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B&H Photo Offering 15-Inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro With $200 Discount and Copy of Parallels 12
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Apple will price match prices with a "brick and mortar" store up to 10%. I recently purchased a 13" MBP from the Apple Store (non-touch bar) for the Best Buy sale price of $1399. They didn't bat an eye in matching it. I was in and out quickly.
Also, I am very pleased with it thus far. I've been wanting a new laptop and I was tired of waiting on a new iMac. I was still planning to buy an iMac after they are refreshed but now I'm not so sure. I have no problem running Logic Pro X on the MBP and that is my principle use. I just set up the Duet Display to use my iPad Air as a second monitor so we'll see how that goes. The MBP is extremely fast. The form factor is great. The sound from the speakers is terrific for such a small device. The keyboard feels fine to me (after a small period of adjustment). I can't figure out what the fuss is about with the USB-C ports. A $9 dongle is not a big deal although I will now buy a Dodocool for a few more options.
(inb4 the obligatory Surface 4 is better- keep it to yourself.)
If you are in the market for this model than B&H is the place to go, only charge tax in NY state and the shipping is lightning fast. Also, if you don't order a stock Mac than prepare for 6 week wait time, like me, who won't have my laptop for my new job until mid January at the earliest (Thanks Apple for creating pent-up demand)
Lastly, anyone who has been waiting for the LG 5k display to be in stock before the discount pricing runs out at the end of the year, Apple has finally made them available on Apple.com but prepare for a 3-4 week wait time on that as well. I'm on the fence if I want to spend 1k on a display (At least I'm not paying for the pro) but at least I've reserved mine now with the special pricing.
Lastly, anyone who has been waiting for the LG 5k display to be in stock before the discount pricing runs out at the end of the year, Apple has finally made them available on Apple.com but prepare for a 3-4 week wait time on that as well. I'm on the fence if I want to spend 1k on a display (At least I'm not paying for the pro) but at least I've reserved mine now with the special pricing.
The Apple Dilemma,
1)Buy new macbook: get more less powerful, thinner, shorter battery, more expensive, less storage hardware in the future
2)Vote with your wallet and not buy new macbook: Apple sees no market for the Mac hardware and abandons the business
[doublepost=1482846744][/doublepost]Also, Americans don't know how lucky they are with their sales and discounts. I am paying $2k+ for the 2015 model!
1)Buy new macbook: get more less powerful, thinner, shorter battery, more expensive, less storage hardware in the future
2)Vote with your wallet and not buy new macbook: Apple sees no market for the Mac hardware and abandons the business
[doublepost=1482846744][/doublepost]Also, Americans don't know how lucky they are with their sales and discounts. I am paying $2k+ for the 2015 model!
Does it come with at least 16 GB memory and an improved graphics card? So I can run a Windows 10 VM without it becoming laggy or crashing? Does it come with a battery that won't drain within seconds?
not that this will ever happen, but it would be really interesting to hear from B&H why they are doing this. I KNOW they sell Apple stuff at discounted prices, but if the demand was so great, as Apple executives are claiming, would they need to do this now? Perhaps B&H ordered more machines than they expected to sell and now they are stuck with a huge inventory?
Any MR members have a contact inside B&H to help us figure out? I would love to learn about their numbers (including orders and returns).
Any MR members have a contact inside B&H to help us figure out? I would love to learn about their numbers (including orders and returns).
Moore's law died in 2012, time to recalibrate expectations. I pity the marketing departments in tech struggling to push products to their entitlement driven tech addicted customer base.
Someone who needs advanced features on a computer for work views that computer as a tool nothing more. I seriously doubt that most emoting here have that detachment. Sounds more like "My Precious"
If Apple made the giant trackpad work with the Apple Pencil, complete with pressure sensitivity, it would be a huge selling point. Bigger than the silly Emoji bar. This would be a Pro feature.
Yes, I had the same issue. I'd prefer a smaller touchpad, but it's not a deal breaker for me. I think it depends on how figgety a person is.
Good set of questions, Robert. This is my personal take for selecting from the late 2016 line-up for your use case:
- Only the 15.4 inch MBPs have the AMD Radeon PRO dedicated GPU; the 13-inch MBPs (with or without touch bar) only have an iNTEL IRIS embedded GPU. (The AMD Radeon PRO 460 is the better choice between the three AMD Radeon dGPUs being offered.)
- The 15.4 inch MBPs kick the IRIS GPU to the curb and replace it with the lesser HD Graphics 530 embedded GPU.
- All 15.4-inch MBPs have 16 GB LPDDR3 memory soldered-in.
- Parallels VMs run with the dedicated GPU on my MBP. So they are being used.
- Parallels VMs consume about 8X more energy than Safari (running on an macOS separate space). This iaw. Activity Monitor tracking long-term energy use on my MBP. Note that Safari already is an energy hog.
- You need 16GBytes of memory to run VMs properly. I have 8GBytes and there is some swap activity when exercising the dual OS personas, in parallel.
