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It’ll be interesting to see pricing when the remaining stock of the superseded models hit the refurb store- presumably Apple should be selling them off at the same price the genuine refurbs have been up till now- though maybe they’ll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

I did wonder if the discount on the top of the range Dell XPS locally was timed to the announcement.

Keep the faith fanboyz think of it as an investment…

I’m typing this on a MBP and use a Mac Pro at work. The new version of the MBP looks interesting, but if you have a new iPhone it seems you can’t plug it in without an adaptor and you can’t connect the headphones either. Plus, you can’t use your iPhone headphones with the phone because that is the same port connected to the computer!

From reddit:

and randomly this popped up in a feed
https://medium.com/charged-tech/apple-just-told-the-world-it-has-no-idea-who-the-mac-is-for-722a2438389b#.yl6hzgg1j
Yes I know I am due to be burned as a heritic for upsetting you all but how bad can that be 😉

Interesting to see that this thread and the Iphone 7 both seem to have the lack of gushing love that mac launches normally do.
Guess thats what the collective Meh on the share price was

I’ll stand by my page 2 comment, was interesting sat with a bunch of their target market on Friday night (80% professionals using mac for dev/graphics etc) not many could even come close to buying one, where as pre launch they would all have been ready to lap one up.

It does seem apple isn’t quite sure what it is doing at the moment,

I have an iPhone 6 and the contract expires soon, but i will probably just keep it as see no real benefit of going to a 7, i have replaced my 2009 MacBook pro but i bought a 2015 rather than one of the new ones, i get useful to me ports, SD card and USB. As for the price hike…

Curious to know what they plan to do with the three desktops. As the mini and the Pro are getting very old!

I think that, after this MBP (2012) and iPhone (6) die, I’m off.

There’s nothing compelling for me any more, and that’s in both Sierra and IOS. I’m liking all the Linux-ness of Win 10 now, and even the new Ubuntu is nice- and don’t really like the way IOS has gone. For both to disappoint me at the same time is unprecedented.

Its more than that- the new MBPs aren’t sufficiently upgradeable for me- this machine I’m on has had more RAM and an SSD from me, and runs well, and I know I’ll get a few years out of it still. The new ones lack that, and I’m not willing to take the gamble at that price. In fact, I can’t take the gamble- I couldn’t afford one.

In fact, although its dodgy, I’d probably hackintosh a Thinkpad or Aspire laptop if this machine kicks it- at least then I’m not dongle-chaining, which would irritate me more than I think I can take.

The nicer things about IOS are just down to one, now- iMessage, and with better phone contracts, I can live without it.

This is a first for me, tbh.

Apple seem to be in the place now that MS were in after a good few of the Ballmer years. Cook has taken over, and like Ballmer at MS, has increased profits and been a steady hand. The only problem is, he doesn’t have the innovation, creativity, vision or the cajones to take risks and drive the brand forward towards real innovation and new market sectors like Jobs and Gates did. The new man at MS has been trying to ready their situation and seems to be doing a good job, I wonder how long it will take before Apple realises what’s going on?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/25/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer/

The iPhone/MBP disconnect is mental as well, if they knew they were about to release USB C only MBPs why not use that on the iPhone? It’s a crazy lack of joined up thinking and, to me, demonstrate how far they’ve fallen.

The image on the previous page is weird though. If you’re charing you’re phone and using you’re laptop, why would you want to plug your headphones into the phone? And didn’t the iphone come with normal headphones and an adapter? I’m confused.

The more I look at the new 13″ non touch bar pro, the more suitable it seems as a direct replacement for my 2012 Air. Smaller, more powerful, similar number of ports (though losing the SD reader kinda sucks). It kinda makes sense on it’s own as a product.

The image on the previous page is weird though. If you’re charing you’re phone and using you’re laptop, why would you want to plug your headphones into the phone? And didn’t the iphone come with normal headphones and an adapter? I’m confused.

Previous “interesting” decisions were pushed along by the cult of Jobs so that it was immediatly pointed out that it wasn’t apple being dim it was you not getting it.

The new man at MS has been trying to ready their situation and seems to be doing a good job,

There are still some quirks but the actual new office plans, cloud side, Power BI (FREE!!!) and Azure are making them a good company for the business user. The surface is a really clever device at the premium end and I’d have one tomorrow if funds allowed. Then in the middle the big manufacturers are delivering high quality machines with excellent specs innovitive features (yes touch screen) and the sensible bits like HDMI, USB & SD cards etc. not to mention upgradable so you don’t need to shell out for memory and diks today but when you need them.

I went to the apple store today….. they had ONE new mbp on display (13″ non-touchbar)

had a chat with the bloke:

Me: Have you got any of the 17″ on display?
him: No
Me: Do you know when you are getting them?
Him: No
Me: I can’t decide between a 1tb 13″ or a 512 17″. If I buy the 17″, is the SSD user upgradable?
Him: Hmm, it used to be
Me: I know…. is it going to be in the new ones?
Him: It isn’t in the macbook
me: I know, is it going to be in the new 17″ mbps?
Him: I don’t know.
Me: Ok, thanks for your help….

