12" Macbook review, after having used every single laptop in Apple's lineup since 2006

[alphaninjacat]

If you're actually traveling around and plugging both your phone and a hard drive into your portable computer at the same time, you have no reason to complain about the problems with portability that a single adapter brings.

If you're still arguing that the computer is underpowered, contrary to the testimony of reviewers and users, then you will lose whatever credibility you still have after choosing the username "alphaninjacat."

Do you need some help with spelling?

I just won the debate! It is a known fact once someone brings up spelling in the debate, they know they lost the debate.

Yeah, a flash drive is small, some small as a coin and I believe most people already carry a phone around (The phone usually is a smart phone). Face it! Apple messed up again, just as they did with the Mac Mini, MacPro, and Apple Watch.

You either have a stake in Apple or you are trying justify the money you wasted on the Retina MacBook

As for the spelling, clearly you do not realize I have auto correct on and could care less if it's perfect or not...

 

[JTBing]

K

I just won the debate! It is a known fact once someone brings up spelling in the debate, they know they lost the debate.

Yeah, a flash drive is small, some small as a coin and I believe most people already carry a phone around (The phone usually is a smart phone). Face it! Apple messed up again, just as they did with the Mac Mini, MacPro, and Apple Watch.

You either have a stake in Apple or you are trying justify the money you wasted on the Retina MacBook

As for the spelling, clearly you do not realize I have auto correct on and could care less if it's perfect or not...

On the contrary, people who bring up spelling only lose if they rest their entire argument on it. You're the one who sounds like you're just restating things you read on the Internet.

Certainly a flash drive is small. You can plug one directly into the Macbook! You, however, also talked about hard drives. This is why word choice (and spelling) are important. The point is that in order to accomplish what you're suggesting, you're already carrying around your phone charger and a cord to connect the hard drive. So, why are you complaining about a small adapter?

Oh wait, why am I arguing with you? You think the Mac Mini was a failure too...

 

[alphaninjacat]

K

On the contrary, people who bring up spelling only lose if they rest their entire argument on it. You're the one who sounds like you're just restating things you read on the Internet.

Certainly a flash drive is small. You can plug one directly into the Macbook! You, however, also talked about hard drives. This is why word choice (and spelling) are important. The point is that in order to accomplish what you're suggesting, you're already carrying around your phone charger and a cord to connect the hard drive. So, why are you complaining about a small adapter?

Oh wait, why am I arguing with you? You think the Mac Mini was a failure too...

The new Mac Mini is a failure. Guess you have not did any research on it. Go online and look at Best Buy's and Apple's open box returns/refurbs. Maybe visit the Mac Mini section of this site and other sites. Microcenter even had the base for $399 last month. In some cases the 2012 Mac Mini i7 Quad Core sell for more than it did new. And even the 2012 was not that popular, but it has become more popular now, do to the epic Apple fail.

Face it! Apple is focusing on profits at this stage. It's what companies do when they become popular...

 

[mpainesyd]

I have had the rMB for more than 2 months now. I was delighted to get it a week before I went on a long trip. It has worked brilliantly in 7 countries. Runs all of my business-related software. My Parallels VM set-up (winXP and Win8) migrated from my old MBP without problems. Maybe it runs a little slower but I am used to that with Windows.
I have a couple of USB-C connectors and accessories but really could have survived with just the Apple HDMI USB-C adapter (to also connect USB3 hard drives/sticks and to charge my iPhone).
Haven't tried a power-bank but will keep that in mind for my next trip.

 

[tbirdparis]

The Retina MacBook! The Retina SlowBook!

As far as being buttery smooth while running two VMs using VMware? This is false, unless someone considers buttery slow smooth without stutter good. And I me slow!

The applications (iTunes, Calendar, ETC) open quite slow the first time they start up (Just reboot and see). I'm blown away anyone would consider this thing fast or useable for anything other than basic stuff. Maybe a new owner trying to justify a new purchase

Apple seems to be focus on profits verses quality/specs/performance.

