Is a Macbook worth getting? (I'd like to fit in)

bernard

bernard

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I've used $50 old thinkpads the last 2 years.
I do still feel a need to fit in. I don't feel like I fit in with the young girls and their Macbooks. I'd like to sit and fit in with the young girls and their macbooks in their cafes.
Is it worth buying a macbook though? For any other reasons than fitting in at cafes with young girls.
And should I get an Air or a Macbook? I already use cloud services for most everything. Would I even need the Macbook? Can you fit in with an Air or does it have to be a Macbook?
(momma are you watching, your boy made it)
 
I recently got a Macbook Pro while studying so I can build apps for IOS etc and so far my experience with it has been great. I tried going back to windows from an iMac but now I think I'll be sticking with macOS for good. The OS is just so much better than Windows in my opinion.

Only thing I'm worried about is the keyboard issue that everyone has been talking about.

Code: 
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/butterfly-keyboard-issues/
 
If you can justify it by being more productive with it why not. Assuming you have extra cash on hand.
MacBook Air is better unless you need a lot of computing power.
 
I hope you are joking about fitting in with girls at cafes. If not, I would try to do some self-examination and try to get rid of such a belief. After that, you can objectively write down your requirements, needs, budget for a new computer and then do a lot of internet research based on that or post your requirements here so we can suggest you something.

Then you might find that Macbook is worth getting, but for the right reasons, not impressing girls at a cafe.
 
Things about Mac that I like:
  1. MacOS
  2. Weight
  3. Battery life
  4. Durability
I've been very pleased with my Ipad and was with my Iphone as well. I consider that a mac product has at least 3 years durability, maybe even more. Which would be significantly more than Lenovo (post-IBM) products, which have never lasted more than 2 years.

I already use Linux, happy with that. MacOS should have some of that simplicity while having its own media products and such. I could never go back to Windows.

Weight along with battery life is for sure the biggest benefit to me. I really would like to sit and work in a cafe (with the young girls) at a whim, because my energy levels are really inconsistent. With long battery life and low weight, I can whip out my Air and get to work without fiddling with power cords and outlets (often missing).

I don't really need power. I get by on an 8 year old Thinkpad already. Only thing I need is some RAM and a graphics card to watch (not edit) video and to edit high resolution images. Everything else I moved to Google cloud already.

Is there any reason at all then to buy a Macbook?

Also indulge me here, for purely aesthetic purposes, I think the Macbook looks better, but it seems they are getting closer in look right?

Lastly, I really like the old Thinkpad keyboard. I am amazed that IBM/Lenovo made keyboards that could last 10 years without missing a beat. What a great feat of engineering. Naturally Mac keyboards are way different, is there a difference here between Air and Macbook?
 
Buy what you like, not what will make you fit in.

While I like the iPad and iPhone, my macbook pro never really sold me on Apple/Mac. I did like it for audio and photo stuff, but that's about it.

I bought a new Asus laptop that I like as much, or more than, my macbook pro. As a matter of fact, I haven't even turned on the macbook pro in over 18 months now.

Also of note, in the 20+ years of 18+ hours days on the computer.. I've never had a keyboard go out on any machine I have owned.

Also, batteries in any laptop go bad soon.

With that, get a laptop that will make you happy and buy an extra battery when you buy the laptop.

.
 
Well, I don't need to fit in that bad, more of a joke, but you know, you see these Macbooks everywhere, kind of get the feeling everyone has them.
I do want a thin, lightweight and long lasting battery laptop. When I compare, I am not sure the non-apple stack up that much better than the Air. I could be wrong, research needed, but the Air seems like it is a market leader. Macbook pro, maybe not so much.
 
The pros are decent enough machines. The newer models are a bit gimmicky (touch bar thing) and I'm not a huge fan of the keyboards, but overall they are good quality bits of kit.
Have not tried a new air, but they look decent.
Tbh a top end laptop for any major manufacturer is going to be solid.
I am running a 2015 Dell XPS 15. Was going to get a mbp at the time, but Dell had just released the newer model of the XPS, so I argued the Dell rep down to £1500, roughly a grand less than the equivulent mbp at the time. (As far is I'm aware, you can't haggle with apple).
I spend 90% of my time in Linux VMS anyway, so the OS means little to me.
Aesthetics and build quality wise, the XPS is a match for the mbp, and a big plus for UK touch typers is it has a regular UK keyboard (I think macs use a US layout on all models).
 
I used to replace laptops every 2-3 years. My current MBP is an early 2013 and still going STRONG. I love Macbook quality. It just works.
 
bernard said:
I'd like to sit and fit in with the young girls and their macbooks in their cafes.
Click to expand...

