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The "I just ordered / bought / got my new/refurb MBP" thread [Merged]

So...the mid-2015 2.5 15" 16gb arrived today...2 days, which is great.
new product, sealed with UK keyboard, so all good at the more realistic price (IMO) of £1599 for 'old tech'...

Nice to have a solid working mobile option again that will get the job done and still the better all round option for me re: the Windows products I checked out...(I'm trapped... :eek: )
Will load up and compare some renders with the 2015 iMac...see how it shapes up....

Obviously a massive leap from my 'modded' 2010 17" :)
When ya gotta buy ya gotta buy...
 
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Pulled the trigger this evening when I got homeand found a cheque for £1300 in the post!

MacBook Pro 15" and AppleCare plus beats earphones that will make an excellent birthday present for my brother.

Paid extra to get it tomorrow so I can spend this weekend playing with my first ever Mac

It feels a bit like Christmas Eve at the moment
 
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My 15'' rMBP came and it is perfect, brand new, sealed in box. Came in 3 days, New Jersey to Florida. If anyone is looking to buy one for $400 off I would visit the eBay page i link in the pervious page. $1600 brand new with the factory warranty and free shipping and since its eBay there is no tax, except in New Jersey I think. So including tax you are saving $500. Just thought I would let everyone know if they were thinking of pulling the trigger soon.
 
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elementg12 said:
My 15'' rMBP came and it is perfect, brand new, sealed in box. Came in 3 days, New Jersey to Florida. If anyone is looking to buy one for $400 off I would visit the eBay page i link in the pervious page. $1600 brand new with the factory warranty and free shipping and since its eBay there is no tax, except in New Jersey I think. So including tax you are saving $500. Just thought I would let everyone know if they were thinking of pulling the trigger soon.
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I am so tempted but I really want one with a 512GB SSD.
 
elementg12 said:
My 15'' rMBP came and it is perfect, brand new, sealed in box. Came in 3 days, New Jersey to Florida. If anyone is looking to buy one for $400 off I would visit the eBay page i link in the pervious page. $1600 brand new with the factory warranty and free shipping and since its eBay there is no tax, except in New Jersey I think. So including tax you are saving $500. Just thought I would let everyone know if they were thinking of pulling the trigger soon.
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$1600 should be the normal price (even accounting for the Apple tax) considering that it still has a Haswell processor!
 
Now that I got the trackpad set up correctly I can't believe how good it is. The clicking effect is incredible. I even actually use force click – only to check up words in the dictionary, but still.
 
Ok, just a quickie update for those who are interested in this kind of thing...

I did a couple of renders on the latest Nov 2015 iMac: 4GHz, 5K, 32gb 2133DDR3, AMD M395X 4GB, 512 SSD
and the latest mid 2015 MBP 2.5GHz, 16GB 1600DDR3, AMD M370X, 512 SSD...

...and here are the results:

C4D Robot head model render, one frame:

MBP: 36 secs
iMac: 25 secs

After Effects 3 minute animation:

MBP: 28:33 mins
iMac: 22:04 mins


I know they're are workstations out there that could blow these set-up's out of the water and that the iMac is more powerful anyhow but the difference isn't that great.

Hopefully my little real-world test goes to show what you're getting (or not getting) by holding off or buying now....be interesting to see (when it eventually arrives) how the new MBP set up compares with the iMac/previous MBP....
 
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Got a new base 13 MacBook pro yesterday, significantly discounted.

Ideally I wouldn't buy older tech, but at the price and fact that I purchased with some of the proceeds from my iPad pro sale. I couldn't be happier.
 
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OneMike said:
Got a new base 13 MacBook pro yesterday, significantly discounted.

Ideally I wouldn't buy older tech, but at the price and fact that I purchased with some of the proceeds from my iPad pro sale. I couldn't be happier.
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Just curious, why did you get rid of the iPad Pro?
 
jerryk said:
Just curious, why did you get rid of the iPad Pro?
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As with 3D Touch now, or Touch ID in the past. I feel the iPad Pro has potential, but the available apps in certain areas are currently lacking. Until that improves, or web sites work better on mobile. It's not worth it to me.
 
robeddie said:
OWC now sells replacement SSD upgrades up to 1TB for the 2015 MBP's, so I bought the low end 128gb model with the intention of upgrading it to 1TB in a couple months.
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Except OWC's replacement SSDs have half the write and almost a quarter of read speeds of standard SSDs in the 2015s.

Granted, I'd take 1TB of slower SSD(which still fast enough for of my use cases) over a 128GB faster SSD any day.
 
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TechZeke said:
Except OWC's replacement SSDs have half the write and almost a quarter of read speeds of standard SSDs in the 2015s.

Granted, I'd take 1TB of slower SSD(which still fast enough for of my use cases) over a 128GB faster SSD any day.
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Exactly. Most reviews of the 2015 MacBook pro say the 'real world' advantage of the 'fast' vs. 'super fast' sdd's are almost never evident.

So ... Just yesterday I bought a refurb 2015 base 13" retina MacBook pro from the Apple online store. My reasons are as follows:

1) The availability of the OWC upgrade. (It's my assumption that the next Apple MBP will have yet another new 'proprietary' ssd connection and it could be a several year wait (like it has been for the 2013-2015 models) for someone to come out with an upgrade for it.

2) The rumored elimination of magsafe.

3) The rumored elimination of USB 3 and thunderbolt, with USB-C as the main, perhaps ONLY interface

4) The rumored decrease in thickness, with the usual commensurate compromises in thermal capacity (throttling) and also battery life compromises.

Granted, most of these reasons are based on rumor, but if you believe the next MBP's will maintain the same thickness and the same connections, you're in the rare minority.