Yep this was definitely a machine that had no expensive R&D, thought or design put into it. And it's clearly built like trash too. I mean just look at it, it just screams cynical cheapness and cost-cutting to gouge as much out of people as possible. Obviously.

 

[mpainesyd]

Haven't tried a power-bank but will keep that in mind for my next trip.

Just went to test running the rMB from a power-bank and realised it has a USB3 female socket and there is no cable to connect it and the rMB. I would need:
a) a female USB-C to male USB3 connector to use the rMB power cord (it has male USB-c connection to the power supply) or
b) a male USB3 to male USB-c cord.

As it happens I have a male USB-C to female USB3 connector on order. I will have to see if I can figure out how to use this.

Apple power cable: male USB-c --- male USB-c
Satechi power bank: female USB3
Adapter male USB3 --- male USB-c
or male USB3 --- female USB-c >> Apple power cord
or male USB3 --- male USB3 >>> Apple female USB3 to male USB-c adapter

I will transfer this to the USB-C adapters thread...

 

[JTBing]

The new Mac Mini is a failure. Guess you have not did any research on it. Go online and look at Best Buy's and Apple's open box returns/refurbs. Maybe visit the Mac Mini section of this site and other sites. Microcenter even had the base for $399 last month. In some cases the 2012 Mac Mini i7 Quad Core sell for more than it did new. And even the 2012 was not that popular, but it has become more popular now, do to the epic Apple fail.

Face it! Apple is focusing on profits at this stage. It's what companies do when they become popular...

The 2014 Mac mini wasn't a failure. Not exactly what everyone wanted, sure, but still a great, very affordable computer that has sold well.

Also.. You brought up the Apple watch. Do you not realize how well it's been selling??

 

[alphaninjacat]

The 2014 Mac mini wasn't a failure. Not exactly what everyone wanted, sure, but still a great, very affordable computer that has sold well.

Also.. You brought up the Apple watch. Do you not realize how well it's been selling??

Wow! You have to have a stake in Apple! Both those products are complete garbage.

 

[JTBing]

Wow! You have to have a stake in Apple! Both those products are complete garbage.

No, I'm just not determined to hate new Apple products against all reason.

 

[wchigo]

Millions of people carry flash drives around and quite a few curry portable hard drives. You cannot plug in a hard drive and smart phone at the same time without a doc. Most people will by the low storage option do to cost and max it out quick and rely on external storage options other than cloud server storage.

The Retina MacBook serves little to no purpose other than to increase profit margins. It's small and lightweight, but underpowered. Retina MacBook is Apple's netbook!

And what about the other millions of people who DON'T carry around flash drives, portable hard drives, etc.?

It seems like you are projecting your own thoughts onto Apple, like they are trying to sell this as a one stop solution to everyone's computing needs. That would only be the case if they decided to kill the MBA and MBP lines and offer the MB as their only laptop, which isn't the case.

You need portability with more ports? The MBA is perfect for you!

You need some portability with ports and more horsepower? The MBP is perfect for you!

Personally, I wanted a really lightweight computer which the MBA fits, but I also wanted a good screen which meant I had to go up to the rMBP. It worked great but ultimately I didn't use most of the ports 99% of the time (occasionally an external drive) and I wasn't taking advantage of all the power in it since I was only using it for web browsing, word/excel, emails and watching videos. The rMB easily handles all of that and even IF I needed to take my USB-C to USB adapter with me, it would still be lighter than the rMBP.

Oh, but wait, I must be wrong about my own opinion because this thing serves only to increase profit margins and not help me with my workflow at all. I guess everyone can just ignore everything I said above then.

 

[dyn]

As for ports! Tell that too the millions of people who use flash drives and portable mouse's while traveling.

As for making bread: tell that too the billions of people eating it everyday!

Well they could spend extra for a dock, but then that is just another thing to curry around. Everyone I know has at-least one flash drive or portable hard drive and a smart phone.

Or educate themselves so they understand that not every product is meant for them and that they need to buy something that fits their needs. If you use a lot of external peripherals then don't buy a MacBook. If you hardly use any of those then do buy one. It's not that difficult...

