Ask HN: Is it a good time to buy a new Macbook Pro? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it a good time to buy a new Macbook Pro?

11 pointsChos8923 comments

Current laptop is getting old and Im in a market for a replacement. My top pick so far is a new MBP but Im having my doubts. I'll list my reasons and concerns and maybe HN can help me decide

-Must be a laptop since I don't have place for a desktop setup

-Looking to buy the least expensive option

-I want to do iOS development

-Want to be able to hook up a external monitor later, hence the MBP and not air

-Why new: 3 year old MBP is still over 1000$ and no guarantee

-Biggest concern: new MBP expected in December according to some rumors and I don't want to miss out on new upgrades for the same price and lose some value of the "old" MBP

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I am a relative new comer to the Mac sphere of things. I personally bought my first MBP a bit over 2 years ago, and my current employer bought be a new MBP 3 months ago. These are the only Mac products I have ever owned. I didn't think I would like them as much as I do and I honestly broke down and bought my first one due to social pressure, to be brutally honest.

I have done a lot of thinking about the whole "when to buy Mac products thing". At first I almost didn't want to buy my first MBP because "what if they announce something new in X weeks/months from now and I miss out!" "What is new announcement in X weeks/months lowers the value of my current MBP!" "Ack I am going to be BEHIND!" These are all real thoughts that I had. Then I realized the flaw in my own logic.

First of all, the value of my MBP is not in its resale value. It's in my ability to complete work for clients which brings me $xxx dollars per hour (or really $xxxxx dollars per week, but that's an entirely different discussion). I have two MBP's in my possession at this very moment that are top of the line and exactly two years apart. If I placed them side by side and told you to pick which one was the newer one, you couldn't. If I let you code on them for one day each and then told you to pick the newer one, you couldn't (unless you looked in "About This Mac" but that would be cheating now, wouldn't it?). Trust me, the hype over the latest and greatest MBP feature is exactly that, marketing hype.

Second, MBP's are honestly just really solid machines for working. The battery life is long, the case is light, the features are more than sufficient for development. My 2+ year old MBP is running like a champ (and if it wasn't I would just take it to Apple, I have Apple Care, and they would fix it). Decide what you are buying the laptop for. If it's for telling your friends that you have the latest and greatest MBP that looks exactly like every other MBP, then wait until the newest one comes out and preorder it, then get ready for it to be old news three weeks later. If you want to build great iOS apps for your own business or for others, then get a good solid machine and start making money with it and stop worrying about all of the Apple hype.

> the case is light MBP are great machines, but being light is not one of their quality.

Unless you are in a state of emergency, I would wait till the new generation is released. Chance is, they are a very big update on the current generation. And if not, you can get the previous gen at a better deal on sale.

I'm weighing the same decision. It's time to replace my eight year old Mac Pro, and I'd like to go with a laptop + docking station + external monitors, but I'm torn as to weather and get the current model or the next.

I've decided to wait. The current model will be discounted, and I want to know how many USB-C ports will be on the next version and what the impact will be. I've heard it is painful if not impossible to connect older Cinnema dispays to mac book via USB-C.

Edited to add:

>-I want to do iOS development You can do iOS development on any intel-based mac. My 8 year old mac pro is fine. My Macbook Air is perfectly fine.

>-Want to be able to hook up a external monitor later, >hence the MBP and not air

You can hook up an external monitor to any of the modern macbooks, you just have to purchase an adapter. A mini-display cable will plug into a thunderbolt port, and there are adapters for other cable types (thunderbold to vga, thunderbolt to DVI, etc). I have a set of adapters I carry in a bag just for presentations.

If you want to drive 4k monitors, there be dragons.

The current MBP with the ATI GPU can even drive the Dell 5k screen when using dual-displayport. A coworker of mine uses it in this configuration. But there is a chance, the next iteration improves this, if it offers TB3.

I'm not sure what you want to know that isn't already fleshed out on the rumor sites [1].

Nobody here knows any more about what is coming than such sources. It is up to you to decide how urgently you need an upgrade.

[1] http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro

I haven't used it for formal dev work in a while, but what is now my wife's 2012 MBA will do iOS development (she had a 2010 MBA before that, and it, too, would run Xcode w/o issue) just fine with an external 27" non-retina Apple display attached to it. Assuming Xcode has not gotten particularly piggish in its last few iterations, even that 2012 MBA should still work. A new one should fly. You don't need a MBP to do iOS dev. If you favor raw power over portability, get the MBP. If you want a portable machine that will, for most of your day, be indistinguishable in perf over a MBP then get the Air.

But to answer your question: no, now is not a good time unless you must have one for work. New ones, with what some suspect is a redesign, are just around the corner. Or buy a used one now, wait for the new ones, then turn around and sell the used one for about what you paid for it.

Pretty simple, wait until the new one comes out and buy it. One will probably come out in September/October if not earlier:

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro

They're killing me. I'm going on a three-week overseas trip in September and I want a new laptop (old one is 2011 model with a dead battery on Mountain Lion that can't be upgraded). And here we are in August and no announcement and we're way past the average release date for everything but the 12" MacBook.

The Macbook Air is cheaper than the Macbook Pro, and you can definitely attach an external monitor. It has a standard mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) port for external devices.

The currently available Macbook Pro is very outdated, and is not a good purchase at this time.

I would like to buy a 4k Ultra Wide monitor at some point, can the Air support it?

If you want to wait and see what comes next, you could always buy something used on Craigslist. I recently reapplied the thermal paste and put a new battery in a 2009 13" MBP (previously upgraded to 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD), and it runs better than it did when it was new. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find a used one for $600 that would do what you want for now. By the time the new ones come out, you'll be able to make an informed decision about whether you need an upgrade. If you do, flip the old one on Craigslist again :)

I'm pretty sure you can attach an external monitor to an air or any other MacBook*.

The current MBP is a very nice machine.

The new MBP is rumored to have some questionable features: Thinner (what will do that do to the keyboard?); touch-sensitive OLED panel replacing real function keys.

Does anyone actually use the F-keys on macOS?

Every time I want to get to the menu (Ctrl-F2), so probably a minimum of a few dozen times a day for that one. F11 to show desktop. ⌘-F5 to toggle VoiceOver for accessibility testing. And probably others I've forgotten I use.

I use it for Jet Brains applications all the time

Hell yes. Intellij, AppCode, and emacs, which is where I spend a huge amount of time.

trcollinson is exactly right focus on the value your machine is bringing now. That being said every evidence point to a major upgrade in December, so unless your really need a new computer waiting is the safest bet a this point.

Specific advice : 1 - Don't get this generation macbook air or non retina macbook pro those are just bad value

2 - which ever decision you make,understand that in 6 month you won't care

3 - One way to edge your bets would be buy a used macbook pro now, resell a later when/if you decide to upgrade. Macbook have a great resale value, and by buying used you avoid the biggest part of the asset depreciation which appends in the first couple of years.

Buy now if you need it now. Otherwise, just wait. You can find some data for your decision here: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

I bought one last month. It's fine. Not having to buy all new connectors was a selling point for me.

Do you want to overpay for 3 year old technology? I'd wait.

I would wait for the new one.

get the MacBook. Macbook Pro is too heavy to carry around.

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