I've never really had issues. Always just make sure to list that the item is sold "as is" and no returns or refunds.
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How long do you keep your macbook pro for?
- Thread starter The Game 161
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I've never really had issues. Always just make sure to list that the item is sold "as is" and no returns or refunds.
My iBook had since day it got released in 2004, still going strong as a home server - better networking speed than a Raspberry Pi!
2015 MBP 13'', will also keep until it dies, the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD make it perfect as a low powered laptop to just keep and repurpose to running VM's on, Plex, small projects or just a machine with ports!!
2015 MBP 13'', will also keep until it dies, the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD make it perfect as a low powered laptop to just keep and repurpose to running VM's on, Plex, small projects or just a machine with ports!!
As long as it runs current software with acceptable performance for on the go then I keep them. 3-4 years but 5 is the longest so far.
I think if apple actually made a laptop worth buying instead of adding all the gimicks and taking away the ease of use it would be a no brainer to upgrade more often. Innovate for it to fulfill the pro name.
Apple have fierce competition in the 13" space now. Many are more powerful with quad processors, have a better port selection aka an SD slot and also have touch screens which is a moot point depending on how you look at it.
The main gripe for me is the lack of an dedicated graphics card, many 13"s offer this now and its time apple had an offering with one.
The current Macbook pro under 15" is a joke in my option.
By the time you add 16gbs ram 512 ssd and an i7 to the 13" its £2400. This is more than the base 15" that comes with an i7 quad as standard, 16gbs ram and a dedicated graphics card... it just not good value. Theres a huge compromise there on speed and usability for 2" of space saving, the 15" really isnt a big machine anymore and its worse that you compromise further with dongle life when the 15" has more than enough room for a simple SD slot.
Im a photographer and my first Macbook pro was the first intel core 2 duo 17" in 2006. I wanted a workstation on the go but found it cumbersome and it wasn't powerful enough so I sold it within 18 months and bought a 2008 mac pro and eventually bought the first unibody Macbook to go with it (before they changed the same model to the "pro" unibody). Since then Ive always been a workstations guy and had a small laptop for working on location. They are useful to me for data management and organisation of images, processing initial images then when I get back its all merged onto the workstation its seemless. Like everyone I like to use it for media consumption too.
The Macbook's logic board went in 2013 and I really liked that laptop but 5 years is a good stint and it felt its age. I replaced it with an 11" Macbook Air with 512 ssd 8gb and the i7 which I loved also it was really powerful and so so small, the screen wasn't much good for actual work but its size was perfect for travel and the odd edit. I took it traveling with me round the world for a year in 14/15 and it was a great for the image making, email, media consumption and keeping in touch with family.
Unfortunately it was stolen in early 2017 and at that time I was looking to buy a new laptop but was stumped with what to buy.
The Macbook air was long in the tooth in 2014 with the screen resolution let alone 2017/8 and the 2016 MbP replacement had me stumped too.
The issue was that the 13" Macbook pro offered no upgrade from my 11" Macbook air except it was slightly quicker the retina display and more real estate which I wasn't overly bothered about anyway. More importantly it took away the ports, mag safe and the keyboard.
I ended up buying a Macbook. Its a really big compromise but apple offered no other alternative at the time. It was that or jump to £1500 for the mid 13" which to my mind offered nothing more pt more ports. The macbook core m processors were so similar it didn't seem worth spending the money on a BTO machine and I needed one asap as I had a trip.
I bought a pre-owned base model from the local CEX and was surprised at how cheap it was at £680 with 23 cycles on it, absolutely mint. When they were still selling the same model for £1299. Which is sort of worrying as its the first apple product not to keep its value...
The 13" Macbook pros have jumped up in value to the point its questionable why anyone would buy one in my mind. The 13" maxed is as much as a 15" which is far more powerful.
A top end 12" Macbook isnt much smaller than the 13" and im not sure whether its a placebo effect but seems like there is barely any penalty to taking it anywhere.. feels smaller when in reality it isnt really.
The 13" is essentially the same thing a dual core with integrated graphics and the i7 benches very similarly to the mid range i5s of the Macbook pro and is still cheaper than the high end apple config Macbook pro but you get 16gb of ram for the same price...