I feel like this machine is the final, best implementation of the current 13" form factor so I took the dive. Plus I had some spare credit on my paypal account :).
 
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It's a little like Retina displays. After a certain number pixels per inch, mb/sec or the like, the extra effect is noticable only to people who want to notice it.
 
I have a 13" 2012 2.9/512 rMBP that I use as a primary machine for both OSX and Win 7. Long story short, I have a new development contract to keep me busy for the next year and was running out of ram and disk space on the 2012. I looked at OWC SSds, but that wouldn't help the RAM. Enough $$ involved to justify a new machine, so...

I ordered a 2015 13" 3.1/16/1tb from the refurb store and a couple hours later realized it doesn't support Win 7 via Boot camp. I called Apple, but it was too late to cancel the order before it shipped, so I started the return process and ordered a 2013 2.6/16GB/1Tb model instead. They were nice enough to expedite shipping for free. Both arrived yesterday, and I'm awaiting the return label for the 2015.

Other than the very small incremental improvements in clock speed, is there anything I will find missing or less about the 2013?
 
Kind of weird that they would deprecate windows 7 for driver support already. People LOVE windows 7!
 
SpacemanSpiffed said:
I have a 13" 2012 2.9/512 rMBP that I use as a primary machine for both OSX and Win 7. Long story short, I have a new development contract to keep me busy for the next year and was running out of ram and disk space on the 2012. I looked at OWC SSds, but that wouldn't help the RAM. Enough $$ involved to justify a new machine, so...

I ordered a 2015 13" 3.1/16/1tb from the refurb store and a couple hours later realized it doesn't support Win 7 via Boot camp. I called Apple, but it was too late to cancel the order before it shipped, so I started the return process and ordered a 2013 2.6/16GB/1Tb model instead. They were nice enough to expedite shipping for free. Both arrived yesterday, and I'm awaiting the return label for the 2015.

Other than the very small incremental improvements in clock speed, is there anything I will find missing or less about the 2013?
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Yea, they took away windows 7 support on even the 2014 models I think. The difference between the 2013 and the 2015 are incremental, but the 2015 has about 15% faster CPU and about a 50% faster gpu.

I got the 2015 because I did want all the gpu power I could get since I do some light gaming on both windows and mac.
 
robeddie said:
OWC now sells replacement SSD upgrades up to 1TB for the 2015 MBP's, so I bought the low end 128gb model with the intention of upgrading it to 1TB in a couple months.
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how hard is it to swap the SSD's? I consider myself savvy enough to work on tech equipment, but always thought the retina models were near impossible to upgrade due to everything being glued in place?
 
jonfarr said:
how hard is it to swap the SSD's? I consider myself savvy enough to work on tech equipment, but always thought the retina models were near impossible to upgrade due to everything being glued in place?
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Real simple on those. There are two types of screws on the bottom you have to unscrew, then one more holding in the SSD. But when you buy the OWC ssd they also send you the two types of screwdrivers you'll need.

Just be sure to use the right screw drivers and don't rush it. If you try to use a screw driver that's not exactly right, you'll very likely strip the screws, then you've got a real problem.

Here's the guide from iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2015+SSD+Replacement/38520

Here the link to the OWC ssd upgrades for current MBP's: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-pro-retina-display/2013-2014-2015
 
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Holy crap! That's a pretty big change... I guess someone must have mislabelled it on the shelf or something...
 
SpacemanSpiffed said:
Woot! My 2013 13" i5 2.6ghz model that I got from the refurb store turned out to be a 2.8ghz i7 model (16GB/1TB)! Bonus plus a nice $$$ savings over the 2015.
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They were still selling the 2013 models in the refurb store as of recently? I only saw the 2015 models. How much was yours?
 
robeddie said:
They were still selling the 2013 models in the refurb store as of recently? I only saw the 2015 models. How much was yours?
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I checked on refurb.me and they showed 4 models of the 13" with 16GB + 1TB. the 2013 2.6 i5, the 2014 2.8 i5, the 2015 2.9 i5 and 3.1 i7.

At first I ordered:

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 3.1GHz Dual-core Intel i7 with Retina Display - $2289​

but as I posted, a few hours later I checked and realized it didn't have boot camp support for Windows 7 (and Windows 10 is not approved for the network this new gig will have me plugging into, and I *hate* Windows 8). So I called Apple to cancel the order. It was too late to stop the shipment from going out, but I was able to set up the return and order this instead:

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 2.6GHz Dual-core Intel i5 with Retina Display - $1909​

I wound up getting $25 off the AppleCare as well ($224 instead of $249), and with a 9.5% state sales tax, my bottom line went down by $419.38 ( $2,359.73 vs $2,779.11 ).

Had I bought the 2015 i7 new, it would be $3228.06 ($878.33 or 37% more), and I just didn't see the value in that.

My 2012 13" rMBP (2.9/512) is still running great and under AppleCare for another 6 months, but the job I am going to mostly use it for really needs the extra ram/storage (I'm down to 9GB free on my 2012)
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tofagerl said:
Holy crap! That's a pretty big change... I guess someone must have mislabelled it on the shelf or something...
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I may have been confusing in the way I said that - it was just the CPU bump to the next tier up - not a RAM or SSD bump.

refurb.me wasn't showing that config in their history, so it may be uncommon enough that Apple just merges the two.
 
The only 16gb ram option there now is the 2015 (same as when I got my base 2.7ghz model).

Either way, I just couldnt see spending $2k on anything dual core. If i was going to spend $2k, I would grab the base 15incher, which comes with 16gb ram standard, and then upgrade the ssd with the owc one.
 
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