2016 Macbook Pro, Order/Shipping Thread

[PhoenixFireless]

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

 

[dk808]

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

I was going to do that, but then i realized i barely play any games or do photo/video editing

Decided to just save $200 and get the 450

 

[sjsharks13]

Just going through this thread and seems like most people ordered the 15 inch? I ordered the 13 inch with touch bar (currently using a 12 inch macbook). Wondering if I should cancel my 13inch and order the 15. To go to the 15 would be a $500 price increase for me

 

[killawat]

Just going through this thread and seems like most people ordered the 15 inch?

Most people want the larger screen or quad core, if you need neither of those then whats the point.

 

[sjsharks13]

Most people want the larger screen or quad core, if you need neither of those then whats the point.

the larger screen appeals to me but also not a necessity

 

[mattcube64]

Hey all, just had a sudden thought.

I'll be in Portland, OR in early December for a trip with my wife, anyway. There's no tax there, which would save me about ~$200 or so on a 15" rMBP BTO. I'll be there Dec 2-4th.

The online orders on Apple.com says the laptop would be available for pickup December 6th.

I know it's a long shot - ANY idea on whether or not in-store pickup items may arrive early?

 

[killawat]

Hey all, just had a sudden thought.

I'll be in Portland, OR in early December for a trip with my wife, anyway. There's no tax there, which would save me about ~$200 or so on a 15" rMBP BTO. I'll be there Dec 2-4th.

That's exactly what i'm doing. I wasn't going to get AppleCare until later but if I can fold it in 'for free'. Plus I have legit business in Oregon as well. Have you tried the craft brews

Where are you seeing the in store pickup option?

 

[AdonisSMU]

Switched to 15" space gray which comes 11/29 - 12/6 after seeing one in person.

 

[Brookzy]

Just going through this thread and seems like most people ordered the 15 inch? I ordered the 13 inch with touch bar (currently using a 12 inch macbook). Wondering if I should cancel my 13inch and order the 15. To go to the 15 would be a $500 price increase for me

There's lots of people ordering 13"! Including me. The initial orders will probably be skewed towards the 15" in the same way that the iPhones are skewed towards the Plus at launch - the most eager early adopters are more likely to be 15"/Plus users.

Edit to add: the fact the 13" are shipping a week later than the 15" probably shows that on the whole, outside of MacRumours, more 13" are being ordered.

 

[vengapat]

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

Im going to return my 2.7 for this version.

 

[MacPioneer]

My first couple of MacbookPros were 17-inchers. I needed maximum screen real estate for Mac and Windows development. Finally had to order a 15" MBP when my 17" died a horrible death. Was gratified to see that I could run it at 1920X1200, same as the native resolution of the 17". Honestly, I barely notice that the screen is smaller - it displays the same amount of information. (My eyesight is good - I don't need glasses to read. Damn lucky, considering I'm 70

I'm pretty sure I'd notice a difference with the 13", where 1920X1200 is not an option.

 

[SeanG1027]

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

This is exactly what I did.

 

[Kevsta26]

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

You don't just lose 0.1 GHz. The 2.7 has 8MB of L3 Cache compared to the 2.6's 6MB of L3 Cache. That will definitely help with multitasking and high intensity applications.

Also maybe it's just me, but I feel more confident in choosing the more expensive with just the graphics upgrade than choosing the cheaper with storage and graphics upgrade. It's possible there are some other differences between the two that Apple isn't specifying, like how the 13 inch only has 2/4 USB-C ports capable of full speed and the iPhone 7 32 GB has much slower storage speeds than the other capacities. There's always those little things that Apple doesn't publically let people know.

 

[el-John-o]

Just going through this thread and seems like most people ordered the 15 inch? I ordered the 13 inch with touch bar (currently using a 12 inch macbook). Wondering if I should cancel my 13inch and order the 15. To go to the 15 would be a $500 price increase for me

I actually prefer the 13" form factor. Since Apple has whittled down the bezel, the 15" is actually not much bigger than the 13" models of a few years ago though.

The biggest thing for me is a dedicated GPU. Compared to the 13", that's going to make the biggest real world difference you can "feel". For all sorts of resource intensive apps. Yes games; but if you're buying a MacBook Pro to play games you could really spend your money better elsewhere (not that having the ability to play the occasion game hurts, of course!). A dedicated GPU makes a big difference in performance from Photoshop to Final Cut Pro and everything in between.

Plus, the quicker quad-core i7.

The 15" is just a much more powerful laptop.

I'm curious why no one is going:
Base 15 inch MBP 2.6
With 512 SSD & Radeon Pro 460

It's cheaper then the 2.7 config and you get a better videocard at the cost of 0.1 Ghz

Others have pointed out that the increase in cache matters too. Clock speed doesn't matter as much these days. 10 years ago you could've gotten a 3.2GHz CPU in a laptop; albeit a single-core 32-bit one. Today's chips are significantly faster; even lightweight sub 2GHz mobile CPU's.

