So no buying a refurbished last year model? Surely that should be ok, because you were a fan of apple unlit this year, which includes last year at full price.... let alone return discount...
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Why I'm switching to PC after 17 years of being on a Mac
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SSD is slower, display is not better, build quality is not even close, Windows.
It's not that the Dell is a bad product, mabe even better for some people, but you're arbitrarily equalizing the two computers in areas where MBP is ahead.
The Dell XPS 15" is certainly the laptop that matches the MBP closest. Still, the truth is far from what you picture.
First, the Dell uses only the lowest-tier quad-core Skylake CPU, while Apple offers upgraded CPUs. Second, the 960M is slower than the Pro 460. SSD is slower. Display quality is arguable: the Dell does have the full Adobe RGB and seems to have better color uniformity, but the MBP is twice as bright and has much better contrast. Also, the MBP is lighter and has better connectivity.
The Dell is certainly a nice laptop, and its priced very competitively. The weak battery life however, would be a complete deal breaker for me. There is no sense in saving $1000 and getting a computer that doesn't get the job done.
OK I'll agree there are alternatives out there to the 13" MBP, but the only one I'm impressed with is the Surface Book.
Here's the specs:
https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...0?icid=Surface_Cat_ModB_NEWSurfaceBook_103116
Pros:
Touch screen
Same memory specs 16 gig max
Camera front and back
i7 CPU
Claimed 16 hours of video battery life.
More and older style ports
Cons:
Windows 10 - I hate the constant virus attacks and requirement to maintain some sort of defense.
Weight is over a half pound greater
Price $300 more for similar equipped (i7, 16 gig 512 SSD)*.
Apples to Microsoft winner is:
13" MBP
PS. I would not buy the Dell.
* based on Microsoft and Apple web store prices as of 12-6-2016
Here's the specs:
https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...0?icid=Surface_Cat_ModB_NEWSurfaceBook_103116
Pros:
Touch screen
Same memory specs 16 gig max
Camera front and back
i7 CPU
Claimed 16 hours of video battery life.
More and older style ports
Cons:
Windows 10 - I hate the constant virus attacks and requirement to maintain some sort of defense.
Weight is over a half pound greater
Price $300 more for similar equipped (i7, 16 gig 512 SSD)*.
Apples to Microsoft winner is:
13" MBP
PS. I would not buy the Dell.
* based on Microsoft and Apple web store prices as of 12-6-2016
Maybe not, but it would still be soldered, glued and sealed to the point that you couldn't upgrade or replace anything and he would charge $200 for an extra 4 GB of RAM.
Performance and features. Mobility and battery are not "high end" features for a computer. They're desireable in a laptop, but consider the Air; the entire point is that it sacrificies functionality and performance for being lightweight and portable.
But now the entire product line is the Air, and there's nothing in it for anyone who didn't want the Air.
I have a late 2013 15" Macbook Pro and an XPS 15 2016 model. The build quality is equal to Apple's. In some areas, the XPS is even a bit better.
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You only get constant virus attacks when you constantly do dumb things, like clicking on suspicious emails and going to questionable web sites.
Look at a picture of the inside of a dell xps, looks like poor build quality, and the carbon part of the chassi still give a plasticy feel of the whole computer when using it
Well, the MBP offers mobility and battery without sacrificing the functionality and performance. It is in the same relative performance class as any MBP before it and performance-wise it rivals considerably heavier and bulkier workstation laptops. How can you say that 'the entire line is an Air' when the thing comes with the fastest consumer quad-core Skylake and GPU that performs better than the 960M? Both performance-wise and feature, gimped machines like the SurfaceBook don't even come close and other quad-core laptops tend to be heavier and/or have significantly worse battery life.
I have a maxed out tb 13. I also have the xps 13 and a Thinkpad Carbon X1.
The mbp build quality blows away both. The TB on the Carbon is laughable.
The screens on both Windows machines suck. Yes they are high res touch panels but they suck. Uneven uniformity and LIGHT BLEED.
