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Who is happy with their 2018 MBP?

M

mortenjensen

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 19, 2012
236
18
Hi all,
I have been reading a lot on this forum the last few weeks trying to decide, whether my next setup should be a 2018 MBP (i5, 13'') + LG 5K or an iMac (possibly wait for the next release) combined with my old MBA.
And I am getting worried. There are many complaints over the 2018 MBP: keyboard and heat, especially.
So, I would like to hear who is actually happy with their 2018 MBP?
I know these forums are meant to deal with issues and complaints. I am just trying to find out how deep the issues go. I have had an issue with my former MBP 2012, the radeon-gate, which was quite a pain, where I had to bring it in for service once a year or so.
Perhaps the MBP has just gotten to complex a machine to be solid?
Morten
 
Overall, my MBP has been problem free, though early on it was dealing with the throttling issue, I believe some people with the i9 are still dealing with that in one way or another. My keyboard is fine, and I'm not having any issues with coil whine, or speaker crackle and the T2/Bridge crashes are not affecting me.

Personally, I'd be wary about all of these reported issues, given the cost of the laptop but with that said I think many of these issues are affecting a small percentage of people. I have no numbers to back that up, just my gut feel.
 
I'm happy with my MBP 13" i5, wouldn't want any other product. Keyboard is fine, heat is fine, no issues at all.
 
I'm loving my 2018 i9. Really no issues whatsoever and having owned both the 2016 and 2017 keyboards, I have to say the 2018 is very much an improvement. The keys are less "clacky," more sturdy and the Gen 2 keys feel a bit like a toy.
 
Mine works fine. I run it pretty hard sometimes doing machine learning. Not unusually for it to run CPU at 100% for 40-50 minutes.

FWIW, this would only take 4-5 minutes on a system with a Nvidia GTX 1070, but sometimes I need to run models on the road.
 
maflynn said:
Overall, my MBP has been problem free, though early on it was dealing with the throttling issue, I believe some people with the i9 are still dealing with that in one way or another. My keyboard is fine, and I'm not having any issues with coil whine, or speaker crackle and the T2/Bridge crashes are not affecting me.

Personally, I'd be wary about all of these reported issues, given the cost of the laptop but with that said I think many of these issues are affecting a small percentage of people. I have no numbers to back that up, just my gut feel.
Click to expand...

Yes, there always are some issues with most products - nothing is perfect. As long as they get fixed then all is fine with me. Its the companies that make it difficult are more concerning to me, and in my 20 years experience with Apple they are not one of them [but others on this forum will beg to differ].
 
No issues at all, and generally I'm happy with it. But it's definitely not worth the price. I can't see myself buying another Mac product if current pricing trends keep up. That goes for other Apple products too. I ditched my iPhone 6 for an Android phone (Essential PH-1) which was literally 1/3 the price of an X and it's met my needs perfectly fine, albeit lacking in the camera department.
 
narcolpetic-haze said:
No issues at all, and generally I'm happy with it. But it's definitely not worth the price. I can't see myself buying another Mac product if current pricing trends keep up. That goes for other Apple products too. I ditched my iPhone 6 for an Android phone (Essential PH-1) which was literally 1/3 the price of an X and it's met my needs perfectly fine, albeit lacking in the camera department.
Click to expand...

Having had a good look at all the alternatives, I think the MBP is reasonably priced, but perceived value is up to the individual. My next laptop will be the MBP 15" or a HP Zbook Studio. There is not much else that meets my though on quality, speed and aesthetic. It all depends what you need and use is I guess, as there are many cheaper alternatives that would suit a lot of people.

I tend to agree on the iPhone however. The pricing is getting stupid and considering what I use mine for and didn't upgrade this year for the first time in ages, and will look at android again for the first time in about 10 years.
 
I haven't had any serious issues and I'm still happy with my purchase, but I don't think you'll get a definitive answer as none of us work at Apple so we can't see what the real numbers are. Apple also has a lot of ways to burry models that have usually high failure rates without properly dealing with the problem...

What remains to be seen is if Apple has resolved the issues with the KB. I haven't had any issues with it, but the fact the 2017 model has Apple's typical "fix"* for really bad models I see that one as a problem. A good sign of how "stable" the model is would be to see if Apple introduces any of these programs for the 2018 model, but only time will tell in this regard.

My advice, read as much as you can and decide if the machine meets your needs and looks reasonable for you. Especially since how you'll fare on reported issues depends too on how you use your machine. If you use it as a desktop replacement and push it hard you'll likely run into throttling issues. If you type extremely larges amounts you may encounter the KB issue. Some people have been having Kernel Panics and I don't know if it has been truly isolated down to a hardware issue or something in the software mix they are using.