Thats another big gripe 8gbs of ram 16 max in 2018 its ridiculous. Boot up lightroom and photoshop and it devours the 8gbs so quickly. Ive had 8gbs as a minimum in my laptops since 2008... its 11 years later. Ive had 48gbs in my mac pro since 2009 too. Its like time is standing still and man do they make you pay for it.
In the 13"s defense they have higher watt cpus and the integrated graphics. They are more powerful but in essence I dont think programs will run really with any huge perceivable difference in the real world. The benchmarks are very similar really within 10% on geekbench.
Obviously they have gimped the macbook with one USB C port not even TB3, which is a complete pain and is a reason not to buy it at all. It doesn't supply enough power to use more than one accessory at a time with a dongle without adding power. Eg a HDD and an card reader so if your on the go and want to move files onto an external you have to be attached to power which makes the weight, size, portability of use in the field void really. So you have to move your data to the machine then move it to an external.
The base 13" macbook pro with 2 ports could be a solution but they have gimped the thermals with that too... and once you spec it up again you might as well go with the 4 port machine and feels a bit basic again as low as you can go with a pro machine although I do prefer the F keys to the pointless touchbar.
The whole line up is a mess and the innovation or lack there of in the 13", the best selling laptop is frankly a joke. A touch bar is not innovation and neither does it speed up workflow as you have to take your eyes away from the screen. Really not sure what they were thinking.
There is no difference in the actual use case of a 2008 macbook and the 2018 macbook pro except it lost a good keyboard, ports, DVD drive and is 3x more expensive. They do exactly the same thing. Granted you couldn't use a 2008 now for anything but media consumption but the point im making is they do nothing different. They haven't changed the product, just implementation of faster technology.
One of the main reasons for having a workstation is that I have found laptops still arent capable of being a desktop replacement for the programs I use. Lightroom runs badly on pretty much everything but the iMac Pro at this point and its been the same in the past. Editing a wedding on a Macbook pro is a exercise in futility because it struggles to make fast previews and rendering 100% views takes literally 6-10 seconds when your editing 3-500 images at a time that 6 seconds per image preview at 100% is an extra 2 hours working just sitting waiting for a rendered image.
Its not Apples fault at all its Adobe and its lack of software optimization throughout CC. The fact is it needs a powerful machine to work at a decent pace IMO is the reason I couldn't replace a workstation with one machine and you cant take a workstation with you. Rendering 50mp files and zooming into 100% on a 5k display takes some power that the current iMacs dont have the iMac pro is the only machine I have used that actually gives a fluid performance but for how long? I wish Apple was still in the Pro market with software, Aperture was fast intuative but they jsut gave up on it. Premier VS Final Cut is another such example. Final Cut is so well optimized premier is a PITA.
I would love for Apple products to work better together, there are so many cool things that IOS programs can do that is impossible on the mac and yet there is no integration. I believe the touch screen is pointless on a laptop unless it can be detachable and used as a tablet, and love the fact lightroom CC on the ipad is fast and you can paint effects in there and then with a pen. The moot point is that Lightroom CC has half the capability of lightroom CC classic.
The ipad is just too closed and IOS is such a poor relation to Mac OS for someone to actually do pro work unless email is your work, app integration is awful really and the programs are lite versions of the desktop versions. Why is this the case why havent things moved on? At the same time Mac OS feels old buggy and a poor visual relation to IOS. In both usability and Apps yet the apps are gimped because the file system is so closed.
TBH the reason we are at this point is probably because if they merged the Mac and IOS markets they wouldn't move as many products.
I would love to have seen apple do what microsoft has done with the surface line but do it right with all the polish but they are so late to the game. Surface product ideology has truly moved the game on for creatives, content creators, artists and general use. Using a pen makes the product feel so much more tactile and allows greater control. Shame the surface products dont have the polish and reliability of the macs. I would still like to give them a go, the Surface book 2 looks amazing and a 1060... yes please.
Im not holding my breath tho, WWDC will give decent processor options making the 13 a quad finally and if were lucky a discrete graphics option.
IMO right now its beyond frustrating to be an apple fan and user. The Macbook Pro used to be the pinnacle and it feels like its getting lost in a sea of innovative products. Overall a great product but does nothing that it couldn't do before and the line up is smoke and mirrors, more products than ever and a more complicated to choose.
