Apple laptops

[Chris_Brown]

I got a decent deal on a factory refurbished mid-2015 top-of-line 15" MBP, so I now have money ready for that Canon 24mm tilt shift lens, also refurbished ...

I'm with ya. I just bought a 2011 17" MBP (the last year they were made), with matte screen, quad-i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, with a few dents for less than $1k. Now my "legacy" core-2 duo can be recycled. The speed bump is gladly noticeable. Since it's used on location, and not for post production, it should last me another few years.

[NancyP]

Those giant 17" MBPs were nice.

[kers]

Those giant 17" MBPs were nice.

and if you put an SSD and some RAM in it they are very fast...more than fast enough.
you will only miss USB3

[N80]

Nothing about these new MBPs appeals to me at this point. Seems like a box of gimmicks with real world application completely neglected.

Consumer Reports

[Hans Kruse]

Nothing about these new MBPs appeals to me at this point. Seems like a box of gimmicks with real world application completely neglected.

Consumer Reports

I have now used the 15" MBP 2016 for about a month and despite the move to TB3/USB-C which has annoyed many I don't see this as an issue. I really like to 4 identical ports rather then 2 different types. The touch bar is not supported by all applications yet but is quite nice. I'm waiting to have this on an external keyboard as well. The screen is great and the sound system is much better than than previously. By far the best feature for me is how quiet it runs compared to the 2015 model when editing photos. Battery life is reported to be inconsistent. I have not been running mine a lot off the power supply but has not noticed any real life difference from the old one. I don't see any gimmicks here and I think when the battery issue is resolved or explained and the people have over come the transiton to USB-C all will love this laptop.

[rdonson]

http://www.consumerreports.org/apple/apple-releases-fix-to-macbook-pros-in-response-to-consumer-reports-battery-test-results/

[N80]

I saw that. No big deal of course. But it still seems like getting a Ferrari and finding that brakes don't work right. With top dollar comes top expectation.

[Hans Kruse]

http://www.consumerreports.org/apple/apple-releases-fix-to-macbook-pros-in-response-to-consumer-reports-battery-test-results/

I saw that and wondered if my 2016 15" MBP also varied a lot in battery life. Without doing any "scientific tests" I can say that I don't find any really variations in normal use on battery. It can run e.g. Netflix for at least 5-6 hours, which is more than I need Lightroom I have not really tested on battery but that would be quite a bit shorter no doubt. Normal web browsing and e-mail would no doubt be longer, but have been testing this. So far I have not seen the OS fix mentioned.

I had the 2015 model before and I can say that for my use the 2016 is a significant improvement over the old one. The screen is a significant improvement and the fan noise is much less than old one. I like the tb3/usb-c setup and the smaller form factor and weight. All in all from me a thumbs up for the 2016 MBP which for me makes a desktop unnecessary. I was close to buying an iMac 5K and going through the pain of having two machines because of the fan noise on the old MBP 2015, but I put it off as I hoped the new one would have that problem solved. I did also not choose the fastest cpu option which I had on the 2015 and this was no doubt a contributing factor to the noise and a mistake on my part to take that.

[N80]

I have found that fan noise increases with the age of the laptop in general. Not sure why. Dust build up, certainly. Maybe additional strain from increasingly demanding OS and software as time goes by.

[NancyP]

My 2010 MBP got sufficiently warm to induce sweat when used on the lap, and fan was on 100% of time. I use one of those plastic laptop stands with a built-in fan powered by USB.

[Hans Kruse]

My 2010 MBP got sufficiently warm to induce sweat when used on the lap, and fan was on 100% of time. I use one of those plastic laptop stands with a built-in fan powered by USB.

The old MBP's were dual core and they produced a lot of heat. The newer quad core models differed and one parameter is definitely what I said, but it was a bit difficult to judge since Lightroom started to used the GPU about the time when I switched from the 2014 model to the 2015 model and I suspected the GPU also produced a lot of heat. I have an app running that shows the temperature of the CPU cores and the GPU and on my 2015 model the GPU always came out the hottest immediately when editing in Lightroom. But all in all the new 2016 MBP runs way cooler. The fan still does come on from time to time when Lightroom runs hot in exports, 1:1 preview generation and editing, but much less than before which means for me that I have stopped my thoughts about getting a desktop to avoid the noise, which drives me crazy

[Hans Kruse]

http://www.consumerreports.org/apple/apple-releases-fix-to-macbook-pros-in-response-to-consumer-reports-battery-test-results/

This is now fixed http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/12/consumer-reports-recommends-new-macbook-pro/ and it was a Safari (rare) bug that caused the testing issue.

[N80]

Again, Ferrari price, Dodge issues.