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So my production laptop decided last night it didn't want to wake from its sleep. It just so happened I'd spent much of the previous hour looking at MBPs as I still have a thing about that sexy OSX. So maybe it just has the hump.
Still, even if I do recover the data from my laptop - the 10% or so that isn't on GDrive - and get it working again, I think I still fancy a MBP. Seems like the 2015s are held in high regard. The 15" is the one I've my eye on, purely for as I need the power.
What's the word on the street on devices of the period - and possibly a bit newer even though some seemed to get slagged off re touch bar etc? Budget poss £1k. Certainly can't justify anything remotely new.
Ta
PS would likely stick Parallels and W10 on it as my keys apps are Win only.
Purely one opinion but the battery swelled on my Macbook Pro three years ago and cracked the logic board. Apple's "genius bar" pointed out that it was six months out of warranty and invited me to choose a replacement from their many and varied display - at my own expense, naturally.
I bought a Surface Pro instead.
I'm not that techy but I have one and here are my thoughts.
It fires up and works in seconds, every time. I like that a lot
The screen and sound is superb
Size is really nice, very usable but not bulky
Battery life is excellent
Lack of USB is irritating but I can live with it
As a lifelong Windows user the Mac OS takes some getting used to. I've had mine a year and I still find it irritating, not so much as there is anything wrong with it, but it is just not what I am used to.
Purely one opinion but the battery swelled on my Macbook Pro three years ago and cracked the logic board. Apple’s “genius bar” pointed out that it was six months out of warranty and invited me to choose a replacement from their many and varied display – at my own expense, naturally.
I bought a Surface Pro instead.
I had the same thing happen to a 2008(ish) MBP I bought secondhand years ago. Thankfully the Genius peeps did battery swap for minimal cost and it was job done.
Also, I have SP3 and it's great for doing stuff on the go. Lots of cool functionality and I like it a lot. But it lacks the power - and makes too much noise - for the tougher stuff.
I have an old-ish rMBR, it's quick and has decent capacity. It's older than 2015 though I think, maybe 2012 or so.
Am um-ing about whether to sell it or keep as a spare.
I like it and ran it as travel / work laptop and hooked up to monitor when working from home.
I've had 2 15" MBPRs, I went for a 2015 as I didn't want to buy a new full set of adapters etc and I wasn't prepared to pay the extra for the touchbar model.
The first one had 2 screens under warranty (1 delaminating glass, one 'smeargate' coating problem) and a replacement "A" key after the print wore off. The second one has been fine.
I would really recommend saving a bit more and buying new so you get a warranty 🙂
@franksinatra, yep I felt the same about my original MBP. Loved the look and feel, but could never get my heads around the OS, Finder, shortcuts etc. Very little was second nature. Annoying for sure. This time round I'll sit down and smash out some tutorials and commit to it.
would likely stick Parallels and W10 on it as my keys apps are Win only
Not really much point buying a Mac if you're just going to use Windows apps. You'll get a better spec machine and much less hassle with drivers and Windows updates if you spend the same money on a high-end Windows laptop.
I had a logic board fail on a mid-2012 this year, so I replaced it with a 2nd hand mid-2012 for £350. Swapped over the RAM and 1Tb hard drive from my old one. Newer ones tend to be SSD which is great if you only need a small drive but stupidly expensive otherwise. I'm also a bit of a luddite and like all those ports and the built in Superdrive.
Although a dyed in the wool fanboy I baulk at the cost of current MBPs and I find myself in agreement with hols2. If your main apps are Windows, go for a Windows machine.
I use both Windows and OSX on a daily basis. Windows 10 is leagues ahead of OSX in functionality but the laters integration between Apple devices is seamless. As an iPhone and Ipad user I really like the work together and I use MacBook Pro 13 as my daily machine, previous to that it had been a 15 inch but it is a big lump to carry around.
Even though I've been using a MacBook now for around 5 years the ease of using Windows makes the OSX look clunky and ask my wife who has used Macs for decades how do you this on a Mac, to which the answer is usually you can't.
I also use Parallels on the MacBook for software that won't run on a Mac and it's OK but needs a bit of fiddling with to get it working properly as the default settings are poor. The coherance view mode is good and always you to run windows program in the OSX environment but it's still not flawless i.e. you can't drag a file from a Windows folder into an email on OSX instead you need find the Windows folder in Finder and drag it from there. MS Office on the Mac is now very good but still lagging a bit from the Windows version and still a few quirks such as if your sent an Outlook email as an attachment from Outlook on a PC you can't open the file on a Mac using Outlook. I still use Remote Desktop to connect to a PC when needed and that works faultlessly.
