Why I bought NonRetina 13" MBP at Best Buy for teenagers

[brdeveloper]

ahahaha the only difference is soldered RAM and none of the cMBPs will drive more than 16GB RAM regardless, so what's the point? I would understand the complaints when compared to, let's say, ThinkPad W540 which has 4 SO-DIMM slots and therefore supports 32GB, but the current MBP layout won't accommodate so many memory modules

Apple charges $200 for 16GB in a 13" rMBP while you can get the same amount of memory for around $100. You also have the original 4GB modules which you can drop into an iMac if you have one. Also, you can put a 512GB SSD pretty easily on a cMBP, while you'll have to wait until PCIe blades become available for rMBPs.

I think there is room for discussion when buying 13" Macbooks. On the 15" side, the decision is pretty easy though. Just buy the base 15", maybe order a bigger SSD and you're fine.

 

[illusionx]

Why I bought NonRetina 13" MBP at Best Buy for teenagers

^ one stick of 8gb go for 80$. There is no way you'd find Samsung sticks for cheaper u less you go for used.

200$ for the 16gb ram upgrade is absolutely fair price.

Not to mention the benefits you get for going with a PCI-E SSD rather than having a sata3 SSD...

 

[domain]

^ one stick of 8gb go for 80$. There is no way you'd find Samsung sticks for cheaper u less you go for used.

200$ for the 16gb ram upgrade is absolutely fair price.

Not to mention the benefits you get for going with a PCI-E SSD rather than having a sata3 SSD...

Not Samsung (and not sure why that is your requirement, Apple doesn't even seem to use a single chip vendor), but yes it is possible... I picked up 4 (new) - 8GB DDR3L/1600 sticks for $55 a piece within the last week. At worst case, the multiple online retailers here in the US have 16gb kits for $149 or under.

Unfortunately the entire argument is somewhat of a apples to oranges comparison. Apple has already charged you for the base memory configuration (lets say 8gb), and then it is $200 on top of that. So real cost to you is more like $300... you don't get to keep/reuse/resell that 8gb you already paid for like you would have if the laptop was user upgradeable.

Can't argue SATA vs. PCI-E throughput, but I would be extremely skeptical that you are going to be see a noticeable difference (outside of synthetic benchmark) considering we are discussing a 13" laptop.

 

[maratus]

Nobody is arguing that Apple's 16GB option is more expensive than buying RAM yourself. But ~200$ is what everyone (Dell, Lenovo, HP) are charging for 8GB -> 16GB upgrade during customisation. They also charge ~300$ for 256GB -> 512GB SSD upgrade and ~500$ for 512GB -> 1TB SSD upgrade, so Apple upgrades aren't overpriced. There're also many laptops with soldered RAM (typically ultraportable thin-and-powerful machines similar to rMBP).

 

[Naimfan]

The 13" cMBP is (still) a highly capable machine, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. In terms of processing power, it is still competitive with the 13" rMBPs and any of the MBAs. And the ability to upgrade it down the line is attractive.

 

[midorix]

Regardless of anyone says, your teenagers are lucky to have a very generous parent like yourself to get them macbooks.

My teenager got 2 years old Lenovo 11" running on Windows 8 that was priced at half of the typical macbook price when new. Since it's a windows machine, he'll learn to troubleshoot the compatablity issues, securities issues, maintenance issues, and so on and he'll thank me one day.

This past couple of weeks, I purchased 13" rMBP for myself from recent sale (I already know how to troubleshoot windows machine). Great machine but I now have a issue using our desktop non-retina iMac as it looks "blurry" in comparison .

I'm sure you'll get differing opinion but at the end, you had your logic and you made the right call.

 

[Meister]

The 13" cMBP is (still) a highly capable machine, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. In terms of processing power, it is still competitive with the 13" rMBPs and any of the MBAs. And the ability to upgrade it down the line is attractive.

Very true. I just wish they would upgrade the gpu.

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Regardless of anyone says, your teenagers are lucky to have a very generous parent like yourself to get them macbooks.

My teenager got 2 years old Lenovo 11" running on Windows 8 that was priced at half of the typical macbook price when new. Since it's a windows machine, he'll learn to troubleshoot the compatablity issues, securities issues, maintenance issues, and so on and he'll thank me one day.