So there's a lot to it and comparing clock speeds isn't really a great way to compare. Which is why I do wish Apple would disclose on the BTO part of the website exactly which model of CPU you're choosing between, so you can search for benchmarks and see what the real world performance difference it.

As it is, the faster CPU is not a huge difference; but it is a difference and it's not extraordinarily expensive.

 

[Kevsta26]

15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Gray

• 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
• 16GB 2133MHz memory
• 512GB PCIe-based SSD
• Radeon Pro 460 with 4GB memory

The upgrade cost of the better dGPU was an easy choice. Really, really wanted to upgrade to the 1TB SSD, but I already feel sick at the ridiculous amount of money I just spent.

I'm on the exact same boat as you! 512GB will have to do. I'm not spending $400 more on an already $3058.45 laptop

 

[mattcube64]

You don't just lose 0.1 GHz. The 2.7 has 8MB of L3 Cache compared to the 2.6's 6MB of L3 Cache. That will definitely help with multitasking and high intensity applications.

Also maybe it's just me, but I feel more confident in choosing the more expensive with just the graphics upgrade than choosing the cheaper with storage and graphics upgrade. It's possible there are some other differences between the two that Apple isn't specifying, like how the 13 inch only has 2/4 USB-C ports capable of full speed and the iPhone 7 32 GB has much slower storage speeds than the other capacities. There's always those little things that Apple doesn't publically let people know.

Genuinely curious... would you mind indulging where you think the extra 2mb of L2 cache will make a noticeable difference?

I would imagine in a laptop, lower-powered CPU with a relatively mild clockspeed, the l2 wouldn't make a massive difference. I've heard it's most noticeable on very high-clocked desktop class chips with possibly even more cores and getting near 4ghz. Basicaally, that the chip speeds will bottleneck you before the cache does.

 

[el-John-o]

I'm on the exact same boat as you! 512GB will have to do. I'm not spending $400 more on an already $3058.45 laptop

With Thunderbolt 3, an external drive is essentially just as fast as an internal one. You can buy a 3.5" form factor SSD and slap it in a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure; or Thunderbolt 3 when those become available (they might already). Or, if raw storage is your game, a RAID array. Either way; you can either get the same 512GB bump in storage (albeit in an external form factor) for less money; or get even MORE storage for the same money. Of course, internal storage is great; but most folks who need lots of storage need it for something specific (photos, videos, etc.), often times which can be offloaded onto an external drive.

 

[killawat]

With Thunderbolt 3, an external drive is essentially just as fast as an internal one. You can buy a 3.5" form factor SSD and slap it in a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure; or Thunderbolt 3 when those become available (they might already).

You don't even have to go all the way up to $pendy TB3 controllers , two SSDs in a low cost USB-C Gen 2 enclosure produce:

The 2015 MBP owners think USB-C/TB3 is just a fad or not really that big of a deal but, I can get these kinds of speeds for $99 bucks (excluding storage) over bus power. Wheras that would cost a ridiculous amount for TB2 implementations.

 

[deadworlds]

Genuinely curious... would you mind indulging where you think the extra 2mb of L2 cache will make a noticeable difference?

I would imagine in a laptop, lower-powered CPU with a relatively mild clockspeed, the l2 wouldn't make a massive difference. I've heard it's most noticeable on very high-clocked desktop class chips with possibly even more cores and getting near 4ghz. Basicaally, that the chip speeds will bottleneck you before the cache does.

Cache is a special kind of ram that is built into a CPU. It's purpose is to hold data that the CPU may ask for in the next clock cycle. This special ram also outperform the system RAM, both in read and write speeds. When the CPU needs to execute an instruction it first scans the cache to see if the next instruction is in there, if it's not, then it has to send a request to the system memory which then loads some blocks of RAM into the cache. This adds latency to the whole process of executing code.

So in summary, a larger cache means that there is a better chance that the next instruction will be in cache rather than having to access system memory.

 

[dk808]

Hope mine delivers before Thanksgiving

 

[OT2000]

Switched from 13" Silver to 13" Space Grey.

Looks beautiful and I figure the Touch Bar will pop more with the darker color. Won't be here until December tho.

 

[spinstorm]

I ordered 13 inch model but thats because I want a small powerful laptop in my bag (with my 12.9 iPad Pro) however if I find that the 15 inch isn't much bigger I may change it. I need to see it in stores. But thats the beauty of the Apple return policy!

 

[moxxham]

Stupid question, but are they on display at Apple retail stores now to check out?

 

[deadworlds]

Stupid question, but are they on display at Apple retail stores now to check out?

I read that someone else on here called their local Apple Store and was told they wouldn't have any on display for 2-3 weeks.

 

[amirite]

My 2014 MBP is 2.6GHZ i5 dual core. So is the new 13 inch (sans bar) worse? It's "2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5".