Should I sell my MacBook Pro?

[adamjackson]

For years (since 2007), I went to an office every day. I kept a MacBook Pro at my office and sometimes moved it between meetings then I bought an iPad Pro now equipped with Magic Keyboard but 2 months ago, I was forced to work from home. Business travel stopped, no more moving between meeting rooms or hopping on a plane and so my home computer, a 27" iMac Core i9 from 2019 became my primary work machine which is great because it's faster and more capable than my iPad and MacBook Pro.

...and this morning, I realized I haven't used my MBP in 2 months. Seriously it's been downstairs in my backpack for 2 straight months not being used. This is a $3,000 machine just sitting there.

...and next week, our work will decide if we're going to be working from home for the remainder of this year. We're a tech company, the office was being renovated anyway (a full rebuild) and they were going to shuffle WFH this year as phases were completed anyway and that's before COVID-19 so now I have a wicked fast iMac, a great iPad Pro (for when I want to work from the couch for a few hours) and a depreciating 2018 MacBook Pro with an old keyboard and thermal design (throttling, missed key strokes, other possible issues) that is literally collecting dust.

(please keep 1st world comments to yourself)

If we do indeed work from home for the rest of 2020 and the iPad Pro through an OS update gets even more capable, I think the MacBook Pro will stay in my bag until the end of 2020 and it's depreciated even further by then and there will be a new 16" refresh this fall with new processors and better GPUs anyway and it'll be the improved keyboard

So......shouldn't I sell my MacBook Pro now? I truly haven't opened it in 2 months. It'd be the first time I had one Macintosh since 2007 so I'm obviously attached to the idea of having 2 computers but it's insane to keep it in a bag just sitting there.

The MBP I have is in my signature, It has AppleCare, it's cosmetically and functionally perfect other than possibly having butterfly issues. I just don't think I should hang on to it if I had planned on going scissor switch 16" next refresh anyway.

 

[Expos of 1969]

Based on your statements, sell it now.

 

[glenthompson]

Once you know you will be working from home for the rest of the year sell it. How well does your iPad do for your portable needs? If you had to go to a meeting or a trip, could you do everything you need on the iPad? If the iPad will suffice then selling the MBP makes sense.

 

[adamjackson]

Once you know you will be working from home for the rest of the year sell it. How well does your iPad do for your portable needs? If you had to go to a meeting or a trip, could you do everything you need on the iPad? If the iPad will suffice then selling the MBP makes sense.

I think that's my biggest concern but I think if I know that I'm at least not traveling for 4-5 months, I can purchase a MacBook Pro at any time and 8 hours later, I'm restored from a Time Machine backup and off to the races so if I do have to go somewhere via plane, it's pretty easy to get back up and running.

I'm gonna wait for the order to come down that we're all staying home and then put the MBP up for sale.

 

[ctjack]

I have experienced it some time ago when i had 1 desktop PC, 1 Win Laptop, 1 Mac.
So i tried to balance between them for 1-2 days, but then i quickly realized that i can't use them all. I was sticking only to one Win laptop.
Then i moved desktop to office, hinge of win laptop was broken and i left with Mac. Since then i told myself not to hoard things, because anyway i won't be able to use them at once.

 

[adamjackson]

Welp, time to sell my MacBook Pro. I'm home until at least early 2021 and on travel-lock-down so I don't anticipate needing a laptop for the first time in 20 years. Kind of crazy.

 

[ascender]

One thing to consider and it might be a total red herring, but if you're going to be working from home for the rest of the year, are you happy to be tied to your desk/iMac?

I'm using my iMac for the most part, but on a nice day its good to be able to work from the garden, or even just a different room in the house. Maybe your iPad Pro will let you do that though.

Just mentioning it because having been at this working from home lark for a long time, little things like this can help with the monotony and lack of human contact.

 

[Super T]

Assuming it works for your needs, selling it now only to basically repurchase in 6 months is going to probably net you a four-figure loss. So it's a personal decision, is it worth probably a grand or so to you for the upgrade from 2018 to 2021 model?

 

[adamjackson]

One thing to consider and it might be a total red herring, but if you're going to be working from home for the rest of the year, are you happy to be tied to your desk/iMac?

I'm using my iMac for the most part, but on a nice day its good to be able to work from the garden, or even just a different room in the house. Maybe your iPad Pro will let you do that though.

Just mentioning it because having been at this working from home lark for a long time, little things like this can help with the monotony and lack of human contact.

I have the iPad Pro for mobile work. I generally use it in writing mode where I'll move to the garden for a bit or couch and do some writing there as iPad OS in Do not disturb mode really allows me to focus more than using the Mac.

Valid point though.

Assuming it works for your needs, selling it now only to basically repurchase in 6 months is going to probably net you a four-figure loss. So it's a personal decision, is it worth probably a grand or so to you for the upgrade from 2018 to 2021 model?

I thought about that and I would indeed be losing money. Looks like my specific model which was $4,000 in July of 2018 is going for $2500 on eBay and low of $2100 w/o AppleCare and some scratches.

Overall, my 'customer sat' of the MacBook Pro Core i9 15" has been very low. Zero keyboard issues but the throttling is HUGE. The machine never maintains a healthy clock speed. The fan is always running. My iMac runs circles around the MacBook Pro so I think the 16" thermal ceiling being higher, I'll enjoy a base 16" more than this top spec 15" so long as I keep doing heavy lifting on the iMac and just do productivity business apps on the MBP.

So I'm losing $1500 by selling the MBP and then spending $2500 at least for a 16". so it's about $1500 total loss. The 2018 MBP was just a bad purchase. Last of butterfly, no thermal support for Core i9 and severely overpriced 32GB and i9 options. Apple dropped the price of many CTO options on 16" versus the 15" it replaces and that hurt my resale value. Oh and 4 months after I bought my MBP, they upgraded the GPU to Vega which I would have gotten had I waited.
Oh well.