This past couple of weeks, I purchased 13" rMBP for myself from recent sale (I already know how to troubleshoot windows machine). Great machine but I now have a issue using our desktop non-retina iMac as it looks "blurry" in comparison .

I'm sure you'll get differing opinion but at the end, you had your logic and you made the right call.

They do have an awesome parent! And they will be happy with their macbooks!

 

[lkpolovchik]

Don't let anybody tell you different, your kids will be thrilled with their MacBooks. I bought the same laptop in May at Best Buy along with the geek squad warranty. I have no idea what half of the posters are talking about on this thread but I do know that little 13" mac does the job it was meant to do, which seems to me to be basic tasks. Maybe in a couple years they can sell them or pass them on to someone and upgrade to a faster mac if they outgrow it. But for now it's a nice gift that any teenager would love. If I had to choose between any windows laptop or that non retina model I would chose that one again.

 

[bniu]

I used to be adamant about being able to do my own upgrades, but I gotta say that I've been pretty satisfied with my rMBP that has 16GB ram and 1TB SSD. It does everything I need it to do and I don't have to worry about doing any upgrades to it. Plus, since I got it refurbed, the price I paid was basically a complimentary upgrade from the 512 to the 1TB drive. Not bad I must say!

I also previously had an 11" MBA with 8GB ram and 256 GB SSD that I was also quite pleased with, but I ended up giving it away to my sister because her laptop broke and she needed a laptop for college. From what she's told me, she is quite pleased with it and it's continued to serve her great.

With the sealed units, if you just get the config that you want, you won't have to worry at all about future upgrades and can just focus on using your machine for many years down the road. It was a much different story back in the day when storage and ram sizes were much smaller. Now, even the basic sizes are good enough for most people.

 

[brdeveloper]

I used to be adamant about being able to do my own upgrades, but I gotta say that I've been pretty satisfied with my rMBP that has 16GB ram and 1TB SSD. It does everything I need it to do and I don't have to worry about doing any upgrades to it. Plus, since I got it refurbed, the price I paid was basically a complimentary upgrade from the 512 to the 1TB drive. Not bad I must say!

I also previously had an 11" MBA with 8GB ram and 256 GB SSD that I was also quite pleased with, but I ended up giving it away to my sister because her laptop broke and she needed a laptop for college. From what she's told me, she is quite pleased with it and it's continued to serve her great.

With the sealed units, if you just get the config that you want, you won't have to worry at all about future upgrades and can just focus on using your machine for many years down the road. It was a much different story back in the day when storage and ram sizes were much smaller. Now, even the basic sizes are good enough for most people.

If you can afford Apple premium prices for BTO upgrades, you're fine. If you live in U.S., even better. In Brazil the cheapest Macbook (MBA 11"/4GB/128GB) costs around $2000,00. A dGPU rMBP (15"/16GB/512GB/750M) is offered from $4000,00. However, even in U.S. a 13" cMBP can be a good deal, since you can buy standard SATAIII SSDs and 16GB RAM for very interesting prices.

I just bought Apple Care for my rMBP, which will be covered until Dec/2016. Until then, I'll just attach external media. Wouldn't risk my warranty with internal drives. But after that, I'll probably get a 512GB or 1TB SATAIII blade.

 

[Essenar]

On one hand, I agree with the majority here. This machine is very outdated and the memory/hard-drive upgrades won't help close the gap against the rMBP with 8GB.

On the other hand, I think Apple's tactics of forcing us to go "all in" on the initial purchase is a way of separating social classes based on economic standing.

It's perfectly reasonable for a person who makes $40k a year to want to buy a laptop and not want to use a credit card to do it. Maybe they just want to spend $900 and get Apple Care. That jumps the price up considerably, plus the price of software for college students, a bag, a keyboard cover. What if they're on recovering credit from a Chapter 13? They don't DESERVE a Mac? That's an arrogant, pretentious, selfish way to view things like this.

However, if they buy the $1100 Retina, they're bottle necked from future upgrades. The $1000 Air is even worse. We've essentially told them, "You're too poor to be able to have a future proof device. Sucks to be you, should've went and been born not poor."

