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Wait for the fall or buy now?

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winstonpurnomo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 21, 2015
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I'm headed to college this fall and plan to major in ComSci. Given the programming focus, I've been advised by those at my college to get a Unix laptop, and I'd love to finally jump ship to the Mac with this opportunity.

With the filing of the new model numbers today, I can expect new MacBooks inbound. I am contemplating either jumping to the 2019 15" Pro, which I can get at a substantial discount after tax refund and student discount abroad, or "refreshing" my current laptop, an Asus Ultrabook, with a new battery and installing Linux for the first programming class, and holding out til whenever these new MacBooks are released.

I'm thinking I'd like to wait for the 16 inch, but even then wouldn't it make sense to wait for new Airs and 12" MacBooks to see what they have to offer? Thoughts?
 
There's never a good time to buy. Get one when you need it and move on. Quite frankly most students overbuy for school. The real heavy stuff will be done on workstations (often remotely). I'd value a larger screen more than anything. With that said I got through a few semesters with a 12" MacBook just fine and I don't doubt with an external monitor it would have carried me to my BS just fine.
 
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winstonpurnomo said:
I'm headed to college this fall and plan to major in ComSci. Given the programming focus, I've been advised by those at my college to get a Unix laptop, and I'd love to finally jump ship to the Mac with this opportunity.

With the filing of the new model numbers today, I can expect new MacBooks inbound. I am contemplating either jumping to the 2019 15" Pro, which I can get at a substantial discount after tax refund and student discount abroad, or "refreshing" my current laptop, an Asus Ultrabook, with a new battery and installing Linux for the first programming class, and holding out til whenever these new MacBooks are released.

I'm thinking I'd like to wait for the 16 inch, but even then wouldn't it make sense to wait for new Airs and 12" MacBooks to see what they have to offer? Thoughts?
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Since you have an interim laptop to tie you over, I’d wait till the fall, and go for that battery.

You don’t need a MBP for your programming classes in general. It really is just a nice to have. I got by the entire CompSci college experience without a laptop and developed in lab Linux workstations and my home PC easy.
 
If you need one now, buy one. If you don't, don't.

There will always be something better around the corner.
 
winstonpurnomo said:
I've been advised by those at my college to get a Unix laptop, and I'd love to finally jump ship to the Mac
Click to expand...
My only advice is to do some research on how well the MBP runs linux. I've had varying levels of success over the years.

Also, waiting for the fall doesn't buy you anything since Apple just released the MBP, we'll not see anything in 2019. This fall will be the new Mac Pro, and various iDevices.
 
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Are your planning on doing Machine Learning or AI? If so, do not buy a mac.

Get a notebook that can run Linux and has an Nvidia GPU. ML work require GPU acceleration and that means an Nvidia GPU, not the AMD GPUs found in recent Macs.
 
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maflynn said:
My only advice is to do some research on how well the MBP runs linux. I've had varying levels of success over the years.

Also, waiting for the fall doesn't buy you anything since Apple just released the MBP, we'll not see anything in 2019. This fall will be the new Mac Pro, and various iDevices.
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Can i also trust you? I will be really upset if the new 16’ released this fall because I just got the 2019 mbp 2days ago
 
maflynn said:
My only advice is to do some research on how well the MBP runs linux.
Click to expand...

Queen6 said:
If Linux is required that's the priority not a Mac.
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Not sure where the references to Linux come from: the OP stated he's been advised to find a Unix machine. Well, the Mac is a Unix machine. Linux is not (its Unix-like).

Not that I advise against Linux, but if the requirement is a Unix laptop, the Mac fits the bill just as well as a Linux machine.
 
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09872738 said:
Not sure where the references to Linux come from: the OP stated he's been advised to find a Unix machine. Well, the Mac is a Unix machine. Linux is not (its Unix-like).

Not that I advise against Linux, but if the requirement is a Unix laptop, the Mac fits the bill just as well as a Linux machine.
Click to expand...

My error, then an MBP is appropriate

Q-6
 
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If you can wait until at least the September keynote, it might be worth it. Normally it would be nutty to think a refresh would come so soon, but I think the June update was actually delayed and meant to be released back in March. (Tim Cook had said in the previous quarterly earnings call that Intel supply had delayed a MacBook update, and that was probably it.) And with 10nm Intel chips coming, combined with the strong rumors, and now the Eurasian-database hint, I think new portables are coming by year-end.

MBPs are nice computers for Comp Sci, as you can do Unix, Windows, iOS, and Android tools all in one machine. Virtual Machines run great with the multi-core and blazing SSDs. The ML-stuff as jerryk pointed out is the big black hole now because NVIDA/CUDA is so central to much of it... although in our case, we find running anything but minor ML models on a laptop somewhat dubious anyway -- we use in-house servers or occasionally cloud services for serious modeling.

Good luck and enjoy and your studies -- Comp Sci is a fun area to study!
 
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