I deploy XPS 15s at work an they all have some kind of bleed that makes the screen look horrible in low light.
The mbp and every mbp have no light bleed and are color calibrated.
You may get a good Windows screen sure. But no company but Apple obsesses over this.
I have seen many Windows machines and it's a crapshoot on display quality.
The mbp build quality blows away both. The TB on the Carbon is laughable.
The screens on both Windows machines suck. Yes they are high res touch panels but they suck. Uneven uniformity and LIGHT BLEED.
I deploy XPS 15s at work an they all have some kind of bleed that makes the screen look horrible in low light.
The mbp and every mbp have no light bleed and are color calibrated.
You may get a good Windows screen sure. But no company but Apple obsesses over this.
I have seen many Windows machines and it's a crapshoot on display quality.
I've seen the ACTUAL insides as I opened the XPS up to upgrade to 32GB RAM. The build quality is excellent, inside and out. And the carbon fiber feels more rubbery and sturdier, not plasticky.
Not only I could imagine it, this is EXACTLY what he would do. He did it all the time. Simplicity, throwing away old things, replacing the old with the new. And the criticism was always the same. And he would probably find a way to charge it more. People have weird ideas about Jobs.
BTW, what compatibility got broken? I have all my old devices plugged into my new MBP this very moment. I didn't know they were somehoew incompatible
The Dell is in many ways more comfortable to type on than the MBP, as it does feel 'softer' and doesn't have sharp edges.
The fact that we're discussing such minor differences shows just how far the PC competition has come. Over time Apple is going to need to step it up if it wants to command the same premium pricing.
Not only I could imagine it, this is EXACTLY what he would do. He did it all the time. Simplicity, throwing away old things, replacing the old with the new. And the criticism was always the same. And he would probably find a way to charge it more. People have weird ideas about Jobs.
BTW, what compatibility got broken? I have all my old devices plugged into my new MBP this very moment. I didn't know they were somehoew incompatible
Think this is to do with the MacBook not recognising various hard disks/thumb drives and many dongles too. Then we had that weird wi-fi issue. Although people jumped to blame the product, some of these products were things like the Samsung T3 - but even for those products which aren't premium, they were working on their old laptops and similar tier laptops like the XPS lineup, so I can understand their frustration. Teething problem of going to USB-C TB3 perhaps, or maybe an engineering oversight on Apples behalf? Time will tell, especially if next generation MacBook's end up fixing these issues, wonder if it means people can exchange theirs, that would be lucky
.That's just baldly untrue. The sole component that's currently true for is the PCIe/NVMe SSD, and the only use-case that would make a serious difference vs a host of other top end SSDs is if your workflow is built around constant and repeated writing of multi-gig files (ie several per minute), and even then we're talking seconds per hour.
By "benchmarks" do you mean one Apple presentation slide? The reviews, and the bulk of this forum, do not line up with that.
The 1060 does exist, and is in thinner form factors than last year's MBP.
The 1050 is the upcoming budget card. The MBP (like my 2015) has always had a middling card, but to be trashed by this year's budget offering on the other side is getting silly. I not you've moved to "energy efficiency" in an attempt to move the goal posts.
This is especially true in the Adobe suite, which is part of the pipeline for the bulk of professional creative users.
That much high speed connectivity at the cost of general connectivity. You've replaced the use-case of the bulk of users with one that benefits a fraction of one percent! Great job! It's a choice that doesn't even match the current mass-market philosophy elsewhere.
It's a great achievement, and I've used Macs for 15 years+. But it's created a machine that's stepped out of the field it was previously aimed at. The 2015 machine was totally portable. If they'd used similar dimensions but today's internals for the MBP, and this new form factor as the new MacBook, this forum wouldn't have collapsed into disgruntled monkeys: everyone would have been delighted.
But they didn't, they are forcing people who need to compete in the real world (where things like rendering time and Adobe's Nvidia acceleration make a real world -day-to-day difference to their costs) to look elsewhere. Because their competition has, and can do the job quicker.
