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The keyboard takes some getting used to but its not nearly the catastrophe many on this forum make it out to be. I prefer the feel of the older one but this is the future. It's still tactile enough.. Everyone is always skeptical of change. The speakers are a huge upgrade. The track pad is lovely. And don't forget about the spec differences. If you're buying the 15in money is little to no object. Get the newer one unless you love all the older ports and mag safe. Two years from now everyone will be using usb-c, the advantages are two big to ignore.
 
Apple insists this is a "bad experience with poor ergonomics" and that "nobody wants it"...

Yet I constantly catch my own family members trying to instinctively touch and interact with both iMac and laptop screens and have even caught myself almost doing it a couple times.

For *all* interactions it's not the best, no question...but sometimes it's awfully nice to touch something and interact with it - and in some contexts is the most intuitive way to do something.

I think they just don't want to put the effort into macOS itself to make it more touch capable/friendly personally.

IOS is the sacred cow at Apple. So if they had touch on MacBooks and iMacs, Apple perceives they'd hurt their sacred cow IOS platform.

The thing is now, the originator of this thread, is going to buy an iMac 21.5", and a IOS iPad. Jeez, that's a long way from a 15" Macbook pro.

In the Windows world, he could buy what I bought my wife - an Elitebook 13" x360 G2 which rotates over to a 13" pad. And at home, you could connect a 24" monitor to it. It has not only camera card slots, USB 3 slots, a sim 4g card slot, a power charger slot as well as charging via USB, but its also got Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1. Heck, it could run an external GPU and you could play hi res games on it, all on the one machine. And its military spec unit a great body, with a coffee proof keyboard, that works much the same as the 15" Macbook pro 2015 keyboards do - in other words, very nice. The new keyboards of the 15" MacBooks are also noisy - which is not user friendly IMO. Instead, Apple has got our friend to buy two machines instead of one! Those marketing guys know their stuff I guess.

I still have an iMac with a 24" display - and its just the right size. IMO 28-30" is too big, and 21.5 too small. I replaced the iMac 24' with a Powermac 5.1, and run a 24" Eizo monitor, at the time, their top quality model. It produces colour that prints as its screen looks. But Apple got the 24" size just right, but the marketing boys and the cost accountants got involved and killed the 24".
 
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Hi all – was looking for some buying advice.


My 2011 imac is on life support and I’ve decided to go ahead and buy a Macbook Pro during Black Friday. I’m not a computer programmer or graphics designer but I do like spending time on my computer and, after 4 years of saying “I want one”, I’m finally making the plunge and treating myself to a Macbook Pro.


I definitely want a 15” pro strictly for the screen size. I’d also prefer to upgrade to a 512 SSD. Everything else can be standard offering.


I could opt for a 2015 Macbook Pro (approx. $2k), a 2016 Macbook Pro ($2099) from B&H Photo or the 2017 Macbook Pro ($2500).


Any thoughts on what the best route is? I’ve heard about issues with the keyboard. Ideally I’d like to future proof as much as possible but the differences, particularly between the 2016 and 2017 are minimal at best.

For the price difference the 2016 is the best deal. I have one since December and it’s been perfect, and overall I love it.
 
plenty of used 2015 mbp with applecare til 2019 going under 1200 dunno why ppl keep ignoring that.

Yeh but not in Australia.

