First a little background:
I have a 2012 MBA 13.3 that I use as my main machine. It's been bad since my 3yo decided that it was a frisbee. I've been holding off replacing it and using a company issued surface pro 3. Which by the way is an incredible windows machine and probably the best windows machine I've ever used.
I purchased a 13.3 rMBP for my wife in March as her 2009 MBA was donated. She loves the machine and it does everything and does it incredibly. Well, she hates the new force touch trackpad, but she uses it begrudgingly.
I was set to purchase a second one as my main work/home machine. Mind you my uses aren't that power-intensive. I use office for Mac preview 2016 as my main software along with apple mail and fantastical 2. I use safari entirely unless I'm trying to watch my dodgers through VPN (stupid Time Warner), then I use chrome.
Here are my first impressions:
Looks - everyone has said enough about them. I've posted this before, but it's easily the best looking macbook ever (but my runner up was the 13.3 black macbook from a few years back).
Performance - With my use, I see no discernible drop in performance, but there is one for sure. Here's just a comparison between the 2015 rMBP and MB in file opening times:
file speed comparisons
187 mb word file
8.8 secs on MB
6.8 secs on rMBP
46 sheet excel file with macros
39.07 secs on MB
28.28 secs on rMBP
11mb ppt file laden with pictures
8.03 secs
5.93 secs
As you can see there's definitely a difference in file opening times. But, it's a couple seconds and doesn't bother me at all. There is some small stutter in Word using track changes and making massive changes, but again, as a heavy Word user, it hasn't bothered me.
The keyboard, despite what many have said, is incredible! I can type faster on this than I could on the MBA, or even the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. The keys feel great. And as you can see in my pics below, the size of the keyboard is equivalent to that of the rMBP. Moreover, the key sizes themselves are slightly bigger and with my fat fingers, that's a blessing.
Overall, I have had absolutely 0 issues with this laptop (other than the file vault setup bug which I had on the wife's rMBP).
I'm running down the battery now, and will report back the battery time.
So, these are just my first impressions after about 5 hours of usage. This will be my main machine which will be interesting.
I'll report back as often as possible, but please feel free to ask any questions:
I have a 2012 MBA 13.3 that I use as my main machine. It's been bad since my 3yo decided that it was a frisbee. I've been holding off replacing it and using a company issued surface pro 3. Which by the way is an incredible windows machine and probably the best windows machine I've ever used.
I purchased a 13.3 rMBP for my wife in March as her 2009 MBA was donated. She loves the machine and it does everything and does it incredibly. Well, she hates the new force touch trackpad, but she uses it begrudgingly.
I was set to purchase a second one as my main work/home machine. Mind you my uses aren't that power-intensive. I use office for Mac preview 2016 as my main software along with apple mail and fantastical 2. I use safari entirely unless I'm trying to watch my dodgers through VPN (stupid Time Warner), then I use chrome.
Here are my first impressions:
Looks - everyone has said enough about them. I've posted this before, but it's easily the best looking macbook ever (but my runner up was the 13.3 black macbook from a few years back).
Performance - With my use, I see no discernible drop in performance, but there is one for sure. Here's just a comparison between the 2015 rMBP and MB in file opening times:
file speed comparisons
187 mb word file
8.8 secs on MB
6.8 secs on rMBP
46 sheet excel file with macros
39.07 secs on MB
28.28 secs on rMBP
11mb ppt file laden with pictures
8.03 secs
5.93 secs
As you can see there's definitely a difference in file opening times. But, it's a couple seconds and doesn't bother me at all. There is some small stutter in Word using track changes and making massive changes, but again, as a heavy Word user, it hasn't bothered me.
The keyboard, despite what many have said, is incredible! I can type faster on this than I could on the MBA, or even the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. The keys feel great. And as you can see in my pics below, the size of the keyboard is equivalent to that of the rMBP. Moreover, the key sizes themselves are slightly bigger and with my fat fingers, that's a blessing.
Overall, I have had absolutely 0 issues with this laptop (other than the file vault setup bug which I had on the wife's rMBP).
I'm running down the battery now, and will report back the battery time.
So, these are just my first impressions after about 5 hours of usage. This will be my main machine which will be interesting.
I'll report back as often as possible, but please feel free to ask any questions:
