Given all components of MBP 16" are soldered, is end of third year the best time to sell and buy a new model?

[hajime]

Based on experience with MBP 2016 and 2017, is end of Apple Care the best time to sell and buy the next model?

By then there should be upgrade to wifi 6 and we will know if Magic Keyboard on MBP16 is durable or not. Hopefully there will be better thermal solution.

To avoid selling to doggie places, even at a lost, I would just sellit back to Apple. Of course I buy Apple care.

 

[jerryk]

I prefer to have systems under AppleCare+. Mine are used for business and owned by my business. If they don't work they cost me money.

Regarding when to upgrade when you are within AppleCare, you can upgrade and get back some of the money you spent on AppleCare, or transfer the remaining period to your new system. If you do transfer I am not sure if they will then give you a discount on the extra months needed to make a 3 year coverage period for your new system.

I am replacing my 2018 15" with a 16" and need to call Apple today and get this figured out.

 

[maflynn]

The longer you hold on to your laptop the better you will, as you'll never really recoup the $$ you put into a laptop, especially if you trade it into Apple.

Everyone is different but given the pace of change, rather the lack of, you're not going to see a huge change in performance.

So you really need wifi6? People harp on that, like the exclusion is some sort of human rights violation but I suspect its not really a show stopping requirement for the majority of consumers buying laptops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[hajime]

If Apple will make future MBP like the pre-2016 ones, I will upgrade.
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I prefer to have systems under AppleCare+. Mine are used for business and owned by my business. If they don't work they cost me money.

Regarding when to upgrade when you are within AppleCare, you can upgrade and get back some of the money you spent on AppleCare, or transfer the remaining period to your new system. If you do transfer I am not sure if they will then give you a discount on the extra months needed to make a 3 year coverage period for your new system.

I am replacing my 2018 15" with a 16" and need to call Apple today and get this figured out.

Please share your experience.

 

[AustinIllini]

The longer you hold on to your laptop the better you will, as you'll never really recoup the $$ you put into a laptop, especially if you trade it into Apple.

Everyone is different but given the pace of change, rather the lack of, you're not going to see a huge change in performance.

So you really need wifi6? People harp on that, like the exclusion is some sort of human rights violation but I suspect its not really a show stopping requirement for the majority of consumers buying laptops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not even sure my router supports wifi 6?

 

[4sallypat]

....

So you really need wifi6? People harp on that, like the exclusion is some sort of human rights violation but I suspect its not really a show stopping requirement for the majority of consumers buying laptops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Correct, WiFi6 is not something I would want to have as it would probably drain the battery very quickly due to the multi frequency transmission protocol.

I am quite happy with WiFi5 (AC band) and if I need to download faster, I just connect my TB2 to Ethernet dongle and get 10Gbps at work and 500Mbps at home.....

I'd opt for the long battery life of the new MBP 16 instead of wireless speed....

 

[AustinIllini]

Yeah, my Eero definitely doesn't not support WiFi 6, so I'm not sure how some have called this a "slap in the face".

 

[jerryk]

Speaking of Wifi 6, 802.11ax, most of the literature out there speaks mostly to increased through-puts in high density situations. Stadiums, malls, etc. Places where the facility management may not have done the best job installing large enough numbers of Access Points and as a result the Access Points are overloaded.

The 802.11ax Access Points have better bandwidth sharing and capacity for using frequencies between 1 GHz and 6GHz, when they become available for 802.11 use. This should allow higher through-puts because devices can be spread throughout more frequencies.

Most of this seems to be in the future since it takes both ends of a connection, MacBook/iPhone and Access Point, to support 802.11ax. And as it stands today most Access Points support 802.11ac and the additional frequencies in the 1-6 GHz range have not been allocated for Wifi use.

The biggest users of 802.11ax seem to be mesh networks that use them for backhaul between the remote access points spread through a home. But they do not seem to be providing the full speed to end user devices like the new iPhones.

So for now, I am OK with 1 Gigabit wifi performance I get with multiple Ubiquiti access points and my 2018 MacBook Pro 15".

 

[Qaulity]

Yeah, my Eero definitely doesn't not support WiFi 6, so I'm not sure how some have called this a "slap in the face".

I've been running a links's WRT3200ACM since 2016, and in that time I've been wondering why I can't get the 160MHz channels to connect to any of my machines, turned out it all has to do with this wifi 6 thing. 80MHz isn't too bad, I can usually get close to gigabit speeds on my wireless network, but I was really hoping (back in 2016) that I could smash it out of the park with 2.6Gbps wireless transfer for when I'm moving large files.

Turns out my expectations were 4 years too early, and I still transfer over cat6 if I need to move files quickly. Additionally, a lot of my workstations are using bonded ethernet interfaces so the wired bandwidth is higher than 1Gbps. I'm not going to buy 4 TB3 to Ethernet dongles to max out transfer rates on my MacBook on my network. I'm sporting a 2018 MBP right now, and the only way I'll upgrade is with WiFi 6 to support my 4 year old hardware.

 

[hajime]

It maybe useful for people doing remote desktop. My main hope is better thermal chassis and mire powerful cpu and gpu with removable components.

 

[maflynn]

It maybe useful for people doing remote desktop.

Doubtful, I use remote desktop solutions for my work and the current wifi is more then up to the task.

 

[jerryk]

It maybe useful for people doing remote desktop. My main hope is better thermal chassis and mire powerful cpu and gpu with removable components.

Unless you are doing something like running an application on the local machine and using a database or server on the remote machine I don't see how a faster local Wifi link helps. The gating factor in most systems is outside of the local Wifi connection, connection from local to server for remote desktop.

And I would give up on expecting removable components. Expect more and more integrated pieces since this makes it easier for developers to create high performance drivers, simplier OS installs, and is part of Apple's DNA.

 

[AustinIllini]

Doubtful, I use remote desktop solutions for my work and the current wifi is more then up to the task.

Right. RDP doesn't actually send a ton of data across the network unless you use an application to copy from the server storage to the client. Sometimes then you may rarely see problems but usually not.

 

[leman]

Based on experience with MBP 2016 and 2017, is end of Apple Care the best time to sell and buy the next model?

This has been the case with every MacBook Pro ever. Owning an expensive laptop outside it warranty is not risk-free. And soldered on components have little impact here. I’ve yet to experience RAM or SSD failure on any of these models (and we own a bunch!)

 

[Nacho98]

So you really need wifi6? People harp on that, like the exclusion is some sort of human rights violation but I suspect its not really a show stopping requirement for the majority of consumers buying laptops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Right, I never even knew about wifi 6 until people started complaining about the 16".

Anyway, they can wait. I'm enjoying my 16" now, and I'll be riding my Time Capsule til the day it dies anyway, so wifi 6 wouldn't matter anyway. Not going to go and replace everything in my house for some foofoo standard when I have literally zero complaints about current wifi performance. Can I browse? Yes. Can I stream video? Yes. Bout all I need to do.

 

[hajime]

This has been the case with every MacBook Pro ever. Owning an expensive laptop outside it warranty is not risk-free. And soldered on components have little impact here. I’ve yet to experience RAM or SSD failure on any of these models (and we own a bunch!)

I had 2007 17”. They replaced the Mb with faulty Nvidia GPU twice, battery, optical disc, etc for five times but still could not fix the computer. They just replaced it with a new model at the end. It was under Steve era.