What would you do? iMac and/or MBP/MB

[technoholic]

This is kind of a half iMac half MBP question.

I currently have a Late 2015 iMac 5K 27", and a 2016 MacBook Pro Touchbar They aren't too badly specced for the time but my big mistake was not ordering big hard drives on both. I've run out of space on my 256 SSD on the iMac and pretty much out on the 512 SSD on the MBP. I use both for general work as well as photography daily (Lightroom mainly). Also use Bootcamp on the MBP for some other apps that I need like programming my home control system etc, so that eats into space too.

I'm thinking of upgrading both, I know that I could add an external drive to the iMac (which I have done) but that doesn't solve the MBP problem.

My dilemma is should I get a new iMac for the office, and then maybe a 12" MacBook for portable use. Or should I forget about an iMac, get a fully loaded MBP 13" and a LG 5k display to dock it with (and a TB3 dock of course)? For me, either the MB or the MBP are just as portable as each other, would be nice to have a lighter fanless notebook but not too fussed about that. More power and drive space and emory is the real need.
What would you say the benefits are of either option? I don't really love the LG display, the way it looks, but if it's a better choice I could get over that.

A third option is a new iMac and a new MBP to give me the extra screen size to play with. 15" MBP is not an option.

For full disclosure, I use the iMac daily but the MBP gets much more use overall, evenings, weekends etc, I don't go in the office really unless I need to.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[maflynn]

Why not just get an external drive for the MBP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seems like a waste to buy an iMac and/or a MBP right now especially since most people are waiting for updates to both machines.

Why not buy/use a NAS so your storage can be shared and access between your iMac and MBP.

 

[technoholic]

Why not just get an external drive for the MBP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seems like a waste to buy an iMac and/or a MBP right now especially since most people are waiting for updates to both machines.

Why not buy/use a NAS so your storage can be shared and access between your iMac and MBP.

I don't really want to be carrying around another "thing". I know it's small but would rather have it all self contained.
I do have a NAS, and could use it but can't access it quickly outside the house and of course it's much slower than internal SSD or even external SSD. I'd really like to get TB3 on the iMac too would make things easier.

But I get your point, I don't want to buy something that's going to be replaced in 5 minutes but equally no one seems to expect them anytime soon and I could order be waiting on the next thing.

 

[cobracnvt]

Why not just get an external drive for the MBP

I agree, just to buy some time to see what updates come out over the next year. I noticed the lower price of this external 500 GB Samsung T5 SSD Amazon for $130 and I'm really tempted to pick one up to run VMs on my MBP. https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA500B/dp/B073GZBT36

 

[technoholic]

ok, let's explore the NAS option a little

I've been a Mac user for years now but come from and work in a windows world. Shared drives are easy on Windows. Let's say I wanted to mount a shared folder on both my Macs, so that it appears when I login and when I rejoin the network. I know how to add login items but it doesn't seem as graceful as on windows where it automatically reconnects whenever I'm on the network etc. If I wanted, for example, to have my onedrive local storage on that shared drive, I'd want the onedrive app to see it every time I log in or return home. So is all of that possible?

 

[BayouTiger]

I connect my MBP to my Windows Server LAN every day. There were a couple versions of MacOS that had a broken Samba implementation, but that's been fixed. I have no issue whatsoever connecting to the servers at work. I generally have Windows open in Fusion and from there I can access everything via Direct Access and it works perfectly. The OneDrive App works fine on the Mac, sometimes I think better than my Win10 machine did.

At home I have a Pegasus connected to my iMP for fast online storage and a QNAP NAS connected via 10GBe for capacity. The beauty of the QNAP is that I can connect to it from anywhere.

My biggest issue with the MacBook is the lack of Thunderbolt. I love the format, but I love my Thunderbolt devices more!