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Why does Apple still sell the non-retina MacBook Pro?
- Thread starter vineetb
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a more affordable option for those who need a MacBook with more power than an air? It is quite outdated, but if people are still buying it, they may as well keep trying to sell it. Maybe they just have a large inventory of those parts, and are trying to get rid of them all?
I can't say for sure, but those are my guesses.
I can't say for sure, but those are my guesses.
I guess because they
1. Want too
2. Are still making a profit on the sales.
I understand what you're saying but if apple is still making money off it, why kill it off?
Because so many people on MacRumors complained about Apple not offering user replaceable RAM & HD.
For the time being, I assume power for the price point. I would assume the non-retina MBP will go away when the MB Air is capable of fully replacing it.
Why does it bother you that Apple is doing this?
Bottom line is people continue to buy the model and Apple makes money. Free enterprise is wonderful.
Simples. There's a demand for the product, mainly from the education sector in my experience. If people didn't buy the cMBP Apple would discontinue the model.
It offers ethernet, FireWire, an optical drive, replaceable batteries, easy to find SATA hard drives, and replaceable RAM, all of which are highly desirable by many people, including me. It also costs less and is far more powerful than necessary for most uses.
A few months ago when I was thinking of buying a new laptop, I kept thinking of the MBA or the non-retina MBP. I liked that the HD could be upgraded and the ram as well.
It's actually less powerful than an Air in most aspects (weaker GPU, slower RAM and storage, CPU is barely better, lower screen resolution).
And it's more expensive than a base 13" MBA. Even more if you configure the MBP with SSD to do a more fair comparison performance-wise.
I think they still sell the 13" cMBP for those reasons:
- Some people assume it must be significantly more powerful than a MBA just because it has "Pro" in the name and is more bulky. Apple makes more profits off those people. Same for the people essentially getting ripped off by buying an "iPad mini 3" assuming it must be a lot better than the 2 given its name.
- Some people want upgradeability at all cost. They don't mind getting a worse value up-front because they'll save long-term in upgrade costs.
- Some people are afraid of moving to a ODD-less laptop.
I think this is mainly for institutions and businesses that buy in bulks. See the lowest tier iMac which has MacBook Air internals.
Because:
1. Not everyone can afford an all-SSD MacBook Air/Pro.
2. Not everyone knows how good retina display is, so when they see that the cMBP is much cheaper than the rMBP, and see that there's also more storage, they think that it's better than the rMBP, and so they fall for it. Goodness knows how many people I know who bought the cMBP complain that how slow it was and were amazed when I spun my rMBP towards them and showed them how much better it was. There's still a lot of people who don't know what an SSD is and how much faster it is.
3. They think that the 'Pro' moniker makes it better than the MacBook Air.
4. There's still people who don't mind using a crappy display and prefer the ability to upgrade their own hardware. Personally, I max out every Mac that I buy from the start, online. Being unable to upgrade stuff yourself reduces the chances of screwing something up, especially for people who may not know what they're doing.
16 gigs of RAM and potentially 4TB of storage in a small form factor. For some, storage is king, and they don't feel like lugging around external drives.
I'm still loving my 15" cMBP with 16Gigs of RAM, SSD and big HD in the optical bay. Hope it last for many years to come, as the non-upgradeability of the present systems is VERY loathsome to me. What Apple did to the latest mini is unforgivable.
I'm still loving my 15" cMBP with 16Gigs of RAM, SSD and big HD in the optical bay. Hope it last for many years to come, as the non-upgradeability of the present systems is VERY loathsome to me. What Apple did to the latest mini is unforgivable.
My wife still prefers the regular MBP form factor. She doesn't really care about the memory or storage (I do all the upgrades on it to keep it fresh) but really likes having the built in superdrive. I am just throwing out her view as another perspective on this.
Yeah, that's basically the overall reason for me as well getting the non-retina. I like to be able to upgrade things along the way (probably eventually to an SSD, and definitely to 16GB of RAM) and while I would have loved to do that all upfront, my older computer started seeming to fail much quicker than I would have liked. (To be fair though, it's a Macbook that's approaching 8+ years of age and it's treated me quite well until this point.)
So, I'm alright with some offset to not being able to max things out immediately. Especially since the alternative will be having to max out the next Macbook I buy at the start (due to being un-upgradable) So I'm quite grateful that this is still being sold; otherwise I may have had to choose another laptop and I really do enjoy my Macbook.
So, I'm alright with some offset to not being able to max things out immediately. Especially since the alternative will be having to max out the next Macbook I buy at the start (due to being un-upgradable) So I'm quite grateful that this is still being sold; otherwise I may have had to choose another laptop and I really do enjoy my Macbook.
Lol, no one really NEEDS a mac, it's mostly just a vanity product. I jumped on that train and have been regretting it, but lesson learned (though in my defense I do a lot of video editing and was conned into believing that macs are the gods of video and music editing). sure its nice to have a shiny toy, but if you want any utility or function, build a nice windows 7 desktop - (hard for me to recommend windows laptops atm since windows 8 is a train wreck, hoping 10 will be better :/)
Much the same here. I'm still using my 2011 MacBook pro with a 1TB drive, 256GB SSD, and 16GB RAM. The terribly low storage options on the retina MacBooks are far too inadequate for my uses and it's disappointing that Apple has done that. They're more portable but then if you actually want decent storage your only option is to lug around external drives or pay a fortune larger capacity on board storage. My iTunes library alone would eat a large chunk of the base model storage.
I got a non retina 2012 13" I7 model almost one year ago. I upgraded it to SSD and 16GBytes of memory and it's ****ing awesome.
I work in IT so ethernet on board is awesome. Networking is awesome. If I could I would replace my FW port with another ethernet port, might get a TB adapter so I can have 2.
I also like my music in top quality RAW-format rips, and I have a lot of CDs to rip so I use the optical drive a lot.
My battery is at 83-84% of full capacity now and it hasn't gone a year yet. I think I'll go down to the Apple store so they can run their diagnostic tests on it to see if anythings wrong. I think on the retina when they swap battery they swap the entire top case while on this one you just unplug a cable.
And people saying Windows 8 is a wreck, face it, you're wrong. Win8 runs circles around Win7. I don't use Win8 though because it removed features that I use with Win7, but Win10 are bringing them back.
I work in IT so ethernet on board is awesome. Networking is awesome. If I could I would replace my FW port with another ethernet port, might get a TB adapter so I can have 2.
I also like my music in top quality RAW-format rips, and I have a lot of CDs to rip so I use the optical drive a lot.
My battery is at 83-84% of full capacity now and it hasn't gone a year yet. I think I'll go down to the Apple store so they can run their diagnostic tests on it to see if anythings wrong. I think on the retina when they swap battery they swap the entire top case while on this one you just unplug a cable.
And people saying Windows 8 is a wreck, face it, you're wrong. Win8 runs circles around Win7. I don't use Win8 though because it removed features that I use with Win7, but Win10 are bringing them back.