As for vm's: it's well known that you don't need lots of cpu power for virtualisation. Usually you can also do with less mem and diskspace as well. The amount of mem in the MacBook and the ssd are plenty for virtualisation. You really don't need gazillions of cpu power, amount of mem and so on for things to work. Many things will work fine on very small vm's with only 1 cpu, 512MB of memory and about 4GB of diskspace. We've seen that with the widely popular ARM devices such as the Raspberry Pi.

 

[masotime]

So many flames.

I don't think we can dismiss thumbdrive functionality. It's definitely convenient and important to be able to carry around portable storage, and the lack of backward compatibility and USB-C thumbdrives in general is a current issue, but I see it as less and less of an issue moving forward.

Cloud is becoming increasingly widespread and convenient. I store almost all of my personal documents in the cloud, so usually the issue for me is more about getting a wireless connection. If we can move forward in internet / mobile infrastructure such that high bandwidth internet is both cheap and widely available, I think that the lack of ports will become increasingly less and less relevant / important.

IMO this is just an example of Apple being ahead of its time. Previously it was reversible connectors (USB-C is the new lightning cable), now it is "minimal" connectors... personally I feel it's a matter of one's willingness to roll with it.

 

[dyn]

If we take a look at the MacBook Air folder in Mactracker we see various models. The very first one from 2008 had no ethernet port and it also had only 1 USB port. The model after that (late 2008) also had 1 USB port. In mid 2009 another model was introduced...and you guessed it...it had only 1 USB port. Only as of 2010 the models came with 2 USB ports. Yet the MBA was one of the most popular notebook models from Apple. Apparently the use of USB peripherals and storage isn't a requirement at all. If it were then these notebooks would have never been popular. Let's not forget that the USB port was also very hard to reach as it was tucked away on a flappy panel thingy on the side of the machine.

Next take a look at all those tablets that are able to run Windows 8/8.1/10 because 99% of them come with only 1 USB port. They sell quite well too.

So can we dismiss thumbdrive functionality or not? Real world figures say two words: HELL YEAH. Is Apple ahead of their time? Well obviously they're not since they've done it before and had success plus that USB is going to go USB-C so everybody will end up with it anyway (manufacturers simply haven't got much choice in this). This is just repeating things and if it works...why not? They need to put out good quality products that meet peoples needs/wants. It's not a pissing contest of being the first to bring something new or doing things differently.

I do agree with the fact that thumbdrives and other USB peripherals are rather nice to use. Wireless makes things heavier due to the batteries and you need to keep those charged too. The MacBook as it is now simply isn't for me so I'm not buying one. Is it a cute machine with some nice features? Yep but it still doesn't have all the features I'm looking for. So what do I do? Look at something else that does meet my requirements. Does that make the MacBook a strange machine? Nope. As we've seen on the forums here there are enough people who are over the moon with it.

 

[jeffg819]

Don't carry a mouse because the track pad is that good.

Don't carry a thumb drive because I always have a connection to my cloud storage. I'm also pretty good at losing something that small.

Don't understand why some folks are just so enamored with their own opinion that they can find nothing but vile to spew on others (half baked opinions at that).

 

[masotime]

Wireless / Bluetooth mice are pretty good, and should be irrelevant to the discussion of the Macbook's ports (or lack thereof). The exception is if you game, but you shouldn't get a Macbook if you're planning to game....

 

[Queen6]

Let`s put an end to the thumbdrive drama, it`s not like it`s an insurmountable issue...

Q-6

 

[xPad]

I just won the debate! It is a known fact once someone brings up spelling in the debate, they know they lost the debate.

No, you've just shown yourself to be a person who can't just simply admit when they are wrong, even when it's something so clearly, objectively, wrong.

Yeah, a flash drive is small, some small as a coin and I believe most people already carry a phone around (The phone usually is a smart phone). Face it! Apple messed up again, just as they did with the Mac Mini, MacPro, and Apple Watch.

