Considering coming back to Mac: 13-inch Retina?

[PaulWog]

I already have a laptop right now, and it functions just fine. I'm really interested in picking up the 2015 Macbook Pro 13-inch Retina, but I'm not sure whether I should or not. I could try to resell my current laptop. The last Apple laptop I owned was the 11-inch Macbook Air (2011), and I loved that it held such great value on resale after a year... I did have problems with it though, major issues with faulty Wi-Fi, a fair bit of crashing, and a minor lacking of graphical power.

I just want to hear some input. I've been reading around, I've browsed this site, and I am continuing to Google. We have two Apple TV's in the house, and I will be switching to an iPhone (... eventually, in about a year when my contract expires), so I want to surround myself in the Apple eco-system a fair bit... my main computer will remain a Windows-based unit though.

I work in education, but I'm going back to university for a fifth year in just a little bit. Photography is one of my big hobbies, I have an electrical piano that I haven't ever hooked up to a computer (but I want to get to that at some point), and I enjoy games occasionally. I like watching movies/videos, internet browsing, etc. Word processing, productivity, etc, are obviously some of the main uses.

What I have right now:
I currently have a 2013 laptop. It functions like it did when it was new: the battery life is excellent, the system runs quickly, nothing has broken down really. It's a 15-inch Samsung laptop with an NVidia 640m graphics card, i7 3615Q quad core processor, 8GB of RAM, and a Samsung 840-series 256GB SSD. Battery life is excellent (6+ hours), the form-factor is nice, etc. What I don't like about what I have right now is the touchpad, the scratched up fake metal lid, the slight lack of portability (granted it's nearly as light as the 15-inch MBP), and most of all I dislike the TERRIBLE screen (I can't do ANY work on Lightroom on this thing, colors are not accurate, and if I watch a movie on it I never get an angle that works... the screen is easily a 3/10 on any kind of rating scale).

 

[CaptainChunk]

Well, I guess you'll have to decide how much you'll miss a quad-core CPU and discrete graphics because the 13" rMBP has neither of those things.

But what you will gain is one of the best looking displays in the business and a much faster SSD. The new 2015 model uses PCIe based storage with 4 lanes of bandwidth. Also, there's the new Force Trackpad, which I rather enjoy on mine.

Any rMBP will be heavier than the Air (the 13" model is 3.5 lbs), but I don't find it to be a burden, especially after I came from a 2011 model that weighed about a pound more.

Given your usage, you'll probably be fine with the standard 8GB of RAM. The price to upgrade to 16GB is very steep. Also, there's only about a 3-5% performance differential between the base 2.7GHz i5 and the optional 2.9GHz i5/3.1GHz i7. Remember, we're talking about dual-core chips here. Personally, I opted for the base CPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage - and I'm very happy with that setup.

 

[Freyqq]

Well, you'd be downgrading in CPU and GPU speed, but upgrading in SSD speed and weight/build quality/screen. It's a tradeoff. The base model 15" rmbp, however, would give you similar CPU and GPU performance to what you have now.

Another alternative is to get a nice external monitor for your current computer for photo editing.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I'll echo this

Well, you'd be downgrading in CPU and GPU speed, but upgrading in SSD speed and weight/build quality/screen. It's a tradeoff. The base model 15" rmbp, however, would give you similar CPU and GPU performance to what you have now.

Another alternative is to get a nice external monitor for your current computer for photo editing.

I think you'll be happier with the 15 inch.

 

[uptempos]

i have different needs and usage from you..but after trying the new dell xps 2015 notebook pc two separate times to give it a chance...the trackpad was just too unbearable. The trackpad on the new macbook pro 13inch or any mac for that matter sold me on coming back to the mac platform. Again, I am a light user but just giving my opinion.