I'm a small fish compared to people who update on the regular but I wanted to share: I just pulled the trigger on the 2015 15" MBP, 2.5GHz with the AMD 370. I'd been mulling over whether to get that model from B&H or go for a 2016/2017 and then when they pulled it off B&H for a couple days... my despondency over that "discontinued" told me I really was ready to get a 2015! So when they then came up in the refurb shop, I went for it. It's been a long road, I'm coming from a 2010 15" MBP with a matte screen that's sadly in poor shape and has been sloooowly failing for years. I stupidly knocked out a couple keys on my keyboard with water damage first (the only time I've ever killed anything like that, what a heartbreak) and by now, my audio jack is out, my left fan doesn't run right, my touchpad won't click. It's rather pathetic to see this thing with a bluetooth keyboard, mouse, and external DAC on top while occasionally making a noise like a lawnmower... I should have replaced it years ago but I'm much too stubborn when there isn't yet a
fatal flaw.
Making myself outdated from the start had me hesitating but it
does appeal to me to get the last of the old design. After living using so many peripherals every day, I couldn't commit to going straight into the dongle life. Hopefully I'm not going to regret too much that I didn't try to wait for the 2018 update but the keyboard was something motivating me to look back too. Thanks to the users of this forum for the unknowing assistance they gave me in finally going for it, I've been lurking here while I considered my options and the repetitive 2015 vs 2016 vs 2017 threads really did help!
First impressions (after one night and one morning of use):
- I keep getting weirded out that it's not making a sound. I know, I know but I was still living back before SSDs! Silence itself is a feature for me! I've only had the fan kick on once so far... it's unsettling but wonderful.
- The detail of the Retina screen blew me away when I first opened it. Photos on it are just unreal, they look so beautiful. I'm not sure if I have enough in my daily life that takes advantage of it though! Tumblr looks particularly terrible, the text on gifs looks fuzzy as if everyone is optimizing them for a lower resolution, akhfklg. Maybe that's just because it's scaling to 1440 and I'm used to 1680 or something?
- Maybe it's just because I was coming from an antiglare screen that's seven years old but I was actually expecting the screen to look more drastically different than it does? In both a good and a bad way: I've been worried that the reflections and glare would bother me too much but I was surprised that you can't even see any when light browsing. I definitely do need to adjust to reflections when trying to watch something though. I'd also been expecting to get blinded by the screen brightness (from picking up an iPad now and again) but it seems like I
am keeping the brightness topped out esp when sitting in a room with natural light? And I guess I just thought the contrast ratio would have come farther. I wasn't expecting an OLED screen (though that's the next standard I can't wait to get to) but... I know that's something that improved with the 2017 pro, maybe that's more important to me than I thought.
- The force touch trackpad is really really nice to use. It feels so sensitive and responsive, though I don't think
I'm quite calibrated to it yet! Like, it's great to right click with two fingers but selecting from the menu after that isn't natural yet.
- It's funny, I didn't actually realize how much of a difference it was making to external sound card until now. I didn't get one until my headphone jack stopped working so I never got to compare back and forth directly. Even on this new machine, I think I'd stick with using my DAC every day. Which makes the USB port especially nice to still have, I don't really need a dongle added to the mix too. I'm not sure if it's only psychological but the DAC sounds a bit better here too.
Early conclusions: It's a beautiful machine, I'm almost afraid to use it atm. It
feels really good. It's more power than I need currently but I have the tendency towards overkill because I'm thinking I might need at some point in the next seven years. I'm not sure if I might not be better off with something designed for lighter use and with a screen with more contrast. I'm not exactly sure what that would be though? The 2016/2017 pro 13"? I've been hearing good things about the Samsung Galaxy Book from my brother but I'm not sure I could make the OS switch (/switch to a 2-in-1 instead of a full-fledged laptop).
