2015 13" or ?

[lympero]

Here is my story. I have an 2011 15" mbp which I'm using for web development (part time job) mainly with Ruby on Rails and sometimes using visual studio with parallels. For fun I am working on some iOS projects and the usual stuff with simple photoshop editing - creating family movies with final cut etc.
My wife needs a computer so long story short, my wife will take my mbp (with a new shiny 500 ssd) and I would get a new mbp.

My ideal choice right now is to get the 2015 13" rMBP with 8gb/256 ssd as I have an external monitor and I can get it for 1600€ with 3 years finance plan (0% interest).

My main concern is if it can handle parallels well without lag and choppiness.

My next choice would be to get the new 13" mbp but it will cost me 2249€ (same configuration 8gb/256 with TB and same finance plan) or the 2015 rMBP 15" from eBay for 1900€.

What do you think?

 

[lympero]

Anyone who is using 2015 13" with parallels please? Is it a fluid experience?

 

[Tensakun]

When I use Parallels on my 2011 MBA it is really choppy on 4 GB RAM. If you use Parallels a lot, or have many apps opened during your web development work, I really suggest going a bit deeper into your savings and getting 16 GB RAM.

 

[cerberusss]

Have you guys looked at Veertu? I've been using it for Linux virtual machines, in which case it's free. I believe it's around 40 euros for Windows virtualization. If you don't use any special Parallels features, then Veertu is much more light-weight because it leverages Apple's built-in Hypervisor framework.

 

[8692574]

My 2015 MacBook Air works like a charm on Parallels, but it also depends on what you'd be doing in windows.... you can always bootcamp if it does not work as you expect it to.

I suggest having at least 8 gb memory to make it "lag free".

 

[lympero]

Have you guys looked at Veertu? I've been using it for Linux virtual machines, in which case it's free. I believe it's around 40 euros for Windows virtualization. If you don't use any special Parallels features, then Veertu is much more light-weight because it leverages Apple's built-in Hypervisor framework.

Thanks for this!

 

[raymond7]

Anyone who is using 2015 13" with parallels please? Is it a fluid experience?

Ive got the macbook pro 13 inch 2015 , 8gb ram with 2.9ghz i5. And parallels is working buttery smooth. Even running two vm's at the same time with parallels stays smooth.

 

[lympero]

Ive got the macbook pro 13 inch 2015 , 8gb ram with 2.9ghz i5. And parallels is working buttery smooth. Even running two vm's at the same time with parallels stays smooth.

Thanks. I suppose the 2.7 should give me similar performance.

 

[raymond7]

Thanks. I suppose the 2.7 should give me similar performance.

I think the performance will be very much similar indeed

 

[el-John-o]

I've been using Parallels just fine on a 2012 13" MBP with 16GB of RAM.

If you can afford it, the performance is going to be significantly better on a 15" MacBook Pro. Really, there's no question. Especially as light and thin as these are, even the 15" model is super portable.

 

[imorton]

I also use Parallels VM's with a mid 2012 MB Pro 13" with 16GB Ram and it works real smooth..

 

[el-John-o]

One thing to think about;

With this insanely fast SSD in these new Mac's, that's almost definitely to be faster than anything you've ever used; dual-booting might be an even better option. Unless you use Windows apps a lot. I honestly don't frequently, and I usually don't need to also run Mac apps at the same time. I'm considering not upgrading Parallels (I'm still on an older version) and just dual booting exclusively, because swapping OS's is not going to take that much time...

 

[lympero]

One thing to think about;

With this insanely fast SSD in these new Mac's, that's almost definitely to be faster than anything you've ever used; dual-booting might be an even better option. Unless you use Windows apps a lot. I honestly don't frequently, and I usually don't need to also run Mac apps at the same time. I'm considering not upgrading Parallels (I'm still on an older version) and just dual booting exclusively, because swapping OS's is not going to take that much time...

Yeah I'm getting the 256 version so I can't dedicate lots of space to boot camp. Another thought is to use an external thunderbolt ssd.

 

[el-John-o]

Yeah I'm getting the 256 version so I can't dedicate lots of space to boot camp. Another thought is to use an external thunderbolt ssd.

Windows is the same size whether you run it in Parallels or boot camp. It's going to take up just as much space.

 

[lympero]

With parallels the size is dynamically allocated whereas with parallels you have to specify the size when creating the partition (haven't made a boot camp
Partition so I'm not so sure about that).

Another topic which makes my decision even easier about choosing the 2015 model. I just noticed that the expensive shiny new processor used in the new mbp is not that new. It was release just after 6 months after the one used in 2015 mbp, in September 2015! It's already 14 months old and the benchmarks don't show much of an improvement tbh.
http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_6267u-584-vs-intel_core_i5_5257u-472

 

[el-John-o]

With parallels the size is dynamically allocated whereas with parallels you have to specify the size when creating the partition (haven't made a boot camp
Partition so I'm not so sure about that).

Another topic which makes my decision even easier about choosing the 2015 model. I just noticed that the expensive shiny new processor used in the new mbp is not that new. It was release just after 6 months after the one used in 2015 mbp, in September 2015! It's already 14 months old and the benchmarks don't show much of an improvement tbh.
http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_6267u-584-vs-intel_core_i5_5257u-472

The next generation from Intel is called "Kaby Lake". The 2016 MacBook Pro's have "Skylake". CPU's aren't necessarily released every year.

Some Kaby Lake chips are out, some aren't. But it's important to note; they aren't any faster. They do have a bit of a better GPU though; which is a bigger deal on the 13" for sure. If a Kaby Lake MBP comes (and Apple doesn't just skip ahead to Cannonlake in 2018 which is going to bring much bigger improvements; including lifting the ceiling of 16GB of low energy RAM), it'll potentially have a slightly improved battery life, since the Kaby Lake chips use less energy.

Kaby Lake is an efficiency bump, not a performance bump.