Define "messed up". (hint: it doesn't mean "made a product that's not for me")

None of those products are failures in any sense of the word. Apple doesn't tolerate failures, they end them mercilessly and correct them.

You either have a stake in Apple or you are trying justify the money you wasted on the Retina MacBook

That's an example of the ad hominem fallacy. He's wrong not because of the facts, but because he's a bad person trying to cover up the fact that he's a bad person (making him a worse person)?

Nope, that's not how it works. The fact that you seem to be missing is that not everyone has the same needs. You need more standard-sized USB ports. But do you think everyone does?

Please tell me you aren't that self-centered.

The answer to the above question is, no, not everyone does. For those of us who don't, the new MacBook is fantastic. This isn't some sort of attempt to retroactively justify a bad purchase, but to explain to you that, for us, this is a great purchase.

YMMV. Just remember that that cuts both ways. MMMV from yours, and HMMV from both of ours, etc.

As for the spelling, clearly you do not realize I have auto correct on and could care less if it's perfect or not...

Yes, we already covered that, you don't seem to care about factual correctness.

 

[VesselA]

Not recent ones.

Not the 13" in any case.

The machine is 100% silent with no airflow, passive cooling only. The FAN does come on under significant load (especially when doing stuff an rMB will struggle with) and the sensor does record the speed properly when this happens. But just doing basic web/video/itunes stuff... no noise. Passive only.

As you can see, in the pic the CPU package is only using under 2 watts. Its mostly under 10 in light usage. Which is mostly possible to passive cool like the Macbook.

I actually installed iStatMenus because i couldn't hear the fan, went listening for it, couldn't feel any airflow, etc. It doesn't spin most of the time on the 2015 13".

This is what I love about the 2015 13" MBP - no fan noise on most things. I debated going for the new 12 inch macbook, but concluded it was too underpowered for what I needed it for and the lack of ports too annoying, I was hoping there would be less fan noise on the MBP as the 17 inch from 5 years ago was constantly fanning up even watching a video full screen and running any site with flash. Apple have really got there stuff together with the MBP (13 inch anyway) as it can run 1080p video in total silence, can also run 4K video on my external 4K TV without any fan noise kicking in, quite amazed. Only time it kicks in so far is when I tried high graphics gaming, Trine and batman Arkam city, but even then there is mainly just air sound and a slight whine, not as bad as the old MBP's - (from what I've seen such gaming is impossible on the 12 inch MB, as it throttles to 10 or 12 fps or less)

Fan noise I can't stand and I was even considering the 12 inch MB solely on that basis, that is has no fan noise, but then there would be serious issues with doing anything powerful, such as multi tracks on logic pro, gaming and any video editing. Another thing that made me go for the MBP is the ports, especially having an SD card slot built in, this reduces a major nuisance if you do photography, no having to carry another adaptor about.

 

[VesselA]

Absolutely, while they never went to 0 on my 2014 rMBP 13", probably because of the endless things I always have running in the background, they were always completely silent under relatively light workload, like a few safari tabs, taking notes on evernote, playing some music on spotify, or writing on dayone.

What I was referring to in my post, was how loud they get under "Pro" workload, which by their name they should be able to handle better, and how quickly they get throttled down from the "turbo boost" frequency.

the fans are about as quiet as they can be since they took some real time to redesign how they work, I notice much quieter than the old MBP from a few years ago, mostly air sound with a slight whine - however what amazes me is how infrequently they kick in, and how for nearly everything done the MBP is totally silent like the rMB - It is such a relief for me to be able to view a 1080p video or browse web with many tabs in total silence.

 

[VesselA]

the RMB is like deja vu - it reminds me what apple did with the first release of the Air. One port but amazing new thin and cool design. Yes, it is like a project for what laptops will be like in the future, but without the capability required. If your computing needs are basic then of course its fine.

I considered it as the absence of fan noise alone was a major draw to me alone, but decided lack of higher processing capacity for bigger programs and lack of ports not suitable for me.