Would be great for apple to go back to the 2+2 product philosophy.
Reviewers are never excited with them anymore either as nothing is new or fresh. No reason to spend £2-3k and the price hike reflects this.
It shouldn't be this difficult.
Apologies. Rant over.
I think if apple actually made a laptop worth buying instead of adding all the gimicks and taking away the ease of use it would be a no brainer to upgrade more often. Innovate for it to fulfill the pro name.
Apple have fierce competition in the 13" space now. Many are more powerful with quad processors, have a better port selection aka an SD slot and also have touch screens which is a moot point depending on how you look at it.
The main gripe for me is the lack of an dedicated graphics card, many 13"s offer this now and its time apple had an offering with one.
The current Macbook pro under 15" is a joke in my option.
By the time you add 16gbs ram 512 ssd and an i7 to the 13" its £2400. This is more than the base 15" that comes with an i7 quad as standard, 16gbs ram and a dedicated graphics card... it just not good value. Theres a huge compromise there on speed and usability for 2" of space saving, the 15" really isnt a big machine anymore and its worse that you compromise further with dongle life when the 15" has more than enough room for a simple SD slot.
Im a photographer and my first Macbook pro was the first intel core 2 duo 17" in 2006. I wanted a workstation on the go but found it cumbersome and it wasn't powerful enough so I sold it within 18 months and bought a 2008 mac pro and eventually bought the first unibody Macbook to go with it (before they changed the same model to the "pro" unibody). Since then Ive always been a workstations guy and had a small laptop for working on location. They are useful to me for data management and organisation of images, processing initial images then when I get back its all merged onto the workstation its seemless. Like everyone I like to use it for media consumption too.
The Macbook's logic board went in 2013 and I really liked that laptop but 5 years is a good stint and it felt its age. I replaced it with an 11" Macbook Air with 512 ssd 8gb and the i7 which I loved also it was really powerful and so so small, the screen wasn't much good for actual work but its size was perfect for travel and the odd edit. I took it traveling with me round the world for a year in 14/15 and it was a great for the image making, email, media consumption and keeping in touch with family.
Unfortunately it was stolen in early 2017 and at that time I was looking to buy a new laptop but was stumped with what to buy.
The Macbook air was long in the tooth in 2014 with the screen resolution let alone 2017/8 and the 2016 MbP replacement had me stumped too.
The issue was that the 13" Macbook pro offered no upgrade from my 11" Macbook air except it was slightly quicker the retina display and more real estate which I wasn't overly bothered about anyway. More importantly it took away the ports, mag safe and the keyboard.
I ended up buying a Macbook. Its a really big compromise but apple offered no other alternative at the time. It was that or jump to £1500 for the mid 13" which to my mind offered nothing more pt more ports. The macbook core m processors were so similar it didn't seem worth spending the money on a BTO machine and I needed one asap as I had a trip.
I bought a pre-owned base model from the local CEX and was surprised at how cheap it was at £680 with 23 cycles on it, absolutely mint. When they were still selling the same model for £1299. Which is sort of worrying as its the first apple product not to keep its value...
The 13" Macbook pros have jumped up in value to the point its questionable why anyone would buy one in my mind. The 13" maxed is as much as a 15" which is far more powerful.
A top end 12" Macbook isnt much smaller than the 13" and im not sure whether its a placebo effect but seems like there is barely any penalty to taking it anywhere.. feels smaller when in reality it isnt really.
The 13" is essentially the same thing a dual core with integrated graphics and the i7 benches very similarly to the mid range i5s of the Macbook pro and is still cheaper than the high end apple config Macbook pro but you get 16gb of ram for the same price...
Thats another big gripe 8gbs of ram 16 max in 2018 its ridiculous. Boot up lightroom and photoshop and it devours the 8gbs so quickly. Ive had 8gbs as a minimum in my laptops since 2008... its 11 years later. Ive had 48gbs in my mac pro since 2009 too. Its like time is standing still and man do they make you pay for it.
In the 13"s defense they have higher watt cpus and the integrated graphics. They are more powerful but in essence I dont think programs will run really with any huge perceivable difference in the real world. The benchmarks are very similar really within 10% on geekbench.
