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The "I just ordered / bought / got my new/refurb MBP" thread [Merged]
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I don't think that's normal, though if you're using Chrome instead of Safari, that might account for some of it. On the battery dropdown in the menu bar it sometimes shows apps that are draining lots of power so perhaps check there?
I've ordered a 13 inch MBP and it'll be here in a week, but I'm struggling to find a solid answer to this question: does increasing the usable screen resolution decrease battery life? I don't think 1280x800 will be enough space, so I'm considering using 1400x900, but I'm concerned it'll impact the battery life.
I don't think so. At least I never noticed a change in my daily life.
Somewhat apropos: I have an iGPU in my 13", but my next will be a 15" with dGPU. Will the performance on external displays be faster? I mean things like mission control animations and stuff where there is definitely some lag and issues now.
Somewhat apropos: I have an iGPU in my 13", but my next will be a 15" with dGPU. Will the performance on external displays be faster? I mean things like mission control animations and stuff where there is definitely some lag and issues now.
No chrome installed. I just got it yesterday. The only thing running at the time was Safari. Later, after my post, the battery life started showing 5 hours left. I'm going to give a few days to adjust itself. Perhaps there is something happening in the background or perhaps the battery has to settle in somehow. If after a week or so, I'm only getting 3-4 hours battery, I'll return it.
Download a battery app. I find that the estimate given by the top bar is inaccurate. I've had cases where it initially showed 3 hours. Then it slowly crept up to 4... 5... 6... And then it eventually came to the accurate number of how long it should last.
I'm definitely going to get that app - it looks brilliant, particularly as I'll be using my MBP mostly on a desk yet I'll need the battery to survive.
Woah that's a lot! Hopefully it was just indexing before so will now get tonnes of battery life
I finally gave up on waiting for the new MBP and found a used 2015 CTO 13" rMBP unit on eBay that was exactly what I wanted -- 3.1Ghz, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM -- for $1000 less than Apple's price plus an AppleCare subscription that's good for two more years.
Now I can wait until the bugs get worked out of whatever new MBP they actually end up shipping.
Now I can wait until the bugs get worked out of whatever new MBP they actually end up shipping.
I just chose a refurb 15" 2.8/1 TB/M370 ($2719 direct from Apple). I need a computer before October, and I'm not sure the trade offs in the new one are going to appeal to me. I'd like more RAM and SSD than are currently on offer, but none of the rumors even mention whether that's happening.
Skylake alone is a minor upgrade of ~10% in CPU performance - I honestly don't care (the 2.8 gHz Haswell will beat all except the top Skylake).
Polaris has a lot more potential than Skylake (50% GPU performance?), but I don't game and Adobe is historically slow and troubled with GPU support...
I'd like the OLED strip, but I'm not willing to lose ports or accept the MacBook keyboard to get it - it's "nice to have", not "this will change my life".
As long as it's not heavier and doesn't lose battery life (Jony Ive would never let either happen), I don't care about size, weight or battery life - the existing Retina is FINE on those things!
It looks like, in order to get Skylake, Polaris and the OLED strip, Apple very well might want me to accept:
No useful ports (except for plugging dongles into
).
No SD reader (as a photographer, I use that one all the time).
The MacBook keyboard.
If it came with a 4K wide-gamut screen, 2TB of SSD and 32GB of RAM, I might well accept a bagful of dongles as the price(I'd have a harder time accepting the MacBook keyboard), but I'm afraid we might see the same screen, SSD and RAM limits in an even sleeker case with Skylake and Polaris (only one model with dedicated GPU)
Skylake alone is a minor upgrade of ~10% in CPU performance - I honestly don't care (the 2.8 gHz Haswell will beat all except the top Skylake).
Polaris has a lot more potential than Skylake (50% GPU performance?), but I don't game and Adobe is historically slow and troubled with GPU support...
I'd like the OLED strip, but I'm not willing to lose ports or accept the MacBook keyboard to get it - it's "nice to have", not "this will change my life".
As long as it's not heavier and doesn't lose battery life (Jony Ive would never let either happen), I don't care about size, weight or battery life - the existing Retina is FINE on those things!
It looks like, in order to get Skylake, Polaris and the OLED strip, Apple very well might want me to accept:
No useful ports (except for plugging dongles into
).No SD reader (as a photographer, I use that one all the time).
The MacBook keyboard.
If it came with a 4K wide-gamut screen, 2TB of SSD and 32GB of RAM, I might well accept a bagful of dongles as the price(I'd have a harder time accepting the MacBook keyboard), but I'm afraid we might see the same screen, SSD and RAM limits in an even sleeker case with Skylake and Polaris (only one model with dedicated GPU)
That's pretty good. I purchased yesterday a 15" MPB 256gb/16gbbram 2015 model with warranty for another 5 months with the option to get AppleCare at the end and only 18 battery cycles. $1400. Not sure I'll keep for long, probably will sell when new ones come out. Couldn't wait any longer. Got a project that having a laptop was a must.
