[Closed] New MacBook Pro's

"Earlier this week, Microsoft announced an increase of up to 22% for business customers of its cloud products"

As Jammers has pointed out, this simply means we we will just buy the similar, and probably superior, British manufactured product

I believe there is one in development, provisionally titled the Lemon

Actually the more critical the environment the older the software is likely to be, because if you know it works and is stable for your specific needs then upgrading is much more of a risk. And cost.

Yep, every time they bring out a new version of Office I have to find all sorts of workarounds for all the bugs / stability issues they've introduced into Office / VBA and somehow try and scrape back some performance (each new version runs significantly slower than the previous one). Total PITA for a load of new features no one uses.

I still use 2010, 10x faster than 2013 and 25x faster than 2016 when number crunching. 2003 was about 10x faster than 2010 as well, so they're just getting slower and slower......

Despite the headlines it really isn't clear without detailed analysis (that seems sadly lacking) on how much the impact currency fluctuations from Brexit is having an impact. [b]All[/b] of Apple’s Mac customers worldwide are waking up to find out the company has significantly increased the average selling price of its laptop computers. In the US the new MacBook Pros will set you back at least $200 more than last year’s models, and sometimes much more.

Prices are even higher in Europe. The MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar is 1,700 euros, or $1,853.

As for Office 2000 if your IT department is living that far in the past then I'd be looking to move to a different company.

200 dollars more is a lot less than 500 quid more - and yank wages are generally higher for the middle classes to make up for the weaker dollar. 96 thousdand dollars in the US to do a 35k R&D scientist role over here - that used to be acceptable when the pound was worth 1.6 dollars....

Hell, they're McDonalds employees are asking for 15 dollars and hour - can you imagine the laughs over here if they asked for 12 quid an hour here?

If the pound stays down, expect living and spending standards to drop pretty rapidly.

binners - Member

As Jammers has pointed out, this simply means we we will just buy the similar, and probably superior, British manufactured product

I believe there is one in development, provisionally titled the Lemon

What is the opposite of jingoism?

Realism?

[url= https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DL9-gZQttC4J:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk ]https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DL9-gZQttC4J: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk [/url]

If you look UK averages are already crap when you look at western europe.

and the UK isn't actually a cheap country either, things look bad and being honest aren't going to get better for a while if ever.

The whole "Macs are creative people" is a bit out of date - they were adopted by graphic designs and photographers, sure -

But now as I sit at work everyone is using a MacAir or MacPro - thats devs, product managers, scrum masters, UX, UI, QA, etc. The whole product dev stack uses Macs - they're simply just that much nicer to use, and now the whole managed integration thing has been worked out, they simply work.

The alternative is some really shitty Lenovo tough book - they terrible but they have the build quality needed for work environment (people tend to treat company owned hardware a lot worse than their own) - nothing else from the big windows boys has the physical build to match.

I expect work will do a round of updates at some point next year, but I won't buy one for home use.

The more I look at these new Macs I don't see the point. I'm sitting here with a 3yo 11" Dell Altitude E6230 with 8GB Ram, I7 2.9GHZ, a 500GB HDD of which 50% is free.

Apart from the fact its older even the cheaper-than-Surface aka cheaper than Mac Air's Dell Lattitude/Inspiron have the same or or lowe spec albeit with touch screens, what would I be gaining?

I appreciate mine's probably loaded with Win-junk by now, but it fulfils my needs for work.

(Crikye, look how cheap Dell's chromebooks are at the moment)

binners - Member

Realism?

My part of the UK does have good form for hi-tech manufacturing you know. 🙂

If you look UK averages are already crap when you look at western europe.

Don't worry, the Brexiteers are in charge, so we'll soon be competing in the Eastern European league!

My part of the UK does have good form for hi-tech manufacturing you know.

Indeed - ARM have had a good run via Apple et al.

However, I'm not expecting to see Acorn taking on the Surface and MBP any time soon. And that's the point.

Don't worry, the Brexiteers are in charge,

Yes, I'm sure this was all part of the Brexiteers' secret plan - paying much more for the things we all want, and making unknown special deals with companies to go ahead and make the investment they had always planned to pre-Brexit – and then claiming it all as a victory, in some exquisite twist of logic.

I've had enough of it!

#VoteLibDem

Indeed - ARM have had a good run via Apple et al.

ARM got sold to the Japanese a few months back didn't they.

😆

#VoteLibDem

That's what got us into this mess in 2010. A mistake I won't be repeating.

