buying a Macbook pro (Mid 2012) Non retina version now (i.e. Late 2014) make sense? I'm a little low on the budget, and as far as the retina version goes, i see no point in getting something that you cannot upgrade! The MCBP, the Mid 2012 is upgradable in every angle, be it RAM and be it space. There are rumors that it is going to get discontinued and updates will be unlikely. Should I go with this?? I have no other option. Maybe a Mac Mini but I would want something that's portable With a screen.

Thanks!!

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To be honest it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend nearly the same amount of cash on a computer that has 2-3 year old hardware. You can get some really good deals on the 2013 rMBP and no matter how you upgrade that 2012 it'll never be as good as the 2013 or 2014.

Thunderbolt 2 and AC wifi are a big bonus and the better battery life and potential for more OSX updates are big things on their own. the retina screen however should push you towards it for that alone, it makes all the difference especially with text heavy workloads....

Upgradeability means nothing when the machine you are getting has just about the best stuff that you can have or are likely to get for few years

Six months ago, I was in your position, the immediate need for a new machine and a tight budget. As you can see from my signature, I went with the 2012. Once I had the expendable money for upgrades, I added an SSD and ram. I couldn't be happier with the machine.

Depending on how you use the machine, the older model still offers some nice features, including the IR sensor, dongleless ethernet and firewire 800, and the optical drive. I still use FW800 drives and the IR sensor, and on occasion ethernet and the optical drive.

As far as the amenities of the newer machine, I don't see ISPs for most people being able to saturate the Wireless N on the 2012 model anytime soon. Unless you are transferring large files regularly between wireless AC devices often, I don't see it being much more than a perk. Thunderbolt peripherals are still very expensive, so unless you have specific plans that require you to use TB2, then you likely won't miss it.

As far as OS X support, I don't foresee the 2012 machine losing support before the 2013 and 2014 machines. They both have core i series processors, both have Bluetooth 4.0. These things will likely be dropped all at the same time.

The places where the newer machines offer significant improvements are the display, the retina sure is nice. The PCIe SSD is much faster, but not that noticeable in day to day work, unless you are doing extremely read/write intensive stuff, but then you would likely be looking at quad core machine instead.

With all that said, the price difference between an upgraded 2012 and a new machine is getting much smaller. When I bought mine, the difference between a machine with 8GB of ram and 256 GB SSD was about $700 (upgrading myself). Now it's about half of that. If I were you, I would look around for a great price on the 2012 machine, if that is the route your budget forces you into. If you can find a new/refurb/open box one in the $800-$900 range, I would jump all over it (I haven't looked to know what kinds of deals are out there though). If not, I would think hard about digging deep for an extra couple hundred bucks and get the 13" Air with 8GB ram and 256GB SSD. Had the Air gotten a spec bump before I bought mine, I would have likely ended up going that route.

It sounds like it will certainly meet your needs, and offers the opportunity to upgrade into the machine you want. You are certainly approaching the purchase with the same sort of practicality I did, and getting what you need rather than chasing specs. Go for it, they are great machines. The price seems fair, slightly lower than I gave for mine with the education discount.

Future OS upgrades shouldn't bottleneck these machines much, as the OS doesn't use more than a couple percent of the processing power. The only bottleneck they have is the read/write speed of the internal HDD, which can be fixed with an SSD. I'm not a fan of running any OS X past Snow Leopard on an HDD (which unfortunately won't run on the 2012 machines). Lion and later really bog down with the HDD because they are constantly caching data.

Go for it, and enjoy your new machine! The machines aren't cheap, but My Macs have treated me well over the years and none have been particularly babied beyond their first few weeks in service.

It only makes sense if you're planning installing big SSDs (>= 480GB) and 16GB RAM. Otherwise, I think it makes more sense buying a 13" rMBP.

I think the classic MBP is still a great machine, big battery life and Ivy Bridge performs nearly as fast as Haswell processors. Buy the BTO i7 option and later upgrade to 1TB SSD and 16GB. It will probably reach 500MB/s on i/o operations which is still great comparing to 120GB PCIe storage.

The computer makes sense, but buying one new from Apple doesn't. I'd look for a used one and save some money. They're great computers and offer several advantages over the Retinas.

I think you should buy the cMBP as it is still a good machine, I have one myself. But as you can see in my signature Ive upgraded it quite a bit. Go for the i7 and max the RAM out plus get an SSD.

I have a 15" 2012 cMBP. I've upped the RAM to 16Gigs and installed an SSD and put a HD in the optical bay. This thing runs multiple VMs, emulators, xcode, eclipse, etc... like a champ. And I don't really do any gaming on it.

The machine is awesome and I would highly recommend going this route, if you have the same usage pattern.

Enjoy your machine. I, despite having a rMBP myself, still see the value offered by the cMBP, especially with it's upgradable storage and RAM.

Also, performance-wise the cMBP is still only an architecture behind, and offers almost identical performance to a retina. Stagnant and delay-ridden Intel has meant that the 2012s have aged quite well, and you really wouldn't notice the difference at all except in few specialized apps.

Enjoy the new machine. Performing the upgrades is really easy on these machines.

damn, i'm too late in this conversation.

I would have advice you on getting the 15"

(you never said which size you got, but according to the price, you got a 13", correct?

I believe it is a bad investment buying a 13", due to personal experiences. it is not very future proof, for some reason the 2-core cpu gets really slow after 2-3 years. and the 4-core cpu still runs just as fast from day 1.

I have 13"-2011 and 15"-2012, and everytime I'm on the 13", I want to throw it away, its slow in everyway.

so the advice I usually give to people is always get the quad-core. and the other features are just depending on what you use it for.

kensic said:

damn, i'm too late in this conversation.

I would have advice you on getting the 15"

(you never said which size you got, but according to the price, you got a 13", correct?

I believe it is a bad investment buying a 13", due to personal experiences. it is not very future proof, for some reason the 2-core cpu gets really slow after 2-3 years. and the 4-core cpu still runs just as fast from day 1.

I have 13"-2011 and 15"-2012, and everytime I'm on the 13", I want to throw it away, its slow in everyway.

so the advice I usually give to people is always get the quad-core. and the other features are just depending on what you use it for.

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I must know at least 10-20 people at my university running dual core 13" cMBPs and rMBP just fine, even doing heavy CAD and graphics work. The HDD would slow down the computer long before the CPU would.

kensic said:

damn, i'm too late in this conversation.

I would have advice you on getting the 15"

(you never said which size you got, but according to the price, you got a 13", correct?

I believe it is a bad investment buying a 13", due to personal experiences. it is not very future proof, for some reason the 2-core cpu gets really slow after 2-3 years. and the 4-core cpu still runs just as fast from day 1.

I have 13"-2011 and 15"-2012, and everytime I'm on the 13", I want to throw it away, its slow in everyway.

so the advice I usually give to people is always get the quad-core. and the other features are just depending on what you use it for.

Click to expand...

That does not make sense. The CPU speed never changes. It sounds like you have software on the 13" that is hogging CPU cycles, or possibly a failing hard drive.

556fmjoe said:

That does not make sense. The CPU speed never changes. It sounds like you have software on the 13" that is hogging CPU cycles, or possibly a failing hard drive.

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yes I agree that cpu speed never changes.

but I guess I should have said, softwares and apps get heavier and require more computing time as time go on. so an outdated cpu's struggle more to run them.

you know what I mean?

I bought a 2012 model from best buy for $999 in May. I added a hardware and software warranty and love this machine. It's upgradable and that was my priority.

if you want a built in optical drive (like me) there really is no other apple option other than used machines.