I think September will be the earliest we can see updates. Most likely in October.
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My 15" 2.8 gHz refurb just came in. This is a refurb??? It looked JUST like new, except it came in a white box. I certainly can't find any indication it's been used. A fast and elegant machine - I'd been dabbling with PCs and had forgotten just how NICE a Mac is to deal with (even though I've been using them for 30 years since the 128k, I hadn't owned one in a couple of years, and hadn't used any macOS since Mavericks extensively). If the successor does come out next week, I'll look at the possibilities (it'll be within my return period), but I'd need quite a bit to give the ports and flexibility of this machine up. The SSD speed (described in another MacRumors thread as "ludicrously fast" - I'm speed testing WELL over a gigabyte per second) is unlike any computer I've used before, and it's noticeable in everyday use even compared to an ordinary SATA SSD, let alone a hard drive. That has a huge impact on how fast it feels.
The screen is really nice and sharp (as Retinas are) - I haven't yet measured the gamut, but it's pretty good. No dead pixels at all (!!! - that's rare on a high-resolution screen).
There is no way a successor is getting 2 TB of drive space, because even the 1 TB drive (which I have) is a custom job - the largest SM951 is 512 GB, except that Apple talked Samsung into making a few 1 TB models that aren't supposed to exist (is Apple's drive location longer than a standard M.2 2280? I know their connector is slightly different)... They aren't going to back down on drive speed (that ludicrously fast drive is a big contributor to the overall elegance of the machine) just to get a 2 TB drive...
The successor might see 32 GB of RAM - that's tempting, although the ludicrously fast SSD means that running into virtual memory may not be that bad.
I think we'd have heard something if the successor was getting a significantly different screen.
it looks like the tradeoff is going to be Skylake (tiny improvement) and Polaris graphics on one model for no standard ports? If that is the tradeoff, I'm happier with the 2015 - even a 50% graphics improvement isn't worth dongle hell!
The screen is really nice and sharp (as Retinas are) - I haven't yet measured the gamut, but it's pretty good. No dead pixels at all (!!! - that's rare on a high-resolution screen).
There is no way a successor is getting 2 TB of drive space, because even the 1 TB drive (which I have) is a custom job - the largest SM951 is 512 GB, except that Apple talked Samsung into making a few 1 TB models that aren't supposed to exist (is Apple's drive location longer than a standard M.2 2280? I know their connector is slightly different)... They aren't going to back down on drive speed (that ludicrously fast drive is a big contributor to the overall elegance of the machine) just to get a 2 TB drive...
The successor might see 32 GB of RAM - that's tempting, although the ludicrously fast SSD means that running into virtual memory may not be that bad.
I think we'd have heard something if the successor was getting a significantly different screen.
it looks like the tradeoff is going to be Skylake (tiny improvement) and Polaris graphics on one model for no standard ports? If that is the tradeoff, I'm happier with the 2015 - even a 50% graphics improvement isn't worth dongle hell!
, Apple very well might want me to accept:
No useful ports (except for plugging dongles into
No SD reader (as a photographer, I use that one all the time).
The MacBook keyboard.
If it came with a 4K wide-gamut screen, 2TB of SSD and 32GB of RAM, I might well accept a bagful of dongles as the price(I'd have a harder time accepting the MacBook keyboard), but I'm afraid we might see the same screen, SSD and RAM limits in an even sleeker case with Skylake and Polaris (only one model with dedicated GPU)
It will probably have the new MacBook Pro keyboard, not the MacBook one. They wouldn't have bothered to redesign the MBP's if they were planning to kill it so soon.
Of course, the keyboard might still bother you as it still has less travel, but not to the same extent.
I think we'll see the screen improvements of the 5K iMac and maybe the iPad, but not 4K.
Yes, Apple refurbs are nice. They actually only reuse the guts--any outside-facing components like the case or keyboard are new.
Oh, is the current MacBook Pro keyboard a recent redesign? Whatever it is, it feels really nice - nicer than I can remember any previous MacBook Pro feeling... They've always been pretty good, but this one definitely feels more positive (clickier) than I remember others being.
The case leak shows the key arrangement of the MacBook - standard-height left and right arrows, which are half-height on the MBP. It could very well have the switches of the MBP (or something else entirely).