I looked at a 2015 May unit and it sold for $Au2,441 on eBay, plus a courier charge, and its used. It did have 8 months Apple left on it though, and the seller had top ratings. He seemed to be either a Geek or a tech junkie ... there was a record too for an earlier model macbook pro, so he seemed a genuine user. That amount of money is $US is over $1,900. So they aren't so cheap in Australia, used. I reckon they are holding their value better than the 2016 new form factor. Which is hardly surprising, and the 2016 models don't have the current streaming friendly CPU, and some say Apple have improved the keyboard a bit.
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For the price difference the 2016 is the best deal. I have one since December and it’s been perfect, and overall I love it.
In Australia, it is the best "deal". They cost pretty much the same from Apple Refurb, as 2015 models. Probably because the 2015 models cost more to build. But I worry about the too large track pad clashing with my lower wrist, I will miss magsafe, I worry about the keyboard, and the ports will cost me the cost of a dock. I don't know how much those cost in Australia. I guess I should look. I also don't value the brighter screen, because the benefit to me in a high res screen is for photography, and if one edits photographs, a bright screen is the opposite of what photo editing requires. I reckon a bright screen is good for looking at the screen in bright light. But then, a matt screen would do that better, as they stop bright light reflecting. So ... I reckon the bright screen is driven by the marketing gurus. They've told the tech guys that bright screens sell. Its not really about focusing on the user long term. Its about selling IMO.

Same too with the light weight. That sells well, but later on, when you are fiddling for adapters and making typing errors, its won't be so much fun. And if the keyboard fails, well then, that will be a real disaster for people like me who expect an Apple product to be robust. And when I type in front of the TV with my wife sitting nearby, and she has to put up with a keyboard rattling away, because the new keyboard is noisy ... you cannot hear the keyboard noise in an Apple shop, they are noisy places IMO.

I remember I took home from University (I needed a computer in 1986 for my MBA) - I took home a Mac Plus, a record breaking machine as it had two disk drives (they called their rigid plastic cases floppy drives) and those had a quarter of a megabyte capacity, which was awesome. It mean't you could run an application (nowadays that's been abbreviated by the marketing guys to App) on one floppy disk, and save the work onto the other slot with your floppy disk. I took that machine home for a weekend. I did not know computers, but I realised the graphics and the mouse was super intuitive, it was just fabulous. The clunky keyboard ( I had done a touch typing course for electronic typewriters but my errors mean't I couldn't use a typewriter) but the clunky keyboard rang with the fell and sound of quality and enthusiasm for quality. I couldn't believe that thing. The screen was superb, with all its grey tones. Just amazing. But it wasn't cheap, and the killer was the hard drive, which Apple wanted two times the cost of the computer, for a 5 megabyte SCSI drive. I bought an Apple XT clone with pirated software and a 20MB hard disk drive, and a 13" screen that was black with horrible green text, for about 2/3rds the price of the Mac. I still wonder how much better that Mac would have been for me. But at the time, the Mac didn't have Lotus 123, which I pirated.

Reminds me why am I worrying about the cost of today's machines. They're all cheap in reality, but their longevity isn't, so really, they are not so cheap after all. I just want some quality, and the keyboard scares me.
 
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IOS is the sacred cow at Apple. So if they had touch on MacBooks and iMacs, Apple perceives they'd hurt their sacred cow IOS platform.

The thing is now, the originator of this thread, is going to buy an iMac 21.5", and a IOS iPad. Jeez, that's a long way from a 15" Macbook pro.

In the Windows world, he could buy what I bought my wife - an Elitebook 13" x360 G2 which rotates over to a 13" pad. And at home, you could connect a 24" monitor to it. It has not only camera card slots, USB 3 slots, a sim 4g card slot, a power charger slot as well as charging via USB, but its also got Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1. Heck, it could run an external GPU and you could play hi res games on it, all on the one machine. And its military spec unit a great body, with a coffee proof keyboard, that works much the same as the 15" Macbook pro 2015 keyboards do - in other words, very nice. The new keyboards of the 15" MacBooks are also noisy - which is not user friendly IMO. Instead, Apple has got our friend to buy two machines instead of one! Those marketing guys know their stuff I guess.

I still have an iMac with a 24" display - and its just the right size. IMO 28-30" is too big, and 21.5 too small. I replaced the iMac 24' with a Powermac 5.1, and run a 24" Eizo monitor, at the time, their top quality model. It produces colour that prints as its screen looks. But Apple got the 24" size just right, but the marketing boys and the cost accountants got involved and killed the 24".

