Buying a Macbook. Humble Pie required

steerpike

So I asked here a few weeks back which laptop I should by and poo-poohed the idea of a Mac. After some research, I'm going to buy a Mac. Think I want a Macbook Pro 13 inch 8gb with Retina display.

Any comments, suggestions, tips before I take Le Plunge?

tiredofwhiners

You'll never buy a Windows machine again and you'll hate your time at work on a PC forever more ....

mrdsgs

Reading this on my 15" macbook pro retina display! Go for it!

pinno

Don't bother. The reasons why you should buy a Mac that you made up in your mind are the wrong reasons.

A) Your out of your depth
You cannot strap it to the stem of your bike without upsetting your hand position
C) You'll never partition the hard drive without expert help from BR
D) You shave your legs and that means you only want one for reasons of vanity
E) Midges readily get into the keyboard
F) Balm oil is very difficult to wipe off the screen (once you've excitedly stared at your strava segment before going for a scrub after a bike run).

:P

markos1963

I just took delivery of my new iMac a couple of weeks ago, now hooked and never going back.

Hoopdriver

Been using Apple fr over 20 years. Everyone in my profession - writer/photographer - uses them exclusively. They are great pieces of kit. You will be very pleasantly surprised, and as was noted above, you won't go back

Caller

steerpike wrote:

Any comments, suggestions, tips before I take Le Plunge?

Buy it using the Education discount link, you'll get it a fair bit cheaper and you can add an Applecare extended warranty for about £50 rather than the £250 or so it normally costs.
They don't seem to check whether or not you're actually a student, at least they didn't with me

http://store.apple.com/uk_edu_5000737/b ... acbook_pro

FatTed

No optical drive, not really a problem but you may need to buy one, another purchase, not a lot of storage, is it enough for you?, do you require SSD, much nicer than HD.
The next upgrade will be Retina display with spinning HD I suspect and increased storage for SSD. you could buy a secondhand macbookpro with optical drive and putt a SSD in the optical bay, for the OS.
I have been using MAC for 20 years, trouble is it is now the MACway or the highway
Te new iTunes sucks, iphoto is a pain and Imovie is not as good as Adobe(not compatible with my panasonic camcorder or video on by lumix cameras), the calendar is not as good as google or busycal (it used to be and this seems to be what is happening).
For me its still better than a PC
In the Family we have 4 Macbook pros one Imac and two Minimacs (music servers)
3 Iphones and countless ipods.
MACs are not as good as many pcs when hooking up to WiFi, you may need to buy a different router.

Hoopdriver

FatTed wrote:

No optical drive, not really a problem but you may need to buy one, another purchase, not a lot of storage, is it enough for you?, do you require SSD, much nicer than HD.
The next upgrade will be Retina display with spinning HD I suspect and increased storage for SSD. you could buy a secondhand macbookpro with optical drive and putt a SSD in the optical bay, for the OS.
I have been using MAC for 20 years, trouble is it is now the MACway or the highway
Te new iTunes sucks, iphoto is a pain and Imovie is not as good as Adobe(not compatible with my panasonic camcorder or video on by lumix cameras), the calendar is not as good as google or busycal (it used to be and this seems to be what is happening).
For me its still better than a PC
In the Family we have 4 Macbook pros one Imac and two Minimacs (music servers)
3 Iphones and countless ipods.
MACs are not as good as many pcs when hooking up to WiFi, you may need to buy a different router.

I travel a hell of a lot and often have to use various hotel and airport wifi and have never had a problem with my MacBook Pro or iPad, or indeed any if the mac laptops I've had over the years.

smoggysteve

What is your main use for the laptop? Take that into consideration before you buy.

Also, I don't know how many of the people who use macs have seen and used Windows 8. That is light years ahead of Windows 7. Its cross platform compatible and I think catching and bettering iOS in many ways, Apple should start looking over their shoulder. If you want to buy it for its nice shiny retina display, save your cash, buy a pc and an ipad for probably the same cost as a Mac

tiredofwhiners

FatTed wrote:

MACs are not as good as many pcs when hooking up to WiFi, you may need to buy a different router.