Lot of mullah for a first-gen MBP.
I will await patiently for the next-gen MBPs with DisplayPort 1.3 support under Thunderbolt 3+ and for next-gen DP 1.3 displays. (Currently, the 5K displays are being drawn by two DisplayPort 1.2a streams stitched together. under Thunderbolt 3.)
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We don't want to hear about your personal fantasy life here.
I understand your need to justify/rationalize your purchase. The truth hurts, sorry.
When I bought my 13" 2016 base MBP at MicroCenter, they were out of just about every other model of new MBP. They said "Apple gave us a sale on the non TB version'.' I'm not sure what that means, but they had about 8 left in space grey. I thought about it, went back and bought it, and there were 3 left at that time. These are selling. They're not a good value and the 15" is a *poor* value. I was planning to upgrade from a 2013 13" to a 2016 15" if pricing remained flat at $1999. Perhaps in 2019 I'll get a 15".
Why did I buy it? There's no comparable screen on any other laptop. There's no comparable trackpad. All of my stuff is in iCloud already. I had to buy 1 Lighting to USB-C and 1 USB-A to USB-C converter. I also bought a loaded ASUS at the same time to compare Windows 10 and had to return it. It didn't run as well as the Mac, even though it had an i7, 16g faster ram, discrete graphics.
Why did I buy it? There's no comparable screen on any other laptop. There's no comparable trackpad. All of my stuff is in iCloud already. I had to buy 1 Lighting to USB-C and 1 USB-A to USB-C converter. I also bought a loaded ASUS at the same time to compare Windows 10 and had to return it. It didn't run as well as the Mac, even though it had an i7, 16g faster ram, discrete graphics.
Back in early November I bought the non touchbar base MacBook Pro, I loved it. I was upgrading from an early 2011 MacBook Pro so this was already a huge update for me. It was great, I loved it so much that 10 days later I returned it to Apple and exchanged it for the touchbar version with the 512GB hard drive. I do not regret it at all. This machine is awesome and I don't see the problems everyone is complaining about. There are times when I don't get the 10 hour battery life, but those are times when I am using multiple apps at the same time, and doing a lot of intense stuff. However I have NEVER gotten less than 7.5 hours out of it, which for me is just fine. If all I am doing is some journalling, or web surfing or watching a movie, I have gotten more than 10 hours. There are a lot of factors that determine how long a charge is. For the most part though, this machine has worked exceptionally well for me.
totally agree these are way overpriced for what you get and they took away the glowing apple on the top .
Got the deal for B&H for the 2.7 15". I'm a professional photographer (shoot for major magazines, commercials, etc..) and this MacBook Pro is perfect for my needs. The screen is probably the first laptop screen I can get accurate colors, not perfect, but very close. The previous version of the MacBook pro's was impossible to color correct on if I needed to in the field. (Obviously its not my main monitor as I use a professional NEC for absolute color correction.) The internal drive is a rocket compared to the old 2012 MacBook Pro. Not even close. The usb-c hasn't been a problem so far. Just bought a new USb-c raid that will triple my current thunderbolt raid speed so I'm looking forward to that. For all other things I just bought a new usb cable to attach my old hub. No problem. The only area that I wish was better was the processor speed. Its pretty similar to my old high end 2012 model. Not a deal breaker but would have hoped for a bigger difference over 4 years. Battery life is also excellent. I'm not getting 10 hours but its much better than my old 2012. No complaints there.
Usb-c is the future. personally I'm glad that the new MacBook Pro is already there.
Usb-c is the future. personally I'm glad that the new MacBook Pro is already there.
The keyboard on that new MacBook Pro is pretty great. I like it better than my 2013" MBP that it's replacing. Very solid and precise feeling.
I was in an Apple store yesterday (getting my 6s battery swapped) and they were sold out of all the 15" MacBook with Touchbar except the higher end with 512k SSD. I can see why that would be the last to go since one is unlikely to need a mobile solution with that much storage, but if price is no issue you might as well get 1TB version.
When I saw the size of the pad (watching the keynote), I assumed it would support the pencil - never thought otherwise. Agree completely that this would have been a terrific feature. Have no idea why it was not included unless it is technically impossible. While I love my Wacom, there are many situations where not having to break it out for things such as minor PShop mask adjustments would be so nice. Anyway, will be waiting to see what the Kaby Lake upgrade brings. No more keynotes for me though. I have developed an OCD complex where Tim's weird hunched-over, pacing back-and-forth literally disturbs me. Why his handlers do not address this is beyond me. Shoulders back Tim. Likely just me though, as I have a similar revulsion to Pete Carrol's gum chewing. Have to look away whenever there is a closeup during a Seahawks game. Benefit of seeing PC's chomping, though, is it helps the kids see why one should not chew gum when on TV, or in other high-visibility situations.
Hm, I fail to see the joke. Isn't it a standard practice that the manufacturer asks for the list price and resellers offer interesting bundles with other products?