I appreciate your honesty :D

I'm a Mac guy. MacOS absolutely boosts my productivity, especially once you've figured out how to set up hot corners, spaces, get all your various mouse buttons linked to these fancy features (by god, don't use the trackpad or their mouse, get a real mouse).

I bought a Macbook Air a while back and don't use it much. I fantasized about working at cafes and all of that but I simply can't do too much serious work on a tiny laptop monitor. I could definitely write and things like that though. I'm glad I have the thing when I travel, but otherwise it's a nice $1500 piece of decoration leaning against the couch in the nice handcrafted Etsy bag I bought for it.

MacOS is everything for me, except the bane of my existence any time I think I want to play a cool game.

The one thing about MacOS is you tend to have to pay a ridiculous price for the hardware to get into the arena, unless you're willing to create a Hackintosh.

If you're looking for a new laptop and won't hang on to one for many many years, you can do far better for your money than with Apple, especially if the stats of the laptop matter to you. Apple, for me, is a convenience thing. I'm tied into the ecosystem and I don't need crazy power for rendering video and playing games. But you pay the "Apple tax" for sure.
 
Ryuzaki said:
(by god, don't use the trackpad or their mouse, get a real mouse)
Click to expand...
Currently using their mouse... I like the scroll on it (using your finger) but now that you've said that, it is a bit small for my hands TBH. What mouse do you recommend?
 
Darth said:
Currently using their mouse... I like the scroll on it (using your finger) but now that you've said that, it is a bit small for my hands TBH. What mouse do you recommend?
Click to expand...

The best mouse I've ever used is the Logitech Performance MX. I wore mine out and tried the new Logitech Master MX (the "better" one). It's smaller and the extra buttons moved to worse places. I'll be going back to the Performance MX. With MacOS you can link all the buttons to any of the cool "hot corners" options among other things and really get your workflow happening quickly. But besides that, they're the best mice I've used thus far in terms of tracking, durability, holding battery for a week on a 5 minute charge, etc.
 
Ryuzaki said:
The best mouse I've ever used is the Logitech Performance MX. I wore mine out and tried the new Logitech Master MX (the "better" one). It's smaller and the extra buttons moved to worse places. I'll be going back to the Performance MX. With MacOS you can link all the buttons to any of the cool "hot corners" options among other things and really get your workflow happening quickly. But besides that, they're the best mice I've used thus far in terms of tracking, durability, holding battery for a week on a 5 minute charge, etc.
Click to expand...

I must have used 10 of these over the years and find they never last too long. Yes the shape is great and they can be recharged (the reason why I first bought one), but I find the left click button will always fail after around 18 months.
 
I have worked in IT support since 95, seeing in email, networks, the Internet and various versions of Windows at both server and desktop/laptop level.
Despite Mr Gates et al giving me a great career, I bought a MacBook as soon as I could afford and have been a Mac user ever since.
They are a lot less stressful to use compared to a Windows machine.
My wife is doing a Uni course and she needed a cheap laptop to take to lectures for taking notes and accessing e-learning. We got a £180 Lenovo thing, which was small, lightweight and quite impressive looking for the price - perfect for what she needed.
But she has issues with it almost every time it boots up. Something needs updating, then it says it is out of disk space (even though it isn't) then the wifi forgets to connect... all good fun.
I guess you get what you pay for - just a shame we couldn't stretch to a MacBook Air at the time.
Would have made my life a lot easier :smile:
 
I switched to Mac and never looked back. I was a long time Windows advocate, but when OSX became full UNIX I decided to give it a try - I haven't looked back. I won't even touch a Windows computer simply because it's way to complicating and frustrating to get going.

I remember starting up my computers back in the day and something was always broken or messed up and it took 30 mins to fix the problem before I could get any work done.

You couldn't pay me to even try to use a Windows computer for a day - the frustration I've had as a coder with Microsoft alone is not worth it. Within Mac I can code in any language with ease and just get shit done. I can't recall once when my "Wifi stopped working" cause of the MacBook Pro or any Mac, but on windows the thing would randomly stop working and fixing it just to get work done would be an hour of wasted time.

The caveat - you can't play games cause of compatibility (I don't know if this is still true, never looked back into it). But meh, realistically I ain't got time for games. I'm already in front of a computer screen way too much, I'd rather not also use it for my entertainment if anything I'd rather go outside.

Now-a-days when people ask me to fix their computers I ask if it's a Mac, and if they say no I tell them "I have zero clue I haven't used Windows in over a decade, Google the problem...". I'm no longer the "fix my computer" person in the family! :D

I will say though - that Logitech Performance MX - OMG that was my favorite mouse, I feel like a clown now that I'm using the magic mouse 2 at the moment. Even though I'm left-handed it was still a great mouse, I need to find one again...
 
I'm all OSX, got an iMac and two MacBooks. Been using Mac since university. Very durable and full Unix... I have one MacBook that's now 5 years old, still as new.

