Still worth grabbing first gen 12" macbook?

[BallparkDreamer]

I got the 2015 12" base model (1.1 / 8 / 256) for $929 on the Apple Refurbished Store. It's been a month now and this is honestly one of the best base model Apple laptops I have ever used. The perfect compliment to my 15" rMBP.

You can wait for WWDC in a few days, if you'd like but I think no matter what Apple announces the following will still be true about the 12":

- Most portable form factor (seriously, this thing is in iPad territory. I don't even think twice anymore about taking my laptop with me when I go out -- a constant question I used to ask myself with my 15")

- Super quick to charge (I get to 100% in a little over an hour), and you can charge it off of a USB power bank (I recommend Anker's USB-C bank it's about $50 on Amazon) -- this might be one of the most underrated features of this laptop!

- Very little heat generation for most tasks, comfortable enough to keep on your lap. It did get a little warm when I was working with small-to-medium sized iOS/OSX apps on XCode. Hitting "build" every minute or so should do it.

- Quietest laptop (the new rMBP will not be fanless). If you're like me, you're used to hearing the fan kick in when watching Netflix -- using the 12" is like driving a Lexus, quiet & refined.

- If you don't continuously depend on flash drives, SD cards, USB mice... etc. this is a perfect laptop for the wireless world we are in today. QacQoc sells a great adapter on Amazon, it gives you back every port you were missing from a MacBook Air minus thunderbolt: 2x USB, 1x SD, 1x microSD, and also supports pass-through charging. It fits flush on my MacBook and is also the same color (space gray)! At $45 it's a steal compared to Apple's adapters.

- The 1.1 model is fast enough for most everyday tasks. You'll run into some slowdowns here and there if your workflow involves a lot of iMovie, Photoshop, bloated IDEs, etc. but in my experience it's no different than using the base MacBook Air with 8GB RAM.

- The butterfly keyboard is great. I got used to it in about 2 hours and if you're a touch typer, expect to see your average WPM increase on this machine.

If you were considering selling your cMBP, I'd say hang on to it during the return period of the 12". I specifically bought the 12" to complement my 15 (which I mostly use docked as a desktop). If you have a lot of high-intensity workloads you are not going to be satisfied with this laptop (but then again, would any dual-core MB short of the 3.1 i7 be sufficient?). I purchased this laptop not expecting to use XCode or PyCharm and I'll admit that I was pleasantly surprised by what I can actually throw at this machine and get away with

Seriously, this review is fantastic! The portability is a big thing for me, since I'm out and about quite a bit. I wouldn't do a ton of heavy work on it. Mainly typical college stuff (so papers, presentations). I have been dabbing in statistical software lately, mainly because of my major/general interest. Do you think the 12" macbook could handle something like that?

 

[SteveJUAE]

Another aspect is the 256 Yoga 900S comes with M7 CPU by default, no gouging here, AKA Apple Tax
Q-6

If your not windows-phobic or like me who use Apple hardware not Software/OS then the 900S has now relegated my 2 rMB's to cute but dull IMO

 

[ncm34]

Seriously, this review is fantastic! The portability is a big thing for me, since I'm out and about quite a bit. I wouldn't do a ton of heavy work on it. Mainly typical college stuff (so papers, presentations). I have been dabbing in statistical software lately, mainly because of my major/general interest. Do you think the 12" macbook could handle something like that?

Definitely, I've done some moderately intensive work in R with no problems! However, if this is going to be your primary computer and you plan on crunching larger datasets (more than 100K rows) on a frequent basis, you may want to be prepared to use the cloud to help. GitHub's student packs got me all the way through college, I didn't spend a penny out of my pocket on compute power

The achilles heel of a fanless machine such as this is throttling. Over short periods of time it behaves just like an entry-level Air or Pro, but over prolonged periods of time it's not very consistent. If you're slamming it back-to-back with CPU-intensive operations that take more than a few minutes to complete, you'll notice some slowdowns. Under heavy load, the machine will perceptibly slow down for a few moments and then all of a sudden, the hiccups are gone as it cools off and is able to race back up to those overclock frequencies.

On another note, the integrated graphics on modern Intel chipsets is actually quite good (no interface lag, something that plagued my first 15" when the HD4000 was active). It is probably a combination of better drivers / system software from Apple and Intel's continued push to have competent graphics solutions on mobile & ultrabook chipsets.

 

[japanime]

I think you're looking at twice that $999 price for any decent MBP that will be available next week. So, if money is tight, the 2015 MB still makes a lot of sense.

I'm kind of holding out for next week, too. Although one of the most appealing features of the MB for me is the fanless design. It seems extremely unlikely that any upcoming 2016 MBP would be fanless, so I keep gravitating back to the standard MacBook.

The fanless design saved my sanity. Seriously. It's absolutely silent, which is music to my ears.

 

[touchstoned]

As an owner of both machines, I will say that the 10-20% performance delta between the 2015 Retina MacBook and the 2016 Retina MacBook makes quite a difference. It's the difference between "almost there" and "definitely enough". I find my 2016 MacBook much more comfortable to use.

Which version do you have? I owned both the base 2015 and the BTO 1.3Ghz 2015 model, and there is a ~20% difference between those two version in benchmarks. Personally, I couldn't really tell the difference. The 2016 Core M5 model benchmarks about equal to the 2015 "M7" 1.3Ghz model, and the M7 isn't anywhere near 20% faster than the M5. It might be 20% faster than the 2015 model in graphics though.


The only scenario where I see the 2016 offering a noticeable improvement over the 2015 is if you compare the 2015 Base 1.1Ghz/256 vs the 2016 flagship Core M7 model, and even then you'd have to play a game or run the battery for 9 hours to really notice any difference between the two.

 

[Dunbar]

I just went from a 2011 i5 MBA (13") to a 2015 base refurb rMB. Overall I'm happy with the performance of the rMB. It's quite a bit quicker in normal tasks than my ~5yr old MBA and lighter and much more portable. The screen is much nicer as well. I do notice some slight hiccups in performance every once in a while but overall I can't complain. At $929 (and no tax in OR - yay) it's a screaming value. My plan is to keep the rMB for 2 years or so and upgrade to newer version that will hopefully put to bed any complaints about performance.