I wouldn't say the display is worse personally - but I guess some could argue that the XPS lineup also excels in other area's that the MacBook doesn't. I truly think the new MacBooks are overpriced for what they offer - I mean when the MacBook Air came out initially, everyone said it was quite overpriced, but at least then, nothing really came close to it's form factor right? The newly released products by Apple aren't anything revolutionary or different (apart from the touch-bar, which not only isn't favoured by many, it is their version of touch screen, which is available on many laptops, and it also required the replacement of physical keys, wasn't just an additional strip).
So yes, I can see why people are disgruntled. If it was somewhat much smaller, much thinner, much better battery life, or something else which made it much cooler than the competition, I think people would have swallowed it better - do you agree? By cooler I mean, things like the Air pods (Which I can't wait to buy). Yes I know they made this years model thinner/smaller, but I was strictly speaking, compared to competition (think XPS line still has it beat in this respect, not sure about the Razerblade?)
(I say this as the owner of the new non-touch rMB, I might have not purchased this if in the UK, the other premium windows laptops were in stock
)..This is actually one of the factors that's massively influence me - my partner has an XPS, and it's a joy to type on, especially on the wrists. If you type many hours a day, it's a night and day difference to a metal edge.
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The Surface Book is a lovely machine, but unless you have a proper use for the stylus graphics tablet mode (which of course many will), you're paying a $1000 premium for a very expensive (but great) feature. It's trowing money away if you don't.
I wouldn't buy *any* laptop right now though: we're 4 weeks away from both Intel and Nvidia refreshes, and the Nvidia refresh is the biggest generational leap in power in 15 years.
Assuming that meant keeping the option of using magsafe, and a real keyboard and such? Yeah, I'd be using one of those.
What are you talking about? There are no faster available consumer Skylake CPUs, unless we want to take the 6x70HQ Series into account (which have lower clocks but the L4 cache, but they not appear to be available in bulk). Similarly, the Pro 460 is the fastest currently available mobile GPU in the sub 50W class, which is the GPU class traditionally used by Apple in their laptops. They never ever used a hotter GPU in a laptop so I don't see anyone would expect them to do it now.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html
http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inch-touch-bar-macbook-pros-reviewed/
http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-15-inch
Consistently getting 10+ hours for web browsing in actual benchmarks and outperforming any competition by a large margin. But yes of course, someone who writes 'OMG I WAS AT APPLE STORE AND THE BATTERY INDICATOR SAID 5 SECONDS' is much more credible than an actual test, performed by a seasoned reviewer.
And it also draws more power then the entire 15" MBP.
And last year it was being trashed by the 950M, which is another budget card. And the year before, it was trashed by the 850M, which is another budget card. Etc. Etc. The Pro 460 is just as energy efficient as the best of Pascal and it should be more or less on par with the mobile 1050. In fact, it will most likely faster in compute workflows as well as games that utilize modern APIs.
If you professionally rely on software that utilises proprietary Nvidia technology, why would you consider an AMD GPU in a laptop in the first place? Moreover, if your work really benefits from having a fast GPU, then the MacBook Pro is simply the wrong tool to look at, and always was.
Yeah. And in practice that's also true of a lot of other things. Need lots of memory? Go get a Windows laptop. Need more storage? Windows laptop. Keyboard? Windows laptop.
Which is why I think this machine shoulda been called the "macbook", and Apple should also have a high-end product line for people who need performance more than they need the lightest possible laptop no matter how weak it is.
And it sucks, because for my work, I would absolutely rather run MacOS than anything else... But not enough to make up for Apple not being willing to make hardware that can do the job.
I really don't get your logic. Appel doesn't make specialised tools, they simply don't. The MacBook Pro — by its design — is a premium jack-of-all trades ultraportable laptop, and it has ALWAYS been this way, since the Powerbook days. If you need a specialised tool, like a workstation laptop with 32Gb RAM or a desktop replacement with a beefy GPU, then you'll have to look elsewhere — again, that has always been the case.
There is not much point for Apple to offer niche laptop models given how they operate. Companies like Dell can afford it — they offer a wide portfolio of products in attempt to cover all niches. Their R&D costs for most models (like their workstation lines) are vey low, because frankly, there is not much R&D to begin with — they just put together standard components into a case and thats it.
And for the last time, the MBP is far from being weak! It uses fastest available consumer CPUs, fastest SSDs, fastest expandability as well as very competent GPU that is more then capable of taking care of stuff that one would usually want to do on a laptop. I mean, this thing can play contemporary competitive games on full HD with decent settings and 60 fps.
So, you're just downright wrong.
Price: Dell: 1699, Mac: 2399 - Dell Wins
CPU: Dell: i7-6700HQ Mac: i7-6700HQ
Display: Dell: 4K Touch Mac: Retina (Non Touch) - Comparable on quality outside of resolution, which, Dell wins.
RAM: Dell: DDR4-2133 16GB (Expandable to 32) Mac: LPDDR3 2133 16GB (MAX) - Dell Wins
Storage: Dell: 256 Mac: 256
GPU: Dell: 960M Mac: Radeon 450 - 960M is superior to the 450M and about equal to the 460 - expect 1060 soon.
WiFi: Dell has Killer.. it's the winner hands down.
Build: Dell: Aluminum, Carbon Fiber Mac: Aluminum Unibody - This is QUITE close.. the Dell is beautiful...
Battery: in REAL WORLD tests - 15" mac has been suffering BAD with battery.. as of now it's mostly a tie..
I support Apple, I use an iPhone 7Plus, I have a 2015 Macbook Pro.. I develop on Mac..
This machine is not up to snuff. Benchmark wise it's a non upgrade.. outside of the SSD it does nothing faster.
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Sure they do. That's what the Air was.
That's just not true. Look at the old 17" MBPs from a few years back; those were not "ultraportable". They were much closer to "jack of all trades". The 2016 isn't a jack of all trades. It's a jack of one trade exactly, "being thin".
When everyone I know who used to develop for Mac and iOS for fun because they were programmers who used macs has quit because there's no machines that come even close to meeting their needs, that's... actually a pretty good reason to think about supporting those users.
What ever happened to "Think Different"? I don't remember when Apple changed their slogan to "Think Lowest Common Denominator".
I don't think that's really true. There's a lot of engineering that goes into making room for things, making things easy to get at, and so on. That they're doing engineering with different priorities from Apple doesn't mean there's no R&D.
Can it run at full speed without thermal throttling? Because if so, it's the first MBP ever to achieve that.
And yeah, it's got consumer CPUs. My significantly cheaper laptop with a Xeon, and 2x as much faster memory expandable to 4x as much, runs rings around it. (And I also get to have two drives.)
It's a tradeoff. It used to be Apple at least made the effort to support two different markets. Now it's only the market that used to be the "macbook" market; the people who had reason to prefer the MBP to the plain MacBook are no longer in Apple's customer base.
The comparable Dell releases in 4 weeks though. You're comparing a year old Dell to a new-cycle MBP.
Its weird that you mention that Dell's RAM is expandable to 32Gb but completely avoid the fact that the MBP's CPU can be upgraded to 6920HQ. Also, how is Dell winning this? The RAM is same speed but uses more energy. Sure, you can upgrade it to 32GB, but then you can kiss your
Again, MBP has significantly better brightness and contrast. The 8% higher PPI of the Dell is not even worth mentioning.
Haven't seen any benchmarks of the Dell. If I am not mistaken it uses this card : http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Killer-Wireless-AC-1535.176453.0.html See it loosing to the 2013 MBP.
All real world tests I have seen so far show the MBP getting at least 10 hours. Dell can't even come close to that.
Don't get me wrong, the XPS 15" is a very nice laptop that will certainly work as a 'budget' MacBook Pro. But I just don't see a single advantage it has over the appropriately specced MBP, except price. And then, I don't see any point is saving $1000 if that would translate to a computer that is frustrating to use in practice.
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Looking forward to see the new XPS! I am wondering what they would upgrade it with though. AFAIK the sad core Kaby Lake is still not available at that point?