Your suggestion of wide gamut without jumping to 4K seems an odd combination... There are wide-gamut 4K displays suitable for the MBP out there (HP's new ZBook Studio uses one), but there's nothing in the 3K range with an enhanced gamut. Of course, Apple's never been afraid to demand (and get) oddball custom displays - most Apple laptops have used nonstandard resolutions and aspect ratios over the years(they're often 16:10 while everybody else is 16:9). The 4K iMac is standard 16:9 unlike the laptops, but it's true 4K, rather than the standard QFHD, which is unusual...
That ZBook actually shows some interesting possibilities for where the MBP might go - it's only 4.4 lbs (they call it the world's first quad-core ultrabook workstation, ignoring the fact that Apple has made one for years - the MBP's graphics card is actually less pathetic than HP's Quadro M1000). It has dual SSD slots (but no single-slot 2TB option, showing that Apple would have to add a slot to the 15" to get to 2TB - and Apple NEVER adds slots :-(). It even uses the elusive Intel 6820HQ - the "missing Skylake" that would probably show up in a new MBP - as an upgraded processor option. Basically, it IS a 2016 MBP, except that it runs Windows and has a huge variety of ports. HP somehow got an Ethernet port into a machine no thicker or heavier than a 15" Retina (they used a collapsing port to do it - we'll see how that one holds up)!
Note that it's actually a tiny bit slower than the processor-bumped version of the 15" Retina, despite being Skylake! The speed difference doesn't matter (it's a few hundred Geekbench points), but it shows that Skylake isn't going to bring a huge improvement.
The case leak shows the key arrangement of the MacBook - standard-height left and right arrows, which are half-height on the MBP. It could very well have the switches of the MBP (or something else entirely).
Your suggestion of wide gamut without jumping to 4K seems an odd combination... There are wide-gamut 4K displays suitable for the MBP out there (HP's new ZBook Studio uses one), but there's nothing in the 3K range with an enhanced gamut. Of course, Apple's never been afraid to demand (and get) oddball custom displays - most Apple laptops have used nonstandard resolutions and aspect ratios over the years(they're often 16:10 while everybody else is 16:9). The 4K iMac is standard 16:9 unlike the laptops, but it's true 4K, rather than the standard QFHD, which is unusual...
That ZBook actually shows some interesting possibilities for where the MBP might go - it's only 4.4 lbs (they call it the world's first quad-core ultrabook workstation, ignoring the fact that Apple has made one for years - the MBP's graphics card is actually less pathetic than HP's Quadro M1000). It has dual SSD slots (but no single-slot 2TB option, showing that Apple would have to add a slot to the 15" to get to 2TB - and Apple NEVER adds slots :-(). It even uses the elusive Intel 6820HQ - the "missing Skylake" that would probably show up in a new MBP - as an upgraded processor option. Basically, it IS a 2016 MBP, except that it runs Windows and has a huge variety of ports. HP somehow got an Ethernet port into a machine no thicker or heavier than a 15" Retina (they used a collapsing port to do it - we'll see how that one holds up)!
Note that it's actually a tiny bit slower than the processor-bumped version of the 15" Retina, despite being Skylake! The speed difference doesn't matter (it's a few hundred Geekbench points), but it shows that Skylake isn't going to bring a huge improvement.
Yes, they introduced the keyboard with the latest force touch models.
Apple has chosen its retina resolutions carefully. I know there are 15" 4K laptops in the PC space, but they seem like gimmicks to me. What would be the point at 15"? You can already not see the pixels at a normal viewing distance, and if you were to try a non-pixel doubled resolution the results would be microscopic at 15". Apple introduced new features to the iPad screen without touching the resolution, and I think that'll be the case here.
I decided to pull the trigger on a CTO 15/2.5/1TB on eBay for $2350 including AppleCare. It came in the other day and this thing is a beast! I installed Windows 10 on a 150gb partition to satisfy my light gaming needs and it performs very well! Coming from an MBA 11"/128gb, it feels good to finally have a machine where I can store all of my photos and music on it. Couldn't be happier!
I just got a new 13 inch 2015 MacBook Pro today and the battery life estimates are poor (6 hours!) so it does seem to be a normal thing with new laptops after all... I'm hoping the battery life will soon improve.
Enough is enough ....
13 inch 2015 MacBook Pro , 2,7/8/256 . Arrive until Thursday . Happy .... waiting !
13 inch 2015 MacBook Pro , 2,7/8/256 . Arrive until Thursday . Happy .... waiting
!
Thinking of pulling the trigger on the 2016 MacBook to go alongside this 15" MBP to see how it fares as a daily computer... Carrying this computer right now is a strain on my hands/arms. If it goes well, will just purchase a PC after selling the MBP and go route with the MB + PC combo. Seems like the best way to get best of both OS's.