Obviously they have gimped the macbook with one USB C port not even TB3, which is a complete pain and is a reason not to buy it at all. It doesn't supply enough power to use more than one accessory at a time with a dongle without adding power. Eg a HDD and an card reader so if your on the go and want to move files onto an external you have to be attached to power which makes the weight, size, portability of use in the field void really. So you have to move your data to the machine then move it to an external.
The base 13" macbook pro with 2 ports could be a solution but they have gimped the thermals with that too... and once you spec it up again you might as well go with the 4 port machine and feels a bit basic again as low as you can go with a pro machine although I do prefer the F keys to the pointless touchbar.
The whole line up is a mess and the innovation or lack there of in the 13", the best selling laptop is frankly a joke. A touch bar is not innovation and neither does it speed up workflow as you have to take your eyes away from the screen. Really not sure what they were thinking.
There is no difference in the actual use case of a 2008 macbook and the 2018 macbook pro except it lost a good keyboard, ports, DVD drive and is 3x more expensive. They do exactly the same thing. Granted you couldn't use a 2008 now for anything but media consumption but the point im making is they do nothing different. They haven't changed the product, just implementation of faster technology.
One of the main reasons for having a workstation is that I have found laptops still arent capable of being a desktop replacement for the programs I use. Lightroom runs badly on pretty much everything but the iMac Pro at this point and its been the same in the past. Editing a wedding on a Macbook pro is a exercise in futility because it struggles to make fast previews and rendering 100% views takes literally 6-10 seconds when your editing 3-500 images at a time that 6 seconds per image preview at 100% is an extra 2 hours working just sitting waiting for a rendered image.
Its not Apples fault at all its Adobe and its lack of software optimization throughout CC. The fact is it needs a powerful machine to work at a decent pace IMO is the reason I couldn't replace a workstation with one machine and you cant take a workstation with you. Rendering 50mp files and zooming into 100% on a 5k display takes some power that the current iMacs dont have the iMac pro is the only machine I have used that actually gives a fluid performance but for how long? I wish Apple was still in the Pro market with software, Aperture was fast intuative but they jsut gave up on it. Premier VS Final Cut is another such example. Final Cut is so well optimized premier is a PITA.
I would love for Apple products to work better together, there are so many cool things that IOS programs can do that is impossible on the mac and yet there is no integration. I believe the touch screen is pointless on a laptop unless it can be detachable and used as a tablet, and love the fact lightroom CC on the ipad is fast and you can paint effects in there and then with a pen. The moot point is that Lightroom CC has half the capability of lightroom CC classic.
The ipad is just too closed and IOS is such a poor relation to Mac OS for someone to actually do pro work unless email is your work, app integration is awful really and the programs are lite versions of the desktop versions. Why is this the case why havent things moved on? At the same time Mac OS feels old buggy and a poor visual relation to IOS. In both usability and Apps yet the apps are gimped because the file system is so closed.
TBH the reason we are at this point is probably because if they merged the Mac and IOS markets they wouldn't move as many products.
I would love to have seen apple do what microsoft has done with the surface line but do it right with all the polish but they are so late to the game. Surface product ideology has truly moved the game on for creatives, content creators, artists and general use. Using a pen makes the product feel so much more tactile and allows greater control. Shame the surface products dont have the polish and reliability of the macs. I would still like to give them a go, the Surface book 2 looks amazing and a 1060... yes please.
Im not holding my breath tho, WWDC will give decent processor options making the 13 a quad finally and if were lucky a discrete graphics option.
IMO right now its beyond frustrating to be an apple fan and user. The Macbook Pro used to be the pinnacle and it feels like its getting lost in a sea of innovative products. Overall a great product but does nothing that it couldn't do before and the line up is smoke and mirrors, more products than ever and a more complicated to choose.
Would be great for apple to go back to the 2+2 product philosophy.
Reviewers are never excited with them anymore either as nothing is new or fresh. No reason to spend £2-3k and the price hike reflects this.
It shouldn't be this difficult.
Apologies. Rant over.
There isn’t the thermal overhead for a discrete gpu in the 13 inch or the space or the battery with the 28w quad core cpu used, the iris plus graphics are pretty good for integrated though.
If you need a discrete gpu buy a laptop with a big enough chassis and enough cooling to make it a gpu worth bothering with.