My situation? Soon after graduating, I got a decent job. I am definitely in the upper range of income for college graduates. So I set aside a few hundred from each check, sold my crappy machine and after a couple of paychecks I had enough for a 15" Retina. I didn't have enough to get the Applecare so I'm getting it at the next check. But I'm uniquely blessed: A single male in a technical field without a lot of expenses every month. A parent fighting a mortgage has just as much a "moral right" to own an Apple product and shouldn't be "shunned" for making a smart financial decision. They're for her/his teenagers. What happens if the hard drive goes bad after warranty is up? If they decide to be programmers or get into engineering or something? An Ivy Bridge is good enough to get them through it but 8GB or even worse, 4GB would be a death sentence. And replacing a PCI-e SSD outside of warranty is baller money, versus being able to just throw a cheap 5400 drive in or an SSD on sale.

 

[brdeveloper]

On one hand, I agree with the majority here. This machine is very outdated and the memory/hard-drive upgrades won't help close the gap against the rMBP with 8GB.

On the other hand, I think Apple's tactics of forcing us to go "all in" on the initial purchase is a way of separating social classes based on economic standing.

It's perfectly reasonable for a person who makes $40k a year to want to buy a laptop and not want to use a credit card to do it. Maybe they just want to spend $900 and get Apple Care. That jumps the price up considerably, plus the price of software for college students, a bag, a keyboard cover. What if they're on recovering credit from a Chapter 13? They don't DESERVE a Mac? That's an arrogant, pretentious, selfish way to view things like this.

However, if they buy the $1100 Retina, they're bottle necked from future upgrades. The $1000 Air is even worse. We've essentially told them, "You're too poor to be able to have a future proof device. Sucks to be you, should've went and been born not poor."

My situation? Soon after graduating, I got a decent job. I am definitely in the upper range of income for college graduates. So I set aside a few hundred from each check, sold my crappy machine and after a couple of paychecks I had enough for a 15" Retina. I didn't have enough to get the Applecare so I'm getting it at the next check. But I'm uniquely blessed: A single male in a technical field without a lot of expenses every month. A parent fighting a mortgage has just as much a "moral right" to own an Apple product and shouldn't be "shunned" for making a smart financial decision. They're for her/his teenagers. What happens if the hard drive goes bad after warranty is up? If they decide to be programmers or get into engineering or something? An Ivy Bridge is good enough to get them through it but 8GB or even worse, 4GB would be a death sentence. And replacing a PCI-e SSD outside of warranty is baller money, versus being able to just throw a cheap 5400 drive in or an SSD on sale.

Agreed. It seems that Apple is trying to keep away from consumers with IT skills. I had my first PC in 1998 when I was 17. Pretty too late for the first computer from a first-world view, but actually I was a lucky guy, since most of my friends didn't have a personal computer. Well, maybe this opportunity led me to a computer science graduation. Since that computer (a Pentium 200MMX tower desktop) was user-upgradeable, I was able to make some improvements on it in the first years.

The upgradeability was a great feature of personal computing for democratizing the technology. You could keep the same computer for years and apply upgrades that were most valuable to you. My first laptop was a Clevo one, renamed to a local brand. I bought it in 2007 and could upgrade RAM (from 512MB to 1GB) and the CPU (from a Celeron M to a Yonah Core Duo).

My White Macbook is going strong to its fifth year since I upgraded RAM and the SSD. If I was able to install high-end Core2Duos or even first-gen i-Series, it would last forever. Persisting this trend, I'll get a PC laptop in the future, probably a Lenovo Thinkpad T-4XX Series. I'm OS-agnostic, so don't care on using OSX.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

it's purely a business decision. Your ability to keep a laptop for 6-8 years directly goes against running a profitable business. In fact, most industries that sells you a product that lasts that long isn't very profitable. Think about it, if you're running a business and your customers come back to see you every 6-8 years, how do you plan for that?

For me, I actually like Apple computers because of the amazing resale value. I always buy from Apple outlet for savings right outside the box, and I resell them for maybe 15-20% loss every year or two. Added up together, 5 years is fast depreciation and you have nothing to show for it at the end, but at least you'll always have the best. You can slow down that depreciation by selling it for 2-3 years, they don't reach half their value for a very long time so you can definitely really stretch your dollar out. You can NOT do this with PC computers as their resale value is horrendous.

