Which MacBook would you suggest?

[thundersteele]

I bought the 13'' rMBP with 2.6/8/256. If you have an extra $100 you can get the CPU upgrade, but it is certainly not necessary.

You have to think carefully whether 256 GB of storage will be enough. Talk to your wife and see how she would feel about having her music library on an external drive etc... sometimes simpler setups are more convenient - i.e. getting at least the 512 GB upgrade on a shared machine might be a good idea.

Don't max out the machine. You already noticed that by getting all available upgrades, your price jumps to the level of a high-end 15'' rMBP, almost doubling the entry level 13'' price. My main advice: Save those extra $1000 and maybe buy a new machine in 3 years instead of 5. You are not making your machine more future proof by getting all upgrades, you are just making it more expensive.


My 13'' rMBP upgrade recommendations:
- If you know what you need, buy that.
- Recommended: 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD
- Optional: 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 2.6 GHz (comes free with the 512 GB SSD)
- Too expensive: 2.8 GHz, 1 TB SSD

 

[s2mikey]

I bought the 13'' rMBP with 2.6/8/256. If you have an extra $100 you can get the CPU upgrade, but it is certainly not necessary.

You have to think carefully whether 256 GB of storage will be enough. Talk to your wife and see how she would feel about having her music library on an external drive etc... sometimes simpler setups are more convenient - i.e. getting at least the 512 GB upgrade on a shared machine might be a good idea.

Don't max out the machine. You already noticed that by getting all available upgrades, your price jumps to the level of a high-end 15'' rMBP, almost doubling the entry level 13'' price. My main advice: Save those extra $1000 and maybe buy a new machine in 3 years instead of 5. You are not making your machine more future proof by getting all upgrades, you are just making it more expensive.


My 13'' rMBP upgrade recommendations:
- If you know what you need, buy that.
- Recommended: 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD
- Optional: 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 2.6 GHz (comes free with the 512 GB SSD)
- Too expensive: 2.8 GHz, 1 TB SSD

Well put. I have your "recommended" config and am loving it so far. Doing some development work and various other tasks. Good point about maxing out the machine.... Not sure that ends up being worth it in the long run.