Your thoughts on the 2013 vs 2014 rMBPs.

[darngooddesign]

I'm upgrading my old 2008* model and am going to buy used. It will, at the very least, be 8GB/256GB, but what are your thoughts on the versions and battery life on those. I think I'll stick with the i5, as the faster chip/gpu hits the battery.

On an aside, is there an OSX equivalent of the iOS activation lock I need to be wary of?

*I've had various work-issued computers so its not a big deal that my personal computer was slowish.

 

[Phyco126]

Can't help you with the rest, but definitely go for the 2014. The extra battery life + performance increases is worth it. That was the one I was going to get until I found out the 2015's SSD was twice as fast. Darn Apple.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

It makes no difference

I'm upgrading my old 2008* model and am going to buy used. It will, at the very least, be 8GB/256GB, but what are your thoughts on the versions and battery life on those. I think I'll stick with the i5, as the faster chip/gpu hits the battery.

On an aside, is there an OSX equivalent of the iOS activation lock I need to be wary of?

*I've had various work-issued computers so its not a big deal that my personal computer was slowish.

The only difference between the late 2013 and mid 2014 rMBP is .2ghz CPU speed everything else is exactly the same it really doesn't matter at all. The 2015 13 inch is a step up, but the faster SSD makes no practical difference for most peoples use case...

 

[Chundles]

I just upgraded from a 2008 Aluminium MacBook to an Apple-Refurb Late 2013 Retina 13" MacBook Pro.

This is the i7 with 512GB and it's the greatest computer I've ever owned. The battery life is amazing.

There's not much difference between the late-2013 and the 2014 model. The 2015 versions got much faster graphics (60Hz 4K vs 30Hz etc) and Force-Touch Trackpad along with slightly better battery life.

I got the late-2013 because it's near enough as makes no difference in performance but was much cheaper than the 2014.