* What I mean by this is they offer a 3 year extended warranty that will allow the affected customers to swap the part out a few times and then they drop ice on it once the machine is "old" (the extended warranty on the issue expires). They usually replace the machine with the same flawed part over and over again so you essentially have a ticking time bomb.
 
LogicalApex said:
I haven't had any serious issues and I'm still happy with my purchase, but I don't think you'll get a definitive answer as none of us work at Apple so we can't see what the real numbers are. Apple also has a lot of ways to burry models that have usually high failure rates without properly dealing with the problem...

What remains to be seen is if Apple has resolved the issues with the KB. I haven't had any issues with it, but the fact the 2017 model has Apple's typical "fix"* for really bad models I see that one as a problem. A good sign of how "stable" the model is would be to see if Apple introduces any of these programs for the 2018 model, but only time will tell in this regard.

My advice, read as much as you can and decide if the machine meets your needs and looks reasonable for you. Especially since how you'll fare on reported issues depends too on how you use your machine. If you use it as a desktop replacement and push it hard you'll likely run into throttling issues. If you type extremely larges amounts you may encounter the KB issue. Some people have been having Kernel Panics and I don't know if it has been truly isolated down to a hardware issue or something in the software mix they are using.

* What I mean by this is they offer a 3 year extended warranty that will allow the affected customers to swap the part out a few times and then they drop ice on it once the machine is "old" (the extended warranty on the issue expires). They usually replace the machine with the same flawed part over and over again so you essentially have a ticking time bomb.
Click to expand...

all well and good but who else supplies warranties like this? I have had worse experiences with Lenovo, Dell and HP............ It is easy to knock Apple and I am not making any excuses for the keyboard issues, but really I still have more confidence buying from Apple than from any other brand. At least with Apple I can go to the store and give them a lot of **** until they sort it out.
 
richinaus said:
all well and good but who else supplies warranties like this? I have had worse experiences with Lenovo, Dell and HP............ It is easy to knock Apple and I am not making any excuses for the keyboard issues, but really I still have more confidence buying from Apple than from any other brand. At least with Apple I can go to the store and give them a lot of **** until they sort it out.
Click to expand...

From my perspective, it is a data point to be used when fully evaluating your purchase and/or owning decision. If you purchased a 2017 MBP before they introduced the KB service program then the extended warranty is a great thing as it offers you some guaranteed life expectancy (though if you purchased Apple Care it offers you nothing extra). But since Apple doesn't use the programs to offer repairs with parts re-engineered to address the flaw you do still have a ticking time bomb at hand.

IMHO the only publicly visible sign of abnormal failures on Apple products is their service programs. Obviously, they vary in severity and it is up to the buyer to gauge that severity.
 
I bought a base model as-is, as a stop-gap until new desktops were released. The only problem I have that you've mentioned, is heat. Between the keyboard and screen gets quite warm on mine, sometimes when it's doing seemingly nothing.

I've also had that weird "two finger swipe back/forward stops working in safari" issue that I don't remember having with my 2011 MBP17.

Otherwise it's a fine machine.
 
Stephen.R said:
I have that you've mentioned, is heat
Click to expand...
I too have the base model, but experience has been the polar opposite. Perhaps my tasks are very different then yours, but I see my temps in the 50c range for most of my work, 70c in Lightroom. Prior to the last supplemental update by Apple, I was seeing near 90c. That update was over the summer if you recall, an I've not upgraded to Mojave (if that matters)
 
maflynn said:
I too have the base model, but experience has been the polar opposite. Perhaps my tasks are very different then yours, but I see my temps in the 50c range for most of my work, 70c in Lightroom. Prior to the last supplemental update by Apple, I was seeing near 90c. That update was over the summer if you recall, an I've not upgraded to Mojave (if that matters)
Click to expand...

(Summer is a semi-meaningless term for me we don't even have 4 seasons here, I guess you mean July/Aug/Sep?)
I haven't got to the stage of installing anything to read the temp sensors to tell me what gets hot.

It's possibly just load. I have a Dell 24" 4K plugged in, so the dGPU is active constantly. I also usually have at least 1 vagrant VM (using Parallels as the hypervisor) running, and IDEA Ultimate.

Also, despite sitting basically under the A/C, the desk is against a wall/window that gets afternoon sun. And this is Thailand, so the ambient temp without A/C is pretty excruciating.

Any suggestions on a decent temp sensor app/tool? (I dont particularly want to monitor it all the time, just for interests sake). If there's built in capability to retrieve the temps via a shell command that'd be even easier probably.
 
My 15” (2.6/560/32GB) is running flawlessly. It’s fast, quiet and cool even when I have photoshop/illustrator/indesign/rhino open at once. The only time it gets hot and loud is when I fire up windows to play Rocket League! A great machine.
 
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