Complete b*llocks - the exact opposite is true.

smoggysteve

FatTed wrote:

No optical drive, not really a problem but you may need to buy one, another purchase, not a lot of storage, is it enough for you?, do you require SSD, much nicer than HD.
The next upgrade will be Retina display with spinning HD I suspect and increased storage for SSD. you could buy a secondhand macbookpro with optical drive and putt a SSD in the optical bay, for the OS.
I have been using MAC for 20 years, trouble is it is now the MACway or the highway
Te new iTunes sucks, iphoto is a pain and Imovie is not as good as Adobe(not compatible with my panasonic camcorder or video on by lumix cameras), the calendar is not as good as google or busycal (it used to be and this seems to be what is happening).
For me its still better than a PC
In the Family we have 4 Macbook pros one Imac and two Minimacs (music servers)
3 Iphones and countless ipods.
MACs are not as good as many pcs when hooking up to WiFi, you may need to buy a different router.

No optical drive - Neither do ultrabooks - as for limited memory, you can pick up a small 500gb hdd for not much with a mac adaptor for the usb port. Plus the idea is pushing people onto cloud storage.

I personally don't like macs, I prefer pc's. I do photography and photo editing and I still think using photoshop on a pc is better than mac. Its a black vs white call between a pc and mac.

chrisaonabike

A few questions for the high-end Mac users out there.

- How much would I have to spend to go Mac if I wanted 3 HD (not necessarily retina) monitors, 6TB of HDD and 16 GB of RAM?

- Can they take high-end graphics cards if I wanted to have the option of bootcamping into Windows for demanding FPS type games?

- What's Windows VM performance like under Parallels? Cos I'd still need to do my day job...

ben@31

I bought a MacBook Pro after getting fed up of PC's crashing, having compatibility issues, slowing down, buggy and generally not doing what I wanted.

Macs are way better, much more reliable/ dependable and I've never had a problem since.

My only comment is Apples pricing is a bit odd, as the 13 inch MacBook Pro with retina display seems poor value... If you're upgrading it, you'd be better off buying the 15 inch MacBook Pro, an extra few £'s gets you a lot more computer.
If you want light and portable go for the 13" MacBook Air. If you want powerful get the 15" Retina MacBook Pro. If you want cheap, consider the non-Retina 13" MacBook Pro.

FatTed

tiredofwhiners
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/31 ... 5&tstart=0

tiredofwhiners

FatTed wrote:

tiredofwhiners
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/31 ... 5&tstart=0

Thats Lion - the old OS. July 2011 - I assume you have a calendar handy ?

And never quote Apple Discussions - its where you go when you have a problem and doesn't take into account the millions of users who don;t have a problem. You make it sound as if there is a general problem affecting the majority of Macs when the opposite is true.

Richard_D

I only have a limited base line but the worst device we have in our house for connecting to the wireless network is an Apple Ipad. It regularly losses it. Unlike the PCs, WII, Ipods, Google Tablet, printer and TV.
For certain application Apple are the way to go, for others you are paying through the nose for the marketing hype

islwyn

tiredofwhiners wrote:

You'll never buy a Windows machine again and you'll hate your time at work on a PC forever more ....

+1.

Loved Windows, was Anti Mac.... Then work went Mac because it was smoother... Now I'm in love with it and have my own personal Pro. Do it.

Won't be looking back to Windows anytime soon!

ben@31

But what ever you do. Don't use your Macbook with a glass of water next to it. Two months ago I found my previous MacBook wasn't very waterproof and expensive to replace.

I now writing this in a cafe on my way home from work and I'm now too scarred to put a coffee cup on a table near the laptop. I won't be making that mistake again.

A few weeks ago I was on a train, thinking... If you're sat at a table on the train and another passenger sat opposite knocked their drink over and frazzled your laptop. Where do you stand? If you said to the complete stranger "you now owe me £1500" what happens if they say "no" and walk off the train never to be seen again?

