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What's the new mb like for people who have had one for some time now
- Thread starter Samtb
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Ok, well I wasn't - was making a bit of a sarcastic caricature out of a healthy portion of the unreasonable performance complaints that have been leveled at the machine. I am a finance professional, not a movie industry professional.
I have had mine since April 27th. It has replaced my 13" rMBP as my only computer, which is now gone. I also don't have an iMac or an external monitor or anything like that. Although the recent iMac Retina price cuts are tempting.
I travel a lot. Pretty much daily. My tasks aren't that heavy. Aside from ripping Blu-rays and then transcoding them, I work mostly with web-based software. I'm a writer, so I do lots of that.
It's the perfect size/weight. I love going to a smaller computer without sacrificing on display quality or power. My only concern was dropping 1.3" in screen size, but that hasn't been an issue for me.
I travel a lot. Pretty much daily. My tasks aren't that heavy. Aside from ripping Blu-rays and then transcoding them, I work mostly with web-based software. I'm a writer, so I do lots of that.
It's the perfect size/weight. I love going to a smaller computer without sacrificing on display quality or power. My only concern was dropping 1.3" in screen size, but that hasn't been an issue for me.
Having had mine a little more than a month now I can't say enough how happy I am.
I'm a very frequent traveler (>100k miles per year on average) I bought this because my surface pro just wasn't cutting it and I really missed OS X since my rMBP had gone by the wayside. In fact I had recently purchased a 13" rMBP for my wife and was using that as a daily driver.
I read all over the forums about lag, and played around with the machine at the apple store. But I bit the bullet and was lucky to get mine delivered on April 21.
This is by far the best Apple laptop I've owned. It's the perfect combination of size and performance. I wasn't expecting this to work as hard as my old rMBP, but I wasn't really using that machine to its fullest. My work mostly consists of regular office-oriented tasks including, well, Office 2016 preview, safari, email, preview, and the like.
I regularly get 6-9 hours per day depending on how much I have safari running and how many FaceTime and Skype calls I make. I rarely plug the machine in during the day.
I love the keyboard, going back to my old rMBP keyboard felt slow. Love the screen, it's gorgeous, even at about 70% brightness. And I've had no perceptible lag as long as I don't use Chrome.
The force touch track pad is great, can't wait to see the new features be developed for it.
But by far the best thing about my machine is how light my travel bag has gotten. Here's my bag pre-rMB:
Retina ipad mini
Retina MacBook pro (13")
Iphone 6+
2 lightning cables, 1 mini-USB cable
2 USB apple chargers
45(?)w rMBP charger
USB battery pack
Here it is post MB
Retina MacBook
iphone 6+
1 lightning cable
1 apple watch cable
4-usb 25-w charger
USB battery pack (probably won't need)
That reduction in weight is around 2-3 lbs by itself, then add in the fact that I carry a sleeve now and not a full blown case and it has made traveling a dream.
This machine is incredible and even if I didn't travel so much, I would be extremely happy with it being my main machine.
I'm wondering how many yearly OS X upgrades it can handle before getting too slow to work with?
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Yes, your Mac mini.
But I'm wondering about the new MacBook. Is it powerful enough to last a few years of updates?
How would it be any different? My point is that most macs can run the latest OS without a lot of slow down. So, if you do keep this laptop for years to come it will probably run whatever OS comes out. But not having my crystal ball, or two chicken beaks and some tea leaves on hand, I just don't have the ability to forecast the future and my wild speculation is probably just as right as someone who says the MB won't run a new OS.
Why do you need 2 chicken beaks & tea leaves as well when you have a crystal ball and a MacBook.
This has been said a lot, and makes a great soundbite.
But at what point did:
"Isn't it incredible that the iPad is as powerful as it is!"
become
"Isn't it incredible that Apple could ship a laptop as underpowered as an iPad!"
Having had one for a few weeks, in real world use, unless you are anal and sensitive to every little nanosecond it might take for something to render, the Macbook is perfectly a perfectly capable computer.
I've had mine for about three weeks and I love it, except for some intermittent wifi problems that I've been very slowly troubleshooting. I'm not sure yet if that's hardware or software. They're intermittent, so I have to wait a while, sometimes a couple days, before I know if my latest tweaks have fixed anything.
edited: I meant to say "wifi problems"
edited: I meant to say "wifi problems"
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Good point, but even before that, the statement isn't even true. iPad 2 comes nowhere close to the single core scores of the base model rMB, and there is very little between the two in multicore, where the A8X has a 3rd core to draw on as well.
In the end it is irrelevant. As you say, the fact that there is even a comparison here is more of a compliment on the A8X's capabilities than an insult to the Core M's.
Sorry, I reordered my comment and duplicated a word. I meant to say "wifi problems". I'll edit the original.
Wha wha what? I did a double take when I saw you here. Macs and Bimmers. Good combo.
Gotcha. The new beta that came out today purportedly shows evidence that Apple is trying to address WiFi issues in Yosemite. See:
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replaced-with-mdnsresponder/
I got one last month but didn't open it and returned it, (It was the 1.1GHz Silver.) I wouldn't mind getting one but I am going to wait for a 2nd or 3rd gen (hopefully they add a better FaceTime HD camera and slightly faster CPU, and maybe drop the price by 100-200... yes all that probably will not happen, but one can dream.) 
Kal.
Kal.