Anyone bought a new Macbook Pro recently?

Absolutely, pro rata it only works out about £20 a month if it lasts anything like as long as my current one has!

FYI, when I was looking last year they were much cheaper in Costco than anywhere else.
 
I'm considering upgrading my Mac book air to a pro. The big thing for me is size and weight, the old pros were a lot heavier than the airs, not so anymore. With the pro I can get more spec for not much more weight and similar size.

I like to replace my iPad, iMac, laptop in rotation, the iPhone will probably get replaced every three years. I try and avoid buying close to launch dates.




My wife gets my hand me downs and the children hers.
 
I bought a NOS early 2015 MacBook pro 13” 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 16GB ram 512 SSD Hard drive for £1350 in Feb this year, 2 USB 3 ports, 2 thunderbolt ports, HDMI port, SDXC port etc, very pleased lot lighter than 2010 that it replaced, need a external dvd/cd drive though. Still some in Ebay
https://support.apple.com/kb/sp715?locale=en_GB

I reckon that'd be perfect!
I might go into Stormfront and have a chat with the guys. They do 12 months 0% interest which eases things slightly!
 
Two things really put me off them though (and the first is true of mine);

Lack of storage ~ Apple trying to force you to use the Cloud. I refuse to so end up with external drives; outrageous IMO on such an expensive bit of kit but hey, that's Apple for you :rolleyes:
Price ~ With Apples's current pricing structure and the shit exchange rates new Macbook's are stoooooopid money.

Andres

Andres, why not just fit a large SSD in place of the HDD in your Pro? They are very cheap now. A couple of hours wait to clone your existing drive across and a few screws and its done.

I use a network attached drive (Synology Diskstation) as my own personal cloud storage and backup with a couple of 2Tb drives in it.

I upped the ram and ssd relatively cheaply in my early 2011 model 15" MBP and its so fast I don't see any need to upgrade, although its about to get its third battery this week.
 
I have the 13" pro with the touch bar. I went in convinced that all I needed was the non touch bar walked up to the counter and blurted out the wrong one :nenau

I was getting it over 12 month interest free so I thought go big or go home. The thing that others have not pointed out is the finger print reader. It is a great extra and as my wife and I share it and have our own log ins all I do when I need to change is touch the finger print reader it logs her out and me in. Also great for online purchases and authorizing updates.

Yes of course you can easily live without the touch bar but if your going to spend some money, spend some!

Neil
 
Andres, why not just fit a large SSD in place of the HDD in your Pro? They are very cheap now. A couple of hours wait to clone your existing drive across and a few screws and its done.

.....................

A couple of issues there......................

1) It already has a SSD ( a paltry 250GB IIRC?) and I'm not sure how easy /cheap it is to upgrade?
2) I am a computer numpty en extremis so found the easiest thing to do was drag an old external HDD I had out of retirement and store all my big files on there. Anything I'm working on (big images/vids) I just drag onto my desk top and then bung them back on the HDD when finished with them. The SSD is just used for storing the OS and Apps.

I'm sure there must be more elegant ways of doing it though.....................

Andres
 
Andres, why not just fit a large SSD in place of the HDD in your Pro? They are very cheap now. A couple of hours wait to clone your existing drive across and a few screws and its done.

I use a network attached drive (Synology Diskstation) as my own personal cloud storage and backup with a couple of 2Tb drives in it.

I upped the ram and ssd relatively cheaply in my early 2011 model 15" MBP and its so fast I don't see any need to upgrade, although its about to get its third battery this week.

Tony,

Is it possible to upgrade the hdd on all MacBooks (pro and air)?

I'm looking for one at the moment but trying to find something that I can upgrade after being bitten with a HP laptop that I cannot upgrade the hdd as it's not a hdd but "memory" soldered onto the motherboard.....

Thanks

Tom
 
I upgraded from the Air to the Pro with the bar.

Do you need it? No.

Is it cool to use? Yep.

You pays your money.

Agreed. I would recommend buying the top-spec model.

If you are a keen photographer the latest macbooks require you to buy one of these ...( since they no longer have a SD card slot)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9XDjjweKd0


PS can any of you pc fanboys ever imagine a Windows based pc lasting for 9 years like the OP's macbook has?
Apple stuff is superb. ( perhaps no longer posessing the commanding lead they used to have .... but still a lead over the competitors)
 
I bought mine at Costco ...MacBook Pro Retina with Touch Bar MNQF2B/A, Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM , 512GB Solid State Drive in Space Grey £1729 (excluding 2% cashback with the black card)
 
Re the retina screens.