The Ors

tiredofwhiners wrote:

FatTed wrote:

MACs are not as good as many pcs when hooking up to WiFi, you may need to buy a different router.

Complete b*llocks - the exact opposite is true.

Depends what he means. In my experience my Mac's are simpler/easier/more reliable when connecting to varying WiFi networks but my PC laptops have stronger signals.

Lycra-Byka

ben@31 wrote:

A few weeks ago I was on a train, thinking... If you're sat at a table on the train and another passenger sat opposite knocked their drink over and frazzled your laptop. Where do you stand? If you said to the complete stranger "you now owe me £1500" what happens if they say "no" and walk off the train never to be seen again?

Then I'd use it as one very expensive weapon.

Then you'd have to replace it.

roypsb

markos1963 wrote:

I just took delivery of my new iMac a couple of weeks ago, now hooked and never going back.

Same here - it's different class!

tiredofwhiners

ChrisAOnABike wrote:

A few questions for the high-end Mac users out there.

- How much would I have to spend to go Mac if I wanted 3 HD (not necessarily retina) monitors, 6TB of HDD and 16 GB of RAM?

- Can they take high-end graphics cards if I wanted to have the option of bootcamping into Windows for demanding FPS type games?

- What's Windows VM performance like under Parallels? Cos I'd still need to do my day job...

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/s ... ly/mac_pro

Configure as you desire.

Under Parallels on my iMac, its as fast as a native OSX programme i,e, very fast.

steerpike

I'll still have to use Windows at work of course. What pain will I suffer from having to switch between Windows and Mac use? My brain is wired for Windows. I'd imagine it's like having to drive both a manual and an automatic car on alternate days. Veering back towards Windows now.

chrisaonabike

tiredofwhiners wrote:

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro

Configure as you desire.

Under Parallels on my iMac, its as fast as a native OSX programme i,e, very fast.

Cheers. That's even more eye-wateringly expensive than I imagined... I take it there's no non-Xeon option? I had a root around there, couldn't see anything.

Can't justify going there, sadly.

tiredofwhiners

Not if you want to add internal drives there isn't. And those models are rumoured to be a dying breed for anything less than servers.

Buy an iMac 27" vanilla and add Thunderbolt or external NAS drives ?

Not sure why you would expect something cheap for 6TB of disc and 3 HD monitors and not expect to pay that much.

Hoopdriver

steerpike wrote:

I'll still have to use Windows at work of course. What pain will I suffer from having to switch between Windows and Mac use? My brain is wired for Windows. I'd imagine it's like having to drive both a manual and an automatic car on alternate days. Veering back towards Windows now.

Macs are very user friendly and intuitive. My wife uses Windows at her job but has no trouble shifting the mental gears to use my Mac here at home

chrisaonabike

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Not sure why you would expect something cheap for 6TB of disc and 3 HD monitors and not expect to pay that much.

Well I have the monitors (22 inch, 1920x1080 - about £100 each) and disks already.

Aside from that, I built my current system around an i7 2600K, 16 GB RAM and a Crucial SSD a year ago. I already had an old nVidia 8800GT from the old 'puter (fine for any of the FPSs up to and including Crysis) , and I bought a cheap passive 8400GS off the bay for 20 quid to support the third monitor.

Apart from the monitors and disks, it came to about £800. I don't need Xeon or the undeniable beauty of Apple hardware, so 2-3k is just ridiculous - I doubt my next upgrade will be more than about the same again, especially as disks (I'd probably need another one) are cheap again now that they've dried out the flooded factories.

tiredofwhiners

Sounds like you've got a good handle on things - if you are currently using Windows, there isn't really a good reason to change things.

team47b

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Sounds like you've got a good handle on things - if you are currently using Windows, there isn't really a good reason to change things.

I agree, that's why I insist on cycling on the left, even though I live in Portugal :roll:

live a little get a mac!

finchy

team47b wrote:

I agree, that's why I insist on cycling on the left, even though I live in Portugal :roll:

Really? Do you really live in Portugal? I'd completely forgotten about that, seeing as you haven't mentioned it in the last 20 minutes.

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