I’m an apple-phile, but there does come to a point that you have to declare that the emperor has no clothes on.

The 17″ Macbook Pro that was discontinued in 2012? 😆

The image on the previous page is weird though. If you’re charging you’re phone and using you’re laptop, why would you want to plug your headphones into the phone? And didn’t the iphone come with normal headphones and an adapter? I’m confused.

I think the point is that those are the headphones that come with the iPhone 7 (with a lightning connector). And if you’ve got your phone plugged into your laptop, you then can’t plug the headphones into either the phone (because the port is in use) or the laptop (because it doesn’t have a lightning connector). On top of which you can’t even plug the phone into the laptop without an adaptor anyway…

The new MBP without the touchbar has an upgradable SSD – see OWC teardown

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/25/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer/

that was a really interesting article, thanks

@doris (IMO) Gates was very far from visionary. He was a smart busnessman and recognised an exlucsive deal for his (really quite poor) OS was very valuable. Over the years he shut out competition via financial muscle – in 1985 I ran a DEC OS on my PC which ran 4 processes simultaneously, MS bought that OS and binned it as although it was streets ahead it did not have the benefit of the licensing exclusives he had elsewhere with DOS

What you are seeing with Apple is a computer market positioning which says their relative niche is where they want to be as its very profitable and a view that phones and tablets are they way forward

their relative niche is where they want to be

It’s only profitable because of the cachet their devices have. If they lose that, they’ve not got much. And if this thread is anything to go by they’re in a spot of bother in that respect.

Given all that cash they have they really ought to be putting it to work.

What you are seeing with Apple is a computer market positioning which says their relative niche is where they want to be as its very profitable and a view that phones and tablets are they way forward

Tablet sales are falling I believe, the iphone sales are down and the lack of massive enthusiasm from the traditional buyers isn’t good. What is actually innovative in the new stuff? What is actually a backwards step?
Another lad in the office was saying how he normally buys one each year then trades up – not convinced this year. No annual upgrades, no new desktops as the article linked asked what are the 115,000 people doing?

I can’t remember the last time I plugged my iPhone into the mac. I charge it on the mains and it syncs wirelessly.

So to all the apple users on here – would you be interested in a Surface style tablet/laptop device, like an iPad pro but that runs MacOS instead of iOS?

Hypothetically of course – I’m not Tim Cook honestly.

Not for me. I think touch has its place, but not much in my world.

And I can’t stand fingerprint smears on monitors….uurggh!!

iPad running MacOS is exactly what I said the iPad should have been in the first place but with an interface that allows both touch and conventional kb+mouse interaction. But then I’m speaking as an ex-Apple user.

And I can’t stand fingerprint smears on monitors

Me neither but somehow doesn’t seem to be an issue on touch devices. I give it a wipe every few days. I was expecting it to be much more of a problem.

And I can’t stand fingerprint smears on monitors….uurggh!!

Stylus then, awesome for interaction and marking up along with taking notes etc. but we shall wait till apple invent it 😉

So to all the apple users on here – would you be interested in a Surface style tablet/laptop device, like an iPad pro but that runs MacOS instead of iOS?

No, happy to not get smears all over the screen and as most applications don’t really work as touch anyway not convinced.

So to all the apple users on here – would you be interested in a Surface style tablet/laptop device, like an iPad pro but that runs MacOS instead of iOS?

Probably. I do music so my main requirements are connectivity – firewire soundcards, USB drives, HDMI monitor etc – and CPU power/RAM (to run various synths and plugins). And I want to be able to take it to another studio and plug it in there.

A touchscreen might be quite nice – there are lots of great music apps that make use of the iPad’s touchscreen.

So yeah, probably. But as mentioned elsewhere, the build quality of MacBooks means my 2015 model will probably see me through the next 4 or 5 years!

iphone sales are down and the lack of massive enthusiasm from the traditional buyers isn’t good. What is actually innovative in the new stuff? What is actually a backwards step? Another lad in the office was saying how he normally buys one each year then trades up – not convinced this year.

in the music world I follow, it’s always been accepted wisdom that you just get a mac. My timeline is usually full of overpaid producers off to buy the latest Apple thing on day 1 – this year it’s they’re all complaining that Apple have lost the plot and saying they’ll skip this version…

Possibly molgrips – however I don’t like laptops, I am desktop plus tablet/phone so won’t pay a laptop premium (hence my ancient 2009 Mini). iPad Pro is too big imho. I’d also be suspicious that a non-Apple machine would run iOS properly.

Lots of talk of Mac OS becoming more like iOS which for me seems a step backwards in terms of functionality.

Anyway £2k plus for a laptop is bonkers but we have become normalised to £700 for a “phone”