Thanks for some confirmations.
Do you "need" a laptop? Nothing in this world is flawless. What works for you may not work for someone else.
I would hold off buying a new one at this point. The 13" are more than likely to be updated with new Skylake chips while the 15" is still waiting for the Polaris GPUs from AMD.
Of course Apple could throw us a curveball and not do anything to the laptops but add "colours/colors".
Even my base 15" without dGPU freezes once in a while. I don't even want to consider the dGPU version due to its lacklustre performance (Gaming).
A. I have 2x Mac Pro 2006s, that have NEVER crashed not once, full proof. If they did, it was because I accidentally pulled a Firewire/USB Drive out too soon and the Finder started panicking.
B. I have a Mac Pro 2009, that it's only flaw is, sometimes it just randomly restarts, it's happened about 8 times. Just for some reason restarts, but it has never crashed, except when the eSata cable got loose on the external RAID.
C. I had some previous 2009 and 2006 MacBooks that NEVER crashed.
When I mean never I am serious, I put them to work and not one straight, "Moving the mouse" and FREEZE.
User Error or OS error, like getting into trouble with an App where you have a Force Quit Nightmare, sure that happens but I am still in charge. I can goto activity monitor, dock force quit, or Apple Menu Force Quit. Then restart.
But a freeze is different, a freeze is like, you are in Safari and you are just reading, and then CURSOR FREEZE, and the only thing you can do is restart. Or you are in Photoshop and you stop to take a drink and then try to use your mouse, then again CURSOR freeze, i.e. in ANY app you use, right in the middle of moving the cursor it just FREEZES, you go to the console log and different ENDPOINTS, with no pattern. It's the first machine I have ever had with a freeze problem.
It all started with Snow Leopard, one day...
I got about 2 crashes in the first month after opening. Then 3 in the 2nd and 3rd month. I was really in the middle of working, but I upgraded to Lion. "And the guns they stopped" no freezing for a couple months, then I got like 4-5 freezes, then like 5 more in month, and I was ok gotta get a month where I can stop to take it in to Apple. So around the 9th month of the Warranty. I take it in and I get the Genius kid, a really cocky fool, he does the tests, and runs them. He says the preliminary test show no problems. He says you can leave it with us if you want and we will do more extensive test. I said sure keep the MacBook for a couple days. I come back in and he is like there's no problems that we can detect. He is like can you REPRODUCE the FREEZE, and I am like no. He says then there is nothing we can do.
Now I got my laptop in the Late part when there were Late 2011s it had Lion on it to begin with, but I rolled it back to Snow Leopard, when I got it, that's why I got the Early, plus it was cheaper. But I wanted a 17 that ran 10.6.8. But I got in the groove of trying to update after a while to hope this "Bug" would somehow magically get fixed. Because when I got Mountain Lion I went right to it, and it seemed to calm the crashing back down, to 1 or 2 a month. In addition, there started to be rumors, of the Video Card fiasco, with this model. And I got nervous but kinda happy that AT LEAST, my model was not going to have a logic board replacement nightmare.
At about Mavericks 10.9, things were nice, it wouldn't crash but maybe once every two months. But then it started going from good to bad good to bad with each incremental 0.0.1 upgrade ever since.
So, starting with Mavericks, if I got a good 0.0.1 OS upgrade it has been like roulette, SERIOUSLY. Like if I remember recently, on 10.11.1 and 10.11.2 It was awesome, like 1 freeze the whole time each with 10.11.1. 10.11.2 when they were out but then 10.11.3 came out and it was like blam 5 or 6 FREEZES. With 10.11.4 I had 3. With the new 10.11.5, I have already had 2.
But like I said, I got the SSD so I can get up refill my water, and restart in under a minute, and start working again.
BUT THE MAIN THING IS:
There is such a thing as FLAWLESS, (barring App Failure or a User clicking menus or buttons before their time, i.e. before they are ready.) My Mac Pros that I use as Media Server with Plex on Lion and a Snow Leopard one, THEY NEVER CRASH they are by Far the best Machines Apple has EVER made. I was expecting this type of Flawlessness, when I dropped $2,500 on the MacBook 17. And I told myself, well you can't win them all, because honestly I have had really good luck with my Macs over the years, I have read posts for 15 years now, and I have heard horror stories, but don't get things twisted because we know Apple has shipped Millions of Macs! I had over 20+... Like I said I am hoping the 17 was just bad luck...and a 2015 15" will be just what I need. I am definitely waiting till after WWDC, but if they go all crazy with USB-C, you can bet I'll be grabbing a "last on the shelf" 2015 15" just wondered about getting dGPU or non-dGPU, if graphics switching is clean...
Thanks for the replies and reading...
Flawless
, and I used Plex every night on this machine to watch Twit.tv
[doublepost=1463823058][/doublepost]You know what? I did kinda go off a little on FLAWLESS, but I did want to clarify with out making this sound crazy. To me FLAWLESS is easy to achieve most machines are FLAWLESS.
Meaning like this, you have MacOS 10.x whatever installed, and you had it say running a UNIX SERVER PROCESS of some sort, so you started it up and it ran in a closet, YOU NEVER TOUCH IT and forget about, NO UPDATING, right? and it just runs for like 3 years, and just keeps doing it's job. If you have machine where you DON'T TOUCH IT, and it just FREEZES RANDOMLY. i.e. it can't sit in closet and just run for years on end, by itself, there is a FAULT in a chip somewhere, barring cooling issues. I think it's Sandy Bridge, because my MacBook Air 11 2012 has NEVER CRASHED either... Ivy Bridge on that thing is FLAWLESS haha, alright good night...
