Never buy first generation apple anything and never be the first to upgrade software! (so many grey screens of death!)
As soon as the second generation of macbooks is out I will be upgrading!
As soon as the second generation of macbooks is out I will be upgrading!
I waited for second generation for the iPhone and iPad, both far more radical steps than this little Macbook, but the first gen products were spectacular.
(edit: My most disappointing Apple product in the past 15 years has been my iPhone 6. Jobs wouldn't let them make it wider due to handling issues. Without his restraint, they made it wider. Now I have to have a case and drop the darn thing all the time. Never had that problem with other iPhones.)
First gen iPhone was a big deal because they put all resources into providing the one or two things all the others sucked at: a smoother and more user-friendly interface and a more pleasant mobile web browser.
But it wasn't until the second or third gen that people coming over from previous smartphones could really get most of those things we took for granted already. If you were coming from a flip phone you were just adding some cool stuff. But if you had become accustomed to the typical features of a smart phone, you had to choose between smooth scrolling and pinch/zoom on a nice capacitive screen and being able to install software, stream music (in the background no less), get live navigation in the car, and operate on the latest high(er) speed networks.
I don't think the new Macbook has nearly as far to go as the first iPhone did. They'll iterate with faster processors, a better GPU, and maybe an extra port next round.
The Model T, released today, would be a joke. But a century ago, the idea of an automobile rather than horses was a tremendous advance.
I mean, the state of the art in smart phones in the US at the time was an HTC 2125...
The first generation retina macbooks had screens that ghosted, and it took several months before lots of kinks were worked out
The Macbook for example was $1800, with a $1300 additional cost if you wanted a 64gb SSD. It had a few hours of battery life and very weak performance.
Was it spectacular? Absolutely. But not necessarily amazing value. It eventually turned into a damn powerful little laptop that people bought instead of a MBP for dev work and even lightweight photo/video editing, with 12+ hours of battery life and still really thin.
The rMB kind of feels like that. It's not necessarily the best value right now. A rMBP or MBA is fine, and if you're OS agnostic, the Dell XPS or Asus Zenbook are interesting choices, too. In a few years the MBA won't have gotten any updates and the rMB gets sourced with a faster chip, drops $100 in price and adds some battery life, and probably comes out with a beefier 14" version. Then it'll be an interesting buy.
As an example, Apple had been making white iBooks for a long time before their Intel transition. But the 1st gen MacBook used a different white plastic that could absorb oils from your hands and turn a nice shade of orange/brown. http://appleinsider.com/articles/06/07/26/apple_recognizes_w...
With a brand new design, you risk problems like that slipping through the cracks. Maybe it turns out that the new keyboard mechanism starts missing presses once the usual crud falls in between the keys, or maybe the USB-C connector isn't durable enough and stops charging reliably a few months in. If the new models have any issues like that, waiting for the second version would save you some headaches.