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2013 Macbook Pro 15" Upgrades and Thoughts

thinkinblue613

thinkinblue613

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 13, 2010
283
4
Planet Earth
Hey guys, been a minute since I've posted here at all.

I have been using a 2013 MacBook Pro 15" Retina, and its been absolutely awesome. I love this thing. Taken me through so much and done a lot of work with it since owning it.

I am certainly replacing the battery ($90 kit from iFixit) and the airport card ($30 from Amazon). About $120 in upgrades. Super tempted to switch the SSD into a 1TB, but its $520 and seems like an unnecessary use of my money. Only reason is I run bootcamp, and limited in storage for both partitions.

Eventually, I will be getting a new machine. Thought I could extend the life of this one or relegate it into a secondary machine. Deciding between a PC build, iMac or MBP to use for the next 5 years. My profession requires a dedicated graphics card too.

Was wondering if anyone else did similar things to their MBPs or is using anything older than 2013 right now. What were your experiences / thoughts so far? Or if you upgraded from this generation, how much better is the newer generation MBP's?
 
Keep your 2013.

Unless you need a significant improvement in graphics performance, the 2016/2017 models don't offer enough for their cost, and come with a number of (unacceptable in my view) risks and negatives.
 
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Naimfan said:
Keep your 2013.

Unless you need a significant improvement in graphics performance, the 2016/2017 models don't offer enough for their cost, and come with a number of (unacceptable in my view) risks and negatives.
Click to expand...

^agree with you there

I'm not planning to upgrade my 2014 15" rMBP anytime soon. The new models don't have anything compelling for what I need to use it for.
 
thinkinblue613 said:
Hey guys, been a minute since I've posted here at all.

I have been using a 2013 MacBook Pro 15" Retina, and its been absolutely awesome. I love this thing. Taken me through so much and done a lot of work with it since owning it.

I am certainly replacing the battery ($90 kit from iFixit) and the airport card ($30 from Amazon). About $120 in upgrades. Super tempted to switch the SSD into a 1TB, but its $520 and seems like an unnecessary use of my money. Only reason is I run bootcamp, and limited in storage for both partitions.

Eventually, I will be getting a new machine. Thought I could extend the life of this one or relegate it into a secondary machine. Deciding between a PC build, iMac or MBP to use for the next 5 years. My profession requires a dedicated graphics card too.

Was wondering if anyone else did similar things to their MBPs or is using anything older than 2013 right now. What were your experiences / thoughts so far? Or if you upgraded from this generation, how much better is the newer generation MBP's?
Click to expand...

Keep your 2013 as long as you can. I say that not because the 2017 isn't a worthy purchase, but because it's a smart financial decision. If you're looking for a dedicated GPU - well, there are a lot of factors to discuss. You're going to get the best bang for your buck with a custom-built PC and an off-the-shelf GPU. Hopefully Apple was serious about a modular Mac Pro.
 
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Upgrading the battery and airport card make sense.

Spending a lot of money on a larger hard drive... doesn't.
 
Thanks for the advice, everybody. Will certainly keep things in mind, I agree its sensible to limit the spending anytime possible.

I put orders in for a battery and airport card -- do the install sometime this week. Stoked for the new parts!
 
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