Consider a model from 2013 or so. I've had very good results from a 13" MBP made that year; given later releases, it's looking more and more like that might've been Apple's high-water mark in computer hardware.
My wife's Macbook has been a huge disappointment. The login is slow, the computer crashes all the time, and safari stopped working. And it's just over two years old.
My 2013 MBP is great, I can see it lasting a few more years even. It was that forward looking.
A 2016 MBP... I can't see it holding up. The cap on RAM I'm already butting up against it...
Photoshop, VMs, site crawls, loading large spreadsheets and trying to crunch the numbers... 16 GB taxes my current system.
I've sort of just given up, I have a gaming desktop I built myself a year or so back with 64 GB of RAM. I just use that when I want to do "work" now... everything loads faster. Freakin' hate that I can't just buy a new MBP for that stuff, but... it's not top of the line, isn't built to last like previous generations were.
I'll keep my 2013 MBP until it gives out on me I guess... running out of Apple Care on it and the battery cycles are high... also not wild about trusting work to a 3-year-old SSD... but cross my fingers I guess.
My sister still uses my old MBP from 2008 or so -- it holds up for most of her needs after a replacement battery and SSD, it's still a solid computer. I don't see these new MBPs holding up like that at all.
Not going to say the new MBPs are shit, but they aren't built to be light-years ahead like they once were. That's what I think everyone is upset about.
My 2013 MBP is still working great, and I'm in no hurry for new ones to come out. I use mine mostly for my photography (RAW editing, catalog management, etc.) and it handles the 36 megapixel images from my camera just fine - I drag sliders and the changes show up in real time. I keep all of my RAW files on an external HD, so if I really needed things faster my first step would be to buy a faster one (SSD).
I also occasionally use it for development, and I don't have any problems there, either.
The most true statement in the article is that my next laptop may not be an Apple, but that has a lot more to do with Apple's crappy software quality lately, and the fact the photo software I use also works on Windows.
Buying a new laptop should not only serve you today but also AT LEAST 2-3 years (more like 5y) down the road.
I'm still using my Late 2013 MBP (which I even bought second hand a year or two old) today - everyday. Unfortunately this one will need to get replaced soon as even with this build quality things starting to come apart or work suboptimal after almost 10 years.
Hoping my next one is more repairable/upgradable (so probably no Apple) and last at least 5 years
Well FWIW, I have a Retina MBP that's close to ten years old. It's been on 24 hours a day, almost everyday since the day I bought it. It's travelled with me to different countries, endured extreme humidity in some areas of the world, and is still running reasonably well today. I've had a lot of computers over the past few decades and it's IMO the best computer I've owned. I skipped out a few generations of MBP's because I didn't feel the need to upgrade.
A few years ago, I bought an XPS because I wanted a PC and it was underwhelming considering I treated it with a lot of extra care. I experienced various bugs running simple games. The fans would go into overdrive despite keeping the drivers up-to-date, raising the laptop to give good airflow, and no graphic intensive program running.
Ultimately, I think it's a bit of a luck of the draw. I don't doubt there are people who have horrible experiences with any brand.
I know we can point at benchmarks and things like that, all I'm saying is that my personal experience is that I spent a decade trying to find something as good as my top-spec 2012 macbook air, which is pretty depressing. Note obviously I also went via the horribly broken keyboard era of macbook pros. Eventually I settled on a X1 carbon, and then a couple of years later the ARM macbooks came out, but I can't justify buying a new laptop out of cycle if my current one works.
why i stay with apple (so far), all my macbooks lasted 4-6+ years so far - with pretty much 0% performance loss, UNIX(!!), and stuff just works. also i don't want to deal with anti-virus software, an ugly command line interface, and terrible UI design in general.
got my macbook screen + motherboard replaced for free, i didn't bring a receipt, 2.5yrs after i got it. done in 4 days. that's pretty awesome customer service IMO.
not that enthusiastic about the latest MBP's though, let us have some ports and physical escape key pls
Maybe downvotes are because of your comparison of a 2013 MBP to a 2001 Dell laptop?
My personal experience is seeing Dell, HP, Fujitsu and other brand laptops completely disintegrate in a 3-year timespan, with Apple hardware easily outliving them - hardware issues eventually appear, but overall condition, specially mechanical, is not even in the same league.
Yeah until it just decides to stop working... I have a 2010/2011 MBP that is literally falling apart, the battery is dying again and I already replaced it about 3 years ago, not to mention the two additional chargers I've had to buy when they begin to fray. Also, the screen joint is getting pretty loose and the computer gets so hot it's unusable at times. Meanwhile my other computers are a ragtag group of laptops that are 5-10 years old and they're still going strong with very few serious issues.
I'm looking at replacing my MacBook, but it's from 2015. I think 2-5 years is a bit of an overstatement. PC laptops I've owned in the past have fared much worse over the same time period.
> How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it just doesn't break down over time.
I've definitely noticed the same thing. Almost every laptop (and computer, for that matter) has broken down within a year to a year and a half for some random dumb reason. Two of my laptops died due to messed up power supply connections on the motherboard, two others died due to the hinges completely snapping off, and another died because the hard drive failed - and that one was an aluminum iMac that I pawned off to my friend, who replaced the HDD and it works just fine still.
I've had my current MBP since 2012, and it's chugging along just fine - except for the hard drive, which I replaced with an SSD and have no problems with, and ironically enough the hinges, which totally cracked. I had to buy some replacement hinges off of iFixit, which I'm waiting on delivery for today.
Apple computers have by far been the longest lasting and least likely to crap out on me that I've ever had. I'm very happy with my old MBP, and the only reason I'm considering upgrading to a newer model is because I can tell this one might be on its way out in general.
The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.
* some hardware issues, I think related to GPU (it panics sometimes)
* replaced charger, second charger is in bad condition, probably time to think about replacing it as well
It's the most terrible laptop I've ever owned. I owned plenty of laptops and I never had any issue with any of them. Macbook really set the bar.
That said, it kind of works... I use USB keyboard, USB headset, always plugged in, don't push it too far, as it starts to throttle very fast. But it loads some ancient macOS version, constantly nags me about updating it.
I'll buy new Macbook. Because of macOS. Reliability-wise I don't have any expectations from Apple. I bought plenty of Apple devices and I had plenty of issues with many of those devices. They definitely don't last forever. Apple software - that's what hooked me.
Those vintage macbook pros are still getting OS and software updates. Hardly "software-defined garbage". I have a 2012 retina that's still chugging along perfectly. Battery life is down from when I bought it, sure, but there's still enough juice for a few hours of unplugged work.
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