I can imagine after a few years and iterations this design, maybe with a 13 or 14 in screen, an SD card reader and greater processing power, that would be ideal - there will eventually be a laptop singularity I think - with power and lightness

 

[VesselA]

the fans are about as quiet as they can be since they took some real time to redesign how they work, I notice much quieter than the old MBP from a few years ago, mostly air sound with a slight whine - however what amazes me is how infrequently they kick in, and how for nearly everything done the MBP is totally silent like the rMB - It is such a relief for me to be able to view a 1080p video or browse web with many tabs in total silence.

I just realised the macbook pro 13" 2015 is as silent as the RMB for all the things the RMB can do - but then when you want to do something surpassing the basic processing power, such as an intensive game which the RMB could not handle, its only then the fans kick in to enable that higher performance.
So with the MBP 13" you are basically getting the same silent operation as the RMB, but with the ability to do powerful processing with the addition of fans. Also you are getting the convenience of a built in SD card slot, USBs, the only thing you are really trading that off with is a smaller and lighter frame (and very sleek design)

 

[tbirdparis]

In my experience, all of the MBPs I have owned (or had access to through work) always seem to start out life with very idealistic and conservative fan use.. they stay silent almost all the time, discreetly kick in the fans when some heavy task is underway and then calm back down again. However a few months down the track, I have no idea why, but they always seem to get worse. The fan comes on more often, stays on for longer and often just idles at a higher speed. I remember opening up an MBP once to clean it out and remove dust from the fans but it didn't seem to make that big of a difference. Does anyone else experience this, or am I just hallucinating? Any idea why it might happen (if it indeed does)?

 

[smallcoffee]

Hm. Read through the last 2 pages or so. Wow.

Anyway, I really like my rMB. I was considering a regular macbook pro but I wanted something that was aesthetically pleasing, and it was cheaper with the 256 ssd than the regular macbook pro. Plus I like the keyboard a lot better than the regular keyboards.

If you need power, idk why you bother with a 13 inch mbp anyway. I wouldn't settle for anything less than the top-end 15 inch if that was my problem, or I'd just get a desktop if mobility wasn't an issue. If you're arguing "well it's not powerful enough", well, for the money and "spec-wise" you could just get a new windows laptop for much cheaper with better hardware. But we all know that a computer is more than the sum of the parts.

 

[VesselA]

Hm. Read through the last 2 pages or so. Wow.

Anyway, I really like my rMB. I was considering a regular macbook pro but I wanted something that was aesthetically pleasing, and it was cheaper with the 256 ssd than the regular macbook pro. Plus I like the keyboard a lot better than the regular keyboards.

If you need power, idk why you bother with a 13 inch mbp anyway. I wouldn't settle for anything less than the top-end 15 inch if that was my problem, or I'd just get a desktop if mobility wasn't an issue. If you're arguing "well it's not powerful enough", well, for the money and "spec-wise" you could just get a new windows laptop for much cheaper with better hardware. But we all know that a computer is more than the sum of the parts.

since the redesign of the MBP, making the bezels thinner and sides as thin as they can be for ports I think its very sleek looking - the old mbp with the thicker bezels was not as nice.

To me the 13" MBP seems to be the perfect all round laptop - its portable and is powerful enough to do anything. I had photoshop, dreamweaver, many tabs open, powering a 4K external TV, running logic pro with multi tracks and the thing was running without any fan noise at all. Its so capable yet small and scaling to 1680 x 1050 makes it ideal for a large resolution of work space on the go. (personally 13" is on the limit to me for size, another thing that made me choose it over 12" MB)

(14" might be better, but I think 15.4 becomes cumbersome to carry easily)


The RMB is a wonderful design, but what can you do on it you can't do on an iPad I wonder (iPad being even more portable) RMB seems to me to be a bit pointless in this regard

 

[Zorba]

Some people still prefer (on some occasions) to work on a normal notebook with trackpad and full size keyboard. Doesn't matter how well you can work on your iPad, working on a notebook is still a lot faster.