The new MacBook Pro’s

It appears the dust has started to settle after Apple’s latest event where they released new MacBook Pro’s. After posting some initial reactions from their announcement to Twitter I’ve sat back and had a little think of the announcement from a new techie point of view.

I bought a brand new 13 inch MacBook Pro for work purposes at the start of August, it was not a stock model I added extra RAM, bumping it up to a nice 16gb. After three months of using it, it’s been perfect everything I need and more. Everything I do on a daily basis it handles with no problem and then some. The MacBook Pro being my daily and only machine, but I don’t use it that often as a laptop, it’s generally docked in a Vertical Henge Dock with a nice 4k Dell Monitor connected and a wireless mouse and keyboard. Being sat at a desk all day I prefer ergonomic’s over anything else. Having the laptop gives me the ability to travel around and be free when needed, and it’s provided that ability on enough occasions already. From a user’s perspective who is after a computer that offers the portability of a laptop and the ability to work with my external peripherals and meet all my daily needs the laptop does that and some. It also has the added benefits of being made from aluminum which I hope makes it more stronger than plastic laptop cases, it’s light (enough), keyboard and trackpad are better than non Apple laptops I’ve used, and they do all I need when I use it as a laptop. To that note the laptop serves it purpose.

Back to the new MacBook Pro’s…

Would I buy one today if I was due and upgrade or looking for a new computer? Yes.

Would I buy one today to just upgrade due them being new? No.

But, what about X, Y and Z (replace these with anything you have seen other’s discuss, like Graphic card, ports, touch bar, etc) – I trust Apple have our best interests at heart when they are choosing what to put inside their products. Do I know about what graphics card is better than the next, No and neither do I want to. It might sound a little bad – But I have a use case for my machine that is more than likely different to yours. I would expect that the new laptop is better than my current one and my current one meets my needs so why wouldn’t the new one?

What about all the peripherals you have and use on a daily basis, you will have to buy all new ones or have a ton of different adapters? No, I won’t need to buy new devices, but yes I would have to buy some adapters to adjust my current setup, but as already mentioned I have it docked, so would be a case of adjusting my dock setup, not too bad, and from what I’ve seen in the past third-party solutions don’t take long to appear and are generally very nice and fit with the Apple aesthetics. I would hope over time the adapters that would be needed would reduce as newer peripherals are bought and use the new technology.

What about other operating systems or computer manufactures? What about them? I have used Windows and Ubuntu as primary machines over the past five years each as primary OS’s for long periods of time, and I enjoyed them in different ways, I’ve not used Windows 10, I switched to Ubuntu about six months before they released it. If I had to I could easy any of the three OS’s as my primary each have their pro’s and con’s based on what I need, but I prefer Mac OS over the others, it does all I need with little issue, has all the Applications I need and some, sure the others have Applications I can use but I find that the Mac eco system is much nicer. Esoecially after I’ve found the Cleanmymac X review.
As for computer manufactures if you are after a Linux or Ubuntu based machine there are a couple of option these days for getting your hands on hardware that has it already installed out of the box and I really like the look of Purism machines. When I used Ubuntu as my main machine I was using a Lenovo T440s, the build quality of the machine was not great, but the size and weight of the machine was the main factor for picking that one, and pretty much all Windows based laptops of 15inch monitor come with a keypad on the laptop keyboard which I did not want. For Windows based hardware you have a huge range to pick from, from super cheap up to “business” grade, with so much choice it can be hard to work out which is the best, and now Microsoft now getting into the hardware more with the surface range it’s growing even more. Over the past 12 months or so the style of the hardware for Windows based machines has got much better too.

So you’ve ditched your Mac in favor of something else, 18 months down the line you want to upgrade as Microsoft or some other manufacture has released some new shiny laptop you want to get. Do you think you will get a good return on your initial investment? I believe not. This is another great thing with Mac’s the ability to sell them second hand is very easy and they hold their value very well. I’ve had a few in the past that have made me good money long after I’ve had them. I have yet to see this sort of second hand eco system with non Mac computers. I may be wrong or I am not looking in the right places, but I will be keeping an eye on this in the coming months.

After reading this article a couple weeks back about IBM workforce switching to be more Apple based, I’ll be interested to see in 12 to 24 months if this is still true.