Hah. In apple's defense I LOVE my ipad and use it religiously but it's showing it's age big time. For the cost of a 15" pro I could get the ipad and the imac so i think that's the best route for me personally....especially since the macbook is basically going to stay in the house, on one desk, for 95% of it's time.

A lot of the issues that I've been reading did scare me off a bit too
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Yeh but not in Australia.


Reminds me why am I worrying about the cost of today's machines. They're all cheap in reality, but their longevity isn't, so really, they are not so cheap after all. I just want some quality, and the keyboard scares me.

This is why I go with Apple. I have a spring 2011 imac at home that is finally starting to die out (looks like a graphics card issue).

I used it heavily, always left it on (this was one of my mistakes) and it never gave me any system problems whatsoever until now. It's actually the machine that forever sold me on apple and their universe of products.
 
A few personal reactions based on my similar, recent, ongoing quest.

I truly hated the 2016 keyboard. For me, it was actually unusable. So much so that nothing could fix that for me - so 2016 is just out of the picture.

The 2017 keyboard I'm still on the fence about. Notably, several I have tried in Apple Stores have had stuck or defective keys. I realize these are in a public space and sometimes get less-than-gentle use, but welcome to mobile computing. And I have concerns about keyboards on display models that the sales staff can't swap out fast enough to ensure that I don't run into broken keyboards - so the keyboard is still at least half a strike against the 2017.

The next concern is charging and ports. I bought one of the original MacBooks and had a lot of spirited discussions with nay-sayers about the charging/port issues. I bought it thinking these issues wouldn't be big issues for me, but I found I was wrong, and if anything I believe that more today than I did back then. My laptop travels a lot, and gets set up in odd places frequently. Since you're buying a 15" and I'm more interested in 13", you won't have the potential two-port limitation issue of the 13" nonTB, but I'd still really miss the MagSafe charger.

Also not an issue for 15" buyers is the TB/non-TB choice. I lean toward non-TB but you won't have that issue.

As a plus, I have to say that whenever I look at the 2017 15" rMBPs, I am just amazed at how thin and light these machines have become. It's a-l-most enough to tempt me from 13" to 15". They're just amazing.

Good luck with your choice.
 
do NOT buy the 2016 15" MBP
i own one. I do not work for Apple Fruit Inc. I have the following issues:
-my 2016 15" mbp has the extended GPU and CPU. The unit stays at home.
-keyboard is very bad. if you do mostly development it could work ok but if you are typing a text document you will make critical mistakes. Your typing will be ever so slow and painful.
-the track pad is bad. It is so large you will accidentally trigger odd events as you type. it seems to have bouts of un predictable sensitivity
-the 15" mpb has (4) usb-c connectors, all of them have become loose and semi reliable. I use only apple brand cables.
-the Apple Fruit company has been plagued with 15 yeas of GPU issues. There are still GPU issues on the 2016 MBP and this is unexceptionable.
-get the 1T SSD drive option. the drive is permanently built in to the unit and can not be up graded.
-battery run time varies and is un predictable. At best it is too short
-the charger does NOT come with a cable, both charger & cable are expensive.
-the mbp is VERY expensive, there is no value here and the unit will be trash before you know it
-people will make fun of you. At least tape over the Apple logo.

i am sorry for the scathing review


do NOT buy the 15" MBP
 
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Yeh but not in Australia.