The whole "Macs are creative people" is a bit out of date - they were adopted by graphic designs and photographers, sure -

But now as I sit at work everyone is using a MacAir or MacPro - thats devs, product managers, scrum masters, UX, UI, QA, etc. The whole product dev stack uses Macs - they're simply just that much nicer to use, and now the whole managed integration thing has been worked out, they simply work.

The alternative is some really shitty Lenovo tough book - they terrible but they have the build quality needed for work environment (people tend to treat company owned hardware a lot worse than their own) - nothing else from the big windows boys has the physical build to match.

I expect work will do a round of updates at some point next year, but I won't buy one for home use.

Same in my company. To the point that those who opt for the very expensive Windows laptop instead of the mac all want to swap these days and are awaiting the refresh date.

Don't worry, the Brexiteers are in charge, so we'll soon be competing in the Eastern European league!

ARM don't manufacture anything anyway.
And the factory in South Wales that does manufacture computery things is up to its eyeballs pumping out as many Raspberry Pis as it can 😉

Maybe the plan was to price everyone out of the market, then produce a stock PC in UK with a custom OS at a controlled cheaper price. Basically Red Star Linux, rebranded 😉

That's what got us into this mess in 2010. A mistake I won't be repeating.

I would look at it the other way, what we have now would have been in 2011 if it wasn't for the Lib Dems. Only 4 years till a general election and the Tories being returned to power after a little bit of boundary manipulation.

Looking on the bright side all those offshored helpdesks will be coming back.

India will be offshoring theri help desks to the UK in a few years...

I would look at it the other way, what we have now would have been in 2011 if it wasn't for the Lib Dems.

I didn't see the Tories win a majority in 2010. The Lib Dems could have played much harder as an independent partner rather than full coalition, withdrawing support if their own needs weren't met, and even potentially proposing their own bills knowing they had Labour support.

In their power grab they sold most of their principles and were duly rewarded in 2015 as a result.

Hmm..refurb old style i7 512 Gb retina MBP for £1600, or a brand new specced up Dell XPS 15" and a refurb MB Air for travelling for the price of the new one? This is probably the most dumbass question of the day, but I'm going to ask anyway - I like the idea of shared clipboard, iMessages, photos, calls etc between products. I often use iPad then go straight to laptop etc. I'm used to basic video editing and reviewing using Apple and would like to continue. Is it possible to stick MacOS on, say a specced up Dell or is that not possible? I'm guessing not. The screen spec on the top level XPS sounds amazing with rave reviews and it seems only battery life (and that it''s a windows machine if so inclined) that's against it?

ARM's business gets more profitable as £ falls. Design costs in £ production/sales in $

Is it possible to stick MacOS on, say a specced up Dell or is that not possible?

Not really.

The Dell screen although sounding good won't offer the colour trueness of the Apple variant either most likely.

I wondered about that. Spec alone can be misleading. Thanks Somouk. That's helpful.

Apparently John Lewis have sold out of 2015 MBPs 🙁

edit: almost

I wonder who bought them all? Apple?

Hacintosh have been around for years.
It can be done but needs compatible components.

Apparently John Lewis have sold out of 2015 MBPs

edit: almost

It'll be interesting to see pricing when the remaining stock of the superseded models hit the refurb store- presumably Apple should be selling them off at the same price the genuine refurbs have been up till now- though maybe they'll take the opportunity to increase refurb store prices as well.

The same old comments regurgitated every time Apple come out with a new version of a product - it shouldn't be a surprise to people by now. The formula is exactly the same every time. A price hike: check, a hike in power and functionality: check, all in an ever shrinking package: check, a few controversial new features that will eventually become features that people wondered what they ever did before they came into existence: check.

Nice bit of kit, but way way too powerful for my needs (i.e. amazon shopping and spouting crap on here!) so the basic Macbook will do fine for me.

I'm typing this on a late 2009 basic Macbook still going strong and has served my every home computing need effortlessly. I purchased it in 2009 for £800, so about £1200 in today's money, so about the same as the current basic macbook. So it appears that Apple products have not increased in price in real terms. I remember when crisps were 8p a bag, they're now anywhere between 55p and £1.50. Things escalate in price - it's a fact of life.

The Pro is clearly a professional machine. I once spec'd up a Mac Pro for over £20k, but if you're a professional who needs that sort of computing power for your professional photo editing / professional video editing / creating music / doing design/cad stuff then it's a tool and a cheap one at that. The company I work for does all it's professional design work for marketing and advertising on iMac's with no issues at all, so a Pro must be a mini-super computer.