So how do other manufacturers manage dedicated graphics?
Zenbook
Vivobook
Surface book 2
Razer
Alienware 13
List goes on.
I don't think we can compare Razers and Alienwares to Macbook Pros, because the very different designs and usage scenarios. They both dedicate a lot of mass to the cooling system and it shows when you put them on the scale. If Macbook Pros were about the same weight, I would fully expect that they are comparable performance-wise. Form factor is Apple's engineering and design choice, not that I prefer thinness over a different compromise.
For the Zenbook, Asus uses a 15W TDP CPU + 10W TDP GPU. I have a feeling that once we have benchmarks, we'll see that the 28W quad cores that Intel just released will benchmark favorably compared to the Zenbook solution, time will tell. It is worth noting that the MX150 GPU that everyone uses in the "ultrabook" category has two flavors (at least), one a full 25W solution and a substantially slower 10W solution that are in many smaller laptops like the smaller Zenbook, Mibook Air, Thinkpad T480S, etc. Based on its CPU+GPU performance and power requirements, I would say for these devices, it is probably better to go with AMD's Zen-based APUs.
As for the Surface Book 2, that's a somewhat good point. The GTX 1060 in that machine is reported to throttle a lot due to thermal and power constraints. However, the GTX 1060 is only available in the 15 inch model. The smaller 13.5 inch model comes with a GTX 1050. According to Notebookcheck, they both throttle a lot. There is a performance drop of 25% over time for the 13.5 inch model. To quote notebookcheck, "Microsoft had to cut some deep corners in order to fit all that power under the hood." The larger model can not maintain battery charge under load, because the power supply capacity is less than power drain of the device. Despite the drawbacks, I think there is market for these types of devices and some people definitely would prefer their performance behaviors to Macbook Pros.
I think a good comparison would be the current and the upcoming Dell XPS 15, with the Macbook Pro 15. There is substantially more GPU power in that package and somehow the CPU+GPU power is still dissipated. The 2017 model does suffer from VRM overheating and throttling issues but we'll see if they fixed this issue in the just-announced 2018 model. A great bonus is that the XPS 15 (2017) has fully removable RAM and SSD, with the SSD connected via a standard M.2 PCI-E interface. The slight bulkiness of the XPS over the current slim Macbook Pros is a good trade-off for many people, I think.
Even with throttling it will run circles around the integrated intel graphics I suspect seen as tho the current are slower than the 5770 in the 2009 Mac Pro. Even the retinas have plenty of pixels to push.
I just want to see something different and that is actually worth the money not removal or downgrade of features that made the pro what it was.
I just want to see something different and that is actually worth the money not removal or downgrade of features that made the pro what it was.
I actually really like the Intel+AMD on a single chip like the i7 - 8705G used in the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1. It has GPU prowess that rivals a GTX 1050Ti to a GTX 1060 and CPU that is as fast as the 7920HQ, all for only 65W TDP. Plus, it has excellent OpenCL and other open standards support. I would love to see that chip in some Mac products like the new Mini or a line of Macbook Pros.
I have the 2017 MacBook Pro and it has given me nothing but issues, I get kernel panics every few days and have returned it to Apple 4 times now. I have decided that if Apple announces a new MacBook Pro at WWDC I will pre-order the 2018 MacBook that day! Either that or I would sell this 2017 model and get another one because Apple refuse to swap it out. The money I have lost due to this machine I could have bought a brand new one already!
Wife has a 2010 13" MacBook Pro and when she started swearing at it, I upped it to 8 gb of ram and now she loves it again. Hope to have it a few more years. Also have an iMac of the same year, run win 7 along with Safari, Excel, mail, Chrome, Teamviewer and sometimes a few more. Runs great with 8 gb.
Still using my Mid-2010 BTO 15" which was an AppleCare replacement for my BTO late-'08 original unibody and still using my 2008 24" LED ACD.
Keeps chugging along, so will continue to use until there is a 32 GB RAM option on a new 15" and an Apple branded external display to go with it. Probably 2019?
Keeps chugging along, so will continue to use until there is a 32 GB RAM option on a new 15" and an Apple branded external display to go with it. Probably 2019?
Maxx power covered this perfectly, they make massive compromises and have no better performance.