I looked at a 2015 May unit and it sold for $Au2,441 on eBay, plus a courier charge, and its used. It did have 8 months Apple left on it though, and the seller had top ratings. He seemed to be either a Geek or a tech junkie ... there was a record too for an earlier model macbook pro, so he seemed a genuine user. That amount of money is $US is over $1,900. So they aren't so cheap in Australia, used. I reckon they are holding their value better than the 2016 new form factor. Which is hardly surprising, and the 2016 models don't have the current streaming friendly CPU, and some say Apple have improved the keyboard a bit.
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In Australia, it is the best "deal". They cost pretty much the same from Apple Refurb, as 2015 models. Probably because the 2015 models cost more to build. But I worry about the too large track pad clashing with my lower wrist, I will miss magsafe, I worry about the keyboard, and the ports will cost me the cost of a dock. I don't know how much those cost in Australia. I guess I should look. I also don't value the brighter screen, because the benefit to me in a high res screen is for photography, and if one edits photographs, a bright screen is the opposite of what photo editing requires. I reckon a bright screen is good for looking at the screen in bright light. But then, a matt screen would do that better, as they stop bright light reflecting. So ... I reckon the bright screen is driven by the marketing gurus. They've told the tech guys that bright screens sell. Its not really about focusing on the user long term. Its about selling IMO.

Same too with the light weight. That sells well, but later on, when you are fiddling for adapters and making typing errors, its won't be so much fun. And if the keyboard fails, well then, that will be a real disaster for people like me who expect an Apple product to be robust. And when I type in front of the TV with my wife sitting nearby, and she has to put up with a keyboard rattling away, because the new keyboard is noisy ... you cannot hear the keyboard noise in an Apple shop, they are noisy places IMO.

I remember I took home from University (I needed a computer in 1986 for my MBA) - I took home a Mac Plus, a record breaking machine as it had two disk drives (they called their rigid plastic cases floppy drives) and those had a quarter of a megabyte capacity, which was awesome. It mean't you could run an application (nowadays that's been abbreviated by the marketing guys to App) on one floppy disk, and save the work onto the other slot with your floppy disk. I took that machine home for a weekend. I did not know computers, but I realised the graphics and the mouse was super intuitive, it was just fabulous. The clunky keyboard ( I had done a touch typing course for electronic typewriters but my errors mean't I couldn't use a typewriter) but the clunky keyboard rang with the fell and sound of quality and enthusiasm for quality. I couldn't believe that thing. The screen was superb, with all its grey tones. Just amazing. But it wasn't cheap, and the killer was the hard drive, which Apple wanted two times the cost of the computer, for a 5 megabyte SCSI drive. I bought an Apple XT clone with pirated software and a 20MB hard disk drive, and a 13" screen that was black with horrible green text, for about 2/3rds the price of the Mac. I still wonder how much better that Mac would have been for me. But at the time, the Mac didn't have Lotus 123, which I pirated.

Reminds me why am I worrying about the cost of today's machines. They're all cheap in reality, but their longevity isn't, so really, they are not so cheap after all. I just want some quality, and the keyboard scares me.

Don't be scared of the keyboard.
 
I know this is an old thread, but I had to come on and post my concerns.

I am on the fence about a MacBook Pro 15 vs the new models. Let me express-

I already own a 2017 iMac 27 with the 580 Radeon Pro Graphics. I edit for a living and this machine has been amazing. However, I don't use the Thunderbolt 3 ports at all.

My old MacBook Pro 2010 just died. I travel a lot and need a reliable, durable machine that has a keyboard that won't need replacements (as I've researched is an issue with the 2016/17 models). I also love my Mag Safe, and the convenience of the SD Card Slot (which was totally horrible to get rid of) as well as my external drive not needing adapters.

I am aware this would be a purchase for a 4 year machine. But YouTube reviewers alone have all said they have no regrets buying the 2015, saying "it's still the best reviewed MacBook Pro to date."

I don't care about Touchbars. Doesn't matter. Don't care about weight. I'm used to the 2010. I don't care about Thunderbolts.

I DO plan on editing 4K eventually; can the 2015 do that? But all my editing is basically on my iMac. The MacBook Pro is for travel. I may need to emergency edit now and then.

Money is NOT a concern. This is about reliance and durability.

There's also the notion of waiting for the 2018 update (supposedly June), but again- I predict if anything, there won't be much change in terms of what I'm looking for.