My current mid-2012 Pro was under £1000, the cheapest current Pro is £1249 which sounds OK by comparison until I take into account the small hard drive. Yes I know all about external drives and NAS but it's not the same as 1Tb on board is it?

I live in Canada, so it's different pricing, tax etc, but while yes, it is a big ball park, it's not a big as you think.

HP Spectre, dual core i7 (clocked faster than MBP), 256 SSD, similar weight etc, $1800, MBP non touch $1900. Definitely the same ball park.

There's no real point in arguing over prices, they're definitely expensive, but I guess if you want MacOS then you've not got a lot of choice. I would consider a windows machine but I hate the thought of going back to programming on one. You get used to your toolset, the bash terminal, your package managers etc. There'd definitely be a learning curve.

I purchased it in 2009 for £800, so about £1200 in today's money,

Hmm yes but normal inflation doesn't apply in computers - prices have been falling in numerical terms for decades. Your MBP in 2009 was about twice the price of a cheapo entry level Windows laptop. Now though with MBPs at £1500 and entry level Windows laptops at £200, that ratio is now 7.5.

You get used to your toolset, the bash terminal

Bash officially available for Windows now 🙂

the basic Macbook will do fine for me

It would do fine for me too if only it could drive two external monitors.

I've ended up with two Thunderbolt displays on my desk, so I have to get an MBP to get both of them lit.

I might as well get one with a Touchy-bar while I'm at it, just in case wobbliscott's 'wonder what I did without it' comment is right.

But I am dubious, much.

I think they have put up the prices in the return store too, which is very annoying and a bit underhand.

They're clearly a bit sore at having to pay tax now.

I think they have put up the prices in the return store too, which is very annoying and a bit underhand.

The return store? The refurb models? All prices have gone up, 2015 MBPs are more expensive and it wouldnt surprise me if the refurb ones are too. Don't see anything underhand about it, they're still cheaper than the new models.

Complaining that a basic macbook won't drive two external monitors? Well that is a pretty specific and not particularly common requirement that wouldn't have been spec'd in the basic macbook. A bit like complaining that a basic ford focus does't have full leather, heated steering wheel, radar guided cruise control and the better engine and gearbox combo. Those are the value-added features you pay a premium for in the higher end models.

The price of computers has nothing to do with memory. Memory has become cheaper over time. The ethos of modern computing and especially Apple is to have all your data in one location away from your main devices, and your devices access the same location for all your data storage needs. That is the way things are going. Instead the value you get from Apple products are better quality componentrary meaning that their devices last a very long time. As well as my 2009 macbook, i've also got an iPad2 and two original iPad mini's all going strong and many many years old. You don't get that with other cheaper similar products. So you are also paying for the longevity of the devices.

Wether you value the attributes of Apple products is upto the individual - if you don't then you think they are a rip off, if you do you think they are reasonably and fairly priced. There are other options available.

The return store? The refurb models? All prices have gone up, 2015 MBPs are more expensive and it wouldnt surprise me if the refurb ones are too.

Sorry predictive text on the phone - yes I meant the refurb store. My point is the refurb models - which have now also jumped in price - to similar prices to the prices that new ones where a few days ago - clearly have been in the country for some time - hence why they have been refurbed. The exchange rate therefore should not affect them at all - so Apple has just hiked their prices on them to reflect a constant 10-15% less than a full price machine i.e. just making more money on the same machines they have already imported.

anyway made my decision, walked into PCWorld and they had some old MacBook Pros for £999 only 128Gb but it will do. I either buy now and pay a chunk or wait until the power cable on my old one fails and face a shocking price hike.

@binners What does this mean:

Without getting into the old tired Mac v PC argument, I use CS on a Mac all day, every day. Would a PC be as intuitive to use. No. Simple as that. Horses for courses.

I use a Win10 box at work and Mac at home both running CS and there is no difference in the software. Actually, not quite true, the Mac refuses to remember open/place dialogue box position and size in Photoshop on the Mac and I have to resize the window every time, very irritating. Known issue for yonks with no solution I'm aware of.

If anything, I think I prefer the way Win10 structures the recent folders in Explorer versus hateful finder. I do miss the trackpad though...

Microsoft have dropped their Surface Book prices by around £200 and are throwing in £285 worth of Xbox One S. Seems to be over the last few days, so possibly a response to Apple's latest offerings.