In hindsight if I'd not committed so much into Apple and MacBooks I would have gone the MS Surface route and saved myself a bundle.
It’s your work laptop, you have a £1k budget, you only use Windows software.
cant see the logic in buying a used MBP TBH.
I appreciate everything said above and know I'm more than capable of making irrational decisions here and there.
Still fancy a MBP as am a bit bored with a Windows front end. Would defo use a few OSX-only apps as no way would I switch to a MBP solely to run Parallels.
Hadn't considered a new Surface Pro. Mine is a 8Gb i5 Pro 3 and handles itself pretty well. A bit of fan noise and only minimal lag when lots of tasks running. MS Store have a few deals on. Nothing spectacular though. Certainly like the performance of the newer ones, even the 8Gb i5.
Food for thought methinks.
My Air is like a cockroach… seems to be indestructible. If it ever dies, I'd grab another one.
I now have a 400gb card hidden in the the SD slot with all my virtual machines on (I use Sun's VirtualBox though, as I'm cheap). That can just be just moved to another physical machine in seconds if need be. If you want always ready backups, you could use a big (tiny) card in the SD slot for always running time machine backups (I'm always backing up to network and cloud drives so don't).
Free : https://www.virtualbox.org/
Hidden : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00WQVK754
I have 2 15" MBPs - a 2011 and 2012 that I use for my design / web business - they just work and I have a local ex-Apple Tech guy who knows how to look after them. I like how my iPhones and iPad seamlessly integrate - if one device goes down, I still have all the data / can recover it easily. Spent years working in a 'Windows' corporate environment - the last few on Surface Pro - 2 total failure / hardware replacements in 2 years plus numerous 'bricking' episodes - I'd never buy one for myself.
Production laptop, lol!
Pat's the mac book on the bonnet, 18 VMs running on that bad boy.
Having used both I'm genuinely curious as to what is leagues ahead in Windows compared to OSX? Apart from games can't really think of anything else.
Price for a start, laptops are thin clients.
Been running a mid 2014 15" MBP since new and it's been flawless, easily the best laptop/ bit of tech I've bought.
I installed Windows 10 to boot from an external second hand IBM enterprise SSD and boot camp onto it for the occasional CAD work when away from the office, which also works a treat and shouldn't compromise the internal HD at all.
That being said, my dad's recently purchased Dell XPS 15 also looks lovely if I required windows all the time.
I use a late 2015 MBP (13", i5) at work connected to a 4k monitor, for things like mobile and api development.
It's ok. The build quality is nice (I especially like the maglock power port, which isn't present on new versions).
Would I buy one? Hell no. Apple are going down the pan IMO really top end pricing for middling gear. They don't seem to be innovating much instead resting on their laurels.
Microsoft seem to be doing a lot right. I'd stay the hell away from their server side stack but otherwise the hardware and windows itself it's nice. OSX crashes more frequently for me.
Got at 17" mbp from work. It works, but is no better or worse than a window laptop. In the 5 months of ownership it has crashed completely 3 times...once more than the previous windows laptop over same timeframe.
Keyboard layout is different but it works well for my work stuff.
I'm not seeing any advantage to it, but as I didn't pay for it, I'm not seeing any disadvantage either.
Slight hijack if you don't mind. What's the best/cheapest way of getting Excel on a MacBook? As a household we are almost totally Apple, but MrsKenny's old Windows laptop is dying and she's thinking of a MacBook. However she does have a load of Excel spreadsheets that would be almost impossible to recreate on Numbers. That's the only thing stopping her buying one at the moment.
It's going to be Office for mac I imagine. I got a 3 license copy years ago for 80quid or so. I don't know the current price though. Of course there are open source alternatives like Open Office.
Upload them to Google Sheets and then work with them using anything?
Or for a completely random alternative she could not get a Macbook but get a good Chromebook and run either the Microsoft Excel android app or just use 365 online.
My daughter has a 2015 MBP and she's envious of my Google Pixelbook as it has more RAM, better screen, better keyboard and is faster!!
Cheers guys will check out both suggestions.
Another quick, related, question. With Office for Mac installed, will files (Word, Excel) etc automatically back up to iCloud the same way my Pages and Numbers documents do? Or would I ned to set up a Microsoft account and upload to OneDrive?