Anyway, I prefer this to constantly upgrading because I'm the kind of guy who doesn't think RAM and Harddrive are as big a deal as the silicone and battery under the hood. Once I go 8GB and a SSD, i see myself pretty happy for a while.

 

[brdeveloper]

it's purely a business decision. Your ability to keep a laptop for 6-8 years directly goes against running a profitable business. In fact, most industries that sells you a product that lasts that long isn't very profitable. Think about it, if you're running a business and your customers come back to see you every 6-8 years, how do you plan for that?

For me, I actually like Apple computers because of the amazing resale value. I always buy from Apple outlet for savings right outside the box, and I resell them for maybe 15-20% loss every year or two. Added up together, 5 years is fast depreciation and you have nothing to show for it at the end, but at least you'll always have the best. You can slow down that depreciation by selling it for 2-3 years, they don't reach half their value for a very long time so you can definitely really stretch your dollar out. You can NOT do this with PC computers as their resale value is horrendous.

Anyway, I prefer this to constantly upgrading because I'm the kind of guy who doesn't think RAM and Harddrive are as big a deal as the silicone and battery under the hood. Once I go 8GB and a SSD, i see myself pretty happy for a while.

Only cheap PCs lose their value fast. A Lenovo Thinkpad or a Dell Precision hold their values just like Macs. I really like Thinkpad laptops and their 3-year warranty out of the box. Some models even have upgradeable processors. If I spill beer on the keyboard, chances are big that the computer will survive. They're like classic MBPs in terms of hardware specs, but with updated CPUs and more upgradeable parts (notably the CPU).

Maybe in USA your approach works. You basically spend $500 each 2 years to stay updated. In Brazil this value translates to $1000. Not a big deal here since it means a quite high monthly fee.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Apple charges $200 for 16GB in a 13" rMBP while you can get the same amount of memory for around $100.

Can you link to this 16GB of RAM for $100 please? I would like to buy this.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Agreed. It seems that Apple is trying to keep away from consumers with IT skills.

This interests me. What are your IT skills?

My office is in a datacentre operated by what is probably the largest datacentre company in the world and almost everyone uses Macs...

 

[saturnotaku]

Can you link to this 16GB of RAM for $100 please? I would like to buy this.

16 GB of RAM hasn't been $100 as a non-sale price for some time. I got my 16 GB kit on Black Friday 2013 for $97. Normal prices right now are $125 and up for 1.5V modules and $135 and up for 1.35V ones.

 

[brdeveloper]

16 GB of RAM hasn't been $100 as a non-sale price for some time. I got my 16 GB kit on Black Friday 2013 for $97. Normal prices right now are $125 and up for 1.5V modules and $135 and up for 1.35V ones.

I can't believe you're correcting me for 25 bucks. Ok, let's go ahead in your reasoning. RAM is "really" expensive, but SSDs are rather affordable these days. You can get a Crucial M500 240GB for $80 at Amazon. So stop whinning an let's upgrade everything. For $200 bucks you can setup a massive upgrade to older Macs.

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Can you link to this 16GB of RAM for $100 please? I would like to buy this.

$125-130 actually, sorry. There's a rather high inflation rate on the RAM market.

 

[brdeveloper]

This interests me. What are your IT skills?

My office is in a datacentre operated by what is probably the largest datacentre company in the world and almost everyone uses Macs...

I'm a master degree student in computer science and BSc. in computer science. Since I was a teenager, I upgraded personal computers for extending their lifetime. If I was in USA, I'd probably had Macs over all my IT life. They're very affordable there. For $1600,00 we get really c***py computers here. I paid around $3000 for an out-of-the-box, early-2013 rMBP on December, 2013. I've just bought Apple Care for protecting my investment until December, 2016.

I think that part of the fun on buying computers is being able to improve your return of investment. If a computer scientist, an engineer, a geek, or whoever is interested on the internals of computers are unable to modify or fix them because of artificial measures (like with the 2014 Mac Mini and its soldered RAM/proprietary screws), then you have a toy and not really a tool. At best, a very expensive tool. This way I'll become a happy owner of a Thinkpad T or W in 2016/2017.