My 2015 MBP has already had one screen replaced due to the screen coating delaminating.
One year on from replacment and the replacment screen is now delaminating nicely. My Apple care runs out in May 2018 so I will get the screen replaced just before then.

It's a very well known problem....Google 'Apple Staingate'.

Apple fixed mine no problem but (as said) the replacment has lasted a year. I wouldn't buy another MBP with a retina screen.
 
Andres, why not just fit a large SSD in place of the HDD in your Pro? They are very cheap now. A couple of hours wait to clone your existing drive across and a few screws and its done.

I use a network attached drive (Synology Diskstation) as my own personal cloud storage and backup with a couple of 2Tb drives in it.

I upped the ram and ssd relatively cheaply in my early 2011 model 15" MBP and its so fast I don't see any need to upgrade, although its about to get its third battery this week.
You cannot do so in the lastest Macbook pro. It is dedicated SSD. Nothing else fits. Very fast, but small.
 
In these days of cloud storage and being pretty much always connected, is a small SSD/hard drive an issue?

I'm on my 2014 Air with a 250gb SSD, do some video editing, much photo processing and various normal work and home use stuff - and don't have a storage issue. I thought the days of storing anything locally are long gone. I'd feel extremely nervous relying on my laptop SSD or a remote drive in the house. I have no fear about losing my laptop.

I pay just under £1 p.m. for 250gb Google storage. When I need to watch TV/videos on a plane or download a video for editing, plenty of room on the hard drive and I get rid of it to the cloud asap.

Is it just me, or are you lot a bunch of technical computing gods needing shit loads of computing power/storage?
 
My daughters Macbook Air has an ssd built in to the mainboard that is not user upgradeable. My 2011 Macbook pro has a removeable sata hdd drive which is easy and cheap to upgrade to an ssd drive.
 
re storage: setup a nas with 4 drives, 2 tb drives are dirt cheap nowadays, you get 6gb of storage and one redundant drive. You can store photos, movies, etc on it and access it on all of your devices. I use an old readynas with plex to stream movies and tv shows to my tv and ipad. all of my photos are backed up to it ( and to SmugMug).

documents are backed up to Dropbox, iphone photos to iCloud and to SmugMug, and all on the nas.
I can still lose stuff but it's a reasonable amount of backup.

I use lightroom with the catalog linked to the photos on the nas. I can edit photos on my macbook or mac pro and have one central library.

The macbook has a 512gb drive but I don't store much on it.
 
In these days of cloud storage and being pretty much always connected, is a small SSD/hard drive an issue?

I'm on my 2014 Air with a 250gb SSD, do some video editing, much photo processing and various normal work and home use stuff - and don't have a storage issue. I thought the days of storing anything locally are long gone. I'd feel extremely nervous relying on my laptop SSD or a remote drive in the house. I have no fear about losing my laptop.

I pay just under £1 p.m. for 250gb Google storage. When I need to watch TV/videos on a plane or download a video for editing, plenty of room on the hard drive and I get rid of it to the cloud asap.

Is it just me, or are you lot a bunch of technical computing gods needing shit loads of computing power/storage?
No, it's more than that. It's about Apple renting you storage space, and also the security aspects of the whole cloud thing. I refuse, point blank to use the cloud, and do you trust the Merkin or for that matter any other Government? No matter what promises are made, if they need to, they change the rules so that they are later found to be worthless.
No, I am not paranoid, I have nothing to hide, but I do not believe in serving up on a plate everything they wish to know about you and your social circle, never mind business.
Myke
 
Re the retina screens.

My 2015 MBP has already had one screen replaced due to the screen coating delaminating.
One year on from replacment and the replacment screen is now delaminating nicely. My Apple care runs out in May 2018 so I will get the screen replaced just before then.

It's a very well known problem....Google 'Apple Staingate'.

Apple fixed mine no problem but (as said) the replacment has lasted a year. I wouldn't buy another MBP with a retina screen.

Fuck , I hadn't realised how widespread that was. I mentioned it at the rugby club tonight and pretty much every macbook user has complained that they suffered this!
 
Fuck , I hadn't realised how widespread that was. I mentioned it at the rugby club tonight and pretty much every macbook user has complained that they suffered this!

Yes, whilst I too am an "Apple fanboy" (!!), my Macbook Pro is now on to its thirm retina screen
 
I replaced my top of the range Lenovo (6+yrs solid service) with the top of the range MacBook in February..........

Lovely piece of kit, but iOS .................... Jeez! It is bloody frustrating!

I have parallels/Win10 on it, but of course - that is a lot more power-hungry.

Al
 


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