Advice?
 
I don't care about Touchbars. Doesn't matter. Don't care about weight. I'm used to the 2010. I don't care about Thunderbolts.

I have a 15 inch, 2016 TouchBar I got used a few months back. FWIW, I didn't care about the Touch Bar (actually wished it didn't have one before I bought), and didn't care about the weight......until I got one. The weight difference alone, the smaller profile all sold and kept me. I still haven't had a situation where my laptop has gotten hot enough to where I couldn't use on my lap which was a problem on my 2012. I haven't had any keyboard or screen issues to date as other have. I would never go back to the older model ones tbh. I'm loving this thing every time I use it.
 
I have a 15 inch, 2016 TouchBar I got used a few months back. FWIW, I didn't care about the Touch Bar (actually wished it didn't have one before I bought), and didn't care about the weight......until I got one. The weight difference alone, the smaller profile all sold and kept me. I still haven't had a situation where my laptop has gotten hot enough to where I couldn't use on my lap which was a problem on my 2012. I haven't had any keyboard or screen issues to date as other have. I would never go back to the older model ones tbh. I'm loving this thing every time I use it.

Yup. I don’t care about the touchbar. I have a 2016 and love it. No keyboard issues or anything.
 
Ok thanks so far for the feedback! The fact that you both don't have keyboard issues with the newer models is nice to know. I guess my only issue now will be the lack of ports. But there are adapters. But still. It just seems like the Thunderbolt 3 is not necessary yet. But perhaps I'm just in need of being more educated about it.
 
Ok thanks so far for the feedback! The fact that you both don't have keyboard issues with the newer models is nice to know. I guess my only issue now will be the lack of ports. But there are adapters. But still. It just seems like the Thunderbolt 3 is not necessary yet. But perhaps I'm just in need of being more educated about it.

2018 update could be huge appleinsider.com. If money is not an issue and you wanna wait. You can get a refurb one from apple just to cover these couple months. And maxed out a 2018 later this year. Always sell the reburb one.
 
Absolutely get the 2017 if you want something future proof. People have been crowing about the keyboard and USB-C but neither are really legitimate complaints especially when looking at two year old hardware versus up-to-date hardware.

The ole "I tried the keyboard in the Apple Store" argument is, frankly, BS. It's not enough time to get used to a keyboard or to properly judge how good a keyboard is. I use a 2015 for work and own a 2016. They keyboard on the 2016 is far superior. Have there been hardware problems with the keyboard? Sure. But that is what it is. The only thing that really matters is usability - and the new keyboard and the new machine are just better.

Do not, under any circumstances except financial (and even then I suggest not) buy the 2015 MacBook Pro.

Thank you! I totally agree re trying the kb in the store BS.
However, just curious about your warning about the 2015. Can you elaborate? I've got some decisions to make soon :)

Also, I've heard rumblings that the screen on the newer machines aren't as robust as the older. Something about missing a layer of protection?
 
Thank you! I totally agree re trying the kb in the store BS.
However, just curious about your warning about the 2015. Can you elaborate? I've got some decisions to make soon :)

Also, I've heard rumblings that the screen on the newer machines aren't as robust as the older. Something about missing a layer of protection?

It’s a 3 year old machine for and doesn’t have modern ports.
 
Thank you! I totally agree re trying the kb in the store BS.
However, just curious about your warning about the 2015. Can you elaborate? I've got some decisions to make soon :)

Also, I've heard rumblings that the screen on the newer machines aren't as robust as the older. Something about missing a layer of protection?
wait for the 2018 model, 4 core coming to 13inch. def worth waiting. even i will overlook the shotty butterfly keyboard for 4 core in 13inch.
 
wait for the 2018 model, 4 core coming to 13inch. def worth waiting. even i will overlook the shotty butterfly keyboard for 4 core in 13inch.
How’s that quad core going to affect the battery life? Is there any news on the power efficiency of the new processors?
 
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