Interesting you use Macs in a datacenter. If something goes wrong, you just replace it with an entire new Mac? When you have Xeon PC towers/racks, you just need replacing a PSU, a hot-swap HDD and so on, sometimes even without needing shuting them down.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Interesting you use Macs in a datacenter. If something goes wrong, you just replace it with an entire new Mac? When you have Xeon PC towers/racks, you just need replacing a PSU, a hot-swap HDD and so on, sometimes even without needing shuting them down.

Sorry...I didn't mean in the data centre farms!

Our typical setup would be IBM blade x240 with dual twelve core xeons (14 blades per chassis), CentOS, 256GB RAM, dual 10gbe ethernet to SSD SAN. Everything upgradeable, everything replaceable, many things hot swappable.

What I meant was that if you look at the people who come into the datacentre facility itself to do hands-on technical work (the managers, the network admins, the sys admins, developers etc) rMBP is by far the most popular choice of computer. I strongly believe it is because of the prevalence of Linux in the data centre (probably in the order of 80% - 90%). My theory is that when Linux professionals need a laptop they gravitate towards OS X.

As a long term user of Linux from the mid 90's, I exclusively used Linux on the desktop until 2004, had a G4 iBook for a year and went back to Linux until 2011. Since then I have exclusively used Mac laptops.

A bit of self-analysis tells me that OS X is everything I wish Linux on the desktop was - standardised, low maintenance, desktop Unix with high-quality commercial applications.

In addition to this the vertical integration is a panacea to the issue of hardware support with Linux on the laptop. Typically 95% of the hardware in a laptop will work flawlessly with Linux, the other 5% will not and it really bothers the OCD geek in me having one or two things on my laptop which don't work (even if I don't use them - Eg fingerprint scanner).

 

[paolo-]

I don't feel so bad about the user replaceability in the new machines. RAM is very unlikely to fail. Obviously more is better but with memory compression and SSD that can do very fast swap I don't think those computer will cripple too fast.

SSD are more reliable than HDD so that removes some of the stress. The SSD is actually replaceable in the computer it's just an Apple specific part. Prior to 2014, you can get reasonably affordable after market SSDs for rMBP and MBA that are actually user replaceable.

I would personally have jumped on the rMBP (hard to tell when you don't have kids though).

 

[saturnotaku]

I can't believe you're correcting me for 25 bucks.

I can't believe you're getting ******** over that, but if it bothers you that much, that's your problem.

 

[gngan]

Agreed with OP. I believe there is still a large market for the old MBP. I always like to have my media with me so I would rather have a machine that allows me to upgrade the HDD. HDD may be old but the storage size is great hence, I am using SSD for OS and HDD for medias. Being able to upgrade ram is also a plus. If my early 2011 MBP can't upgrade ram or HDD then I would probably have upgrade it. I am still using it and is very happy with the performance. I reckon it will last at least 2 more years before I want to upgrade it.

 

[luvmymbpr]

The 13" macbook non-retina would have to be about $400 for me to want it. The retina screen is just too damn good. It's one of the best things Apple has going for it. I'm sitting here at work right now typing this on a higher end lenovo laptop, and the screen looks like pure garbage compared to my 15" mbpr. It's a night and day difference.

I've built computers since the early 90's, and the fact you can't upgrade or repair a MBPr doesn't even phase me. I bought the machine right in the first place, and I have no doubts the i7 and 16gigs of memory with a 500gig ssd will last me at least 3-5 years. I also picked up the 3yr applecare extension at a cheap price. If it breaks, Apple can fix it for me.

 

[Queen6]

Sorry; outdated, outmoded irrespective of what you do the basic MBP will never come close to the performance of base model Retina, most importantly battery life and display quality. As for HD versus SSD no comparison am working on two 15" MBP`s one 2011, one 2012 Retina and the performance difference is "night & day" anyone who thinks different has never used a Mac with native SSD.

If I was buy to buy new Macs for kids it would be the 13" mid-range Retina. As it stands they inherit my old systems, generally 15"or 13" high-end models, no tinkering needed as by far they exceed the needs of the average user...

Q-6