Great for dev. I could use Linux on any old computer, but I love the ui on osx. You would have to kill me before I run Windows.

Hardware cost is such a small part of biz expenses, so if I spend 1200 or 3k on a new computer it doesn't matter. I use it 10 hrs a day.
 
Lack of 13" macbook pro with 32GB Ram or newest CPU's pushed me to Windows for the first time since Apple switched to intel. Picked up a Thinkpad X1 Xtreme and have not been happier.
 
Would you ever consider buying a used Macbook or Air, say from 2015. I seem them around $700-$900 refurbished. Seems expensive to me as a refurb machine.
 
Yes, if the price was good. I have two, one is from 2013/2014 and one is from last year. The changes, except the design, are minimal for my use -- especially if you don't need USB C. I would haggle though, as many of these have the smaller hard drives, older batteries, so I'd rather compare it to what it costs today, and not a x% off per year. Probably the range of 300-500 is fine for a 2014/2015. Old one has normal USB ports and HDMI, so I know some people actually prefer them.

My old Macbook still runs latest OSX, and I use it for web dev and work when I travel. It's 8 GB ram and 128gb HDD, which is fine. My newer one is 256gb hdd and 16gb ram, my wife usually use it when she works on our websites or writing.

On my iMac I have 1tb ssd and 64 gb ram, so it's my main work station though, but I upgraded to that mid last year, tbh the old Macbook would still be fine, but a bit inconvenient. I also added i 24" vertical on each side of it.

So for dev work, it's very nice to have the terminal fully integrated, I can easily add my ssh sessions as mounted volumes, easy to change host file, touch files, mess with bash profile, vim all the linux/unix stuff. I can write my scripts in bash/python and they will pretty much always work on my web servers. I also use alfred app, which allows me to run small scripts from a spotlight kind of task bar, so I use it to mount/unmount volumes, web hooks etc.

The trackpad (external one) is great.

You can prob do it on win too though, it's just everytime I do something on windows, I need to bend it into shape vs mac where things work pretty well out of the box.
 
CCarter said:
I will say though - that Logitech Performance MX - OMG that was my favorite mouse, I feel like a clown now that I'm using the magic mouse 2 at the moment. Even though I'm left-handed it was still a great mouse, I need to find one again...
Click to expand...

MX Master 2S is awesome. It replaced my last Performance MX. Scroll on ratchet mode is pretty loud but it's a solid mouse.
 
I love my MacBook Pro.

First of all, if the laptop dies you won't be losing any work. It goes into some kind of a sleep mode, which is HUGE. You can literally start right where you left off.

Secondly, I absolutely love that you can shut down the laptop and check the option to open back all the applications/tabs you had opened prior to shutting down.

Thirdly, I love the fact that you can drag files on a folder, hover them over the said folder, and it will open it! Then you can drag them onto another folder and so on, instead of drag and drop, then drag and drop, then drag and drop some more. Same goes for the "back" button; you can drag and hover files over the "back" button and you will go back a folder.

I know, these are little things but they make your life that much easier.

The issue with the keyboard is real. Currently, my keyboard doubles "t" and "e" every once in a while. It's a bit annoying, especially since I do a lot of article writing.

Another issue that I haven't seen anyone addressing (mind you, I haven't read the entire thread) is... WHENEVER I PLUG IN MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE THE WI-FI DISCONNECTS AND CAN NO LONGER BE CONNECTED! That is until I unplug the external HDD.

This is so God damn annoying. Thankfully, I don't use my external HDD too often.

Overall, I am more than pleased with MacOS.

For reference, I have a 13-inch 2017 MacBook Pro (the one without the fancy touch bar).

Ryuzaki said:
especially once you've figured out how to set up hot corners, spaces, get all your various mouse buttons linked to these fancy features (by god, don't use the trackpad or their mouse, get a real mouse).
Click to expand...

Can you give some examples of how you use hot corners and spaces?
 
I'm thinking about getting a used Macbook or Air on Ebay next month. Any suggestions on what model/year and specs that are worth it? At what pricepoint?
 
Hmm...

I am a windows guy, and win 10 gives me no troubles whatsoever.
Love thinkpads, the business variety. Those things are BEASTS. No lookers, tho.

We rotate them in the company (600 employess) every four (!!) years and they get sold to the employees at a minimum price .. I have one and it is still a great coding machine.

We do have people that work on Mac.. and all the gripes I hear from them all day.. unbelievable.

All that said, I think a Mac or Windows machine is just that - a machine. Dive into support forums and you'll see there is little difference.

iPad and iPhone are on another level, tho.
Pry my ipad from my cold, dead hands.
 
I just bought a 2015 Macbook Air for $400 used, but in great conditon
Feels good man.
One hell of a machine, so light and long battery life.
 
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