Moving to a Mac/macbook.. anyone made the jump?

[Archtronics]

If your planning any trips to the states soon, that’s a good way to save a few £££s.

 

[v15ben]

If your planning any trips to the states soon, that’s a good way to save a few £££s.

Yup, bought mine in the US and saved a few quid.

 

[SuperJ]

Made the switch to my current MBP in 2014 and would never go back now. You get what you pay for and everything about MacBooks just feels premium.

 

[imprezaworks]

Reading this thread impresses me how long the macs seem to last

 

[AdDaMan]

Yep i switched in about 2012. Never looked back. f**king angers me when i have to use my work windows laptop. POS.

 

[Mk1T]

Crikey, I was not expecting this level of response, really helpful thanks chaps. I'm going to look into the models now and plan a christmas present to myself. Lol.

It seems worth it, I just opened my laptop now to view this thread and it pretty much shat itself, passed out for 30 seconds then went all slow, now seems to be functioning as normal, with a lagging keyboard.. wow.

 

[sn00p]

I've owned quite a few Macs and haven't had a "PC" since early in the 2000's.

I had desktop Macs and then switched to laptops and had a G4 Powerbook which was my daily driver for about 6 years and I only upgraded it as the battery had gone and it was finally starting to feel its age (Intel based Macs had been out a while since then). 2010 bought a MBP and replaced that 2 years ago, 6 years service from a laptop was pretty good going, I still occasionally use it as it has old stuff on it, it's still a reasonable computer.

Now running on the first gen TB MBP.

Couldn't tell you the exact timeline, but we're probably talking that I've changed computers 3 times in the space of 15 years, the G4 powerbook still holds a bit of resale value if I wanted rid of it.

As a geek I love the fact that it runs unix, makes my life very easy when I want to knock up something quickly or do some hackery with something.

 

[glenn_adam_doble]

Wow I can’t believe how much concern there is over virus’s, seems like very old school computer mindset

Never had virus software on my Mac since the day I bought 8 years ago, it’s about being sensible on what you click on and download, if it looks and sounds good to be true don’t click on it or install it

 

[Gavin.]

Reading this thread impresses me how long the macs seem to last

That's the thing, yes they're expensive but they last the distance. Mine originally cost me £999 7 years ago almost to the month, breaking that down it's cost me £142 a year over that period, nothing really. When you do a similar calculation with a pc over it's life length it wouldn't be much different, my last laptop cost me £400 and was dead in 3 years

 

[CrippsCorner]

If you're after Apple build quality, but staying with Windows... have you considered the Surface line? They have quite a few different form factors to choose from now. Unfortunately they also come at Apple prices!

 

[Gavin.]

Or... VMware fusion!

 

[Darren S]

The only real concern I have over modern Macs is with their upgrade paths. I was genuinely shocked to learn that the MBP that my wife bought had its 8GB soldered-on to the motherboard. Whilst I appreciate the 'incentive' to spend more and go for the 16GB version initially, I just think that smacks of short-term logic and does little other than to piss off the end user. If in four or five years when additional memory might be required, why can I not upgrade it easily? Or more likely - the memory would probably fail in that interim period.

This isn't unique to Macs - I've seen the same cancerous attitude in several Windows-based laptops that we've bought through work - some really quite expensive too. But the first time I'd seen this done was on a MBP and is a bit of a sore point, given that the hardware is well known for its general longevity.

 

[sn00p]

The only real concern I have over modern Macs is with their upgrade paths. I was genuinely shocked to learn that the MBP that my wife bought had its 8GB soldered-on to the motherboard. Whilst I appreciate the 'incentive' to spend more and go for the 16GB version initially, I just think that smacks of short-term logic and does little other than to piss off the end user. If in four or five years when additional memory might be required, why can I not upgrade it easily? Or more likely - the memory would probably fail in that interim period.

This isn't unique to Macs - I've seen the same cancerous attitude in several Windows-based laptops that we've bought through work - some really quite expensive too. But the first time I'd seen this done was on a MBP and is a bit of a sore point, given that the hardware is well known for its general longevity.

It's mainly because of the design aesthetics, making the laptops thinner means that things like RAM have to be soldered directly onto the board, there just isn't the space inside for stacked boards with connectors, I've also never had a Mac fail with a memory issue.

On my 2016 TB MBP the storage is soldered directly to the board for the very same reasons, but I have a f**k off NAS which I use to store stuff and important stuff on that is backed up to the cloud, 2 years ago when I bought this machine I opted for the 256GB version because I couldn't see me using any more than that, 2 years later I still haven't even used half of it.

At some point the storage will fail, it's flash, but I expect to have had my moneys worth out of the machine by then and it actually being at the point of time for an upgrade.

I have a 2010 13" MBP which was my daily driver until I got this one, it has upgradable memory and storage, but it's considerable heavier and chunkier than my current machine which is a 15"! I hated carrying the old MBP around because it weighed a ton.

 

[White16valver]

Soooo... I might just splash the cash and pick a MBP up, as I'm fed up not being able to get to my pics (thanks to my work laptop being locked down and my olllld laptop being slower than a snail on a sunday stroll).

This place has been recommended to me for old/refurbed models:
https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/collections/macbook-pro/macbook-pro-retina-15-inch

They look reasonably priced, from what I can see, especially compared to the official Apple site (https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac).

Has anyone used Hoxton by any chance??

 

[Ex-User (60778)]

Soooo... I might just splash the cash and pick a MBP up, as I'm fed up not being able to get to my pics (thanks to my work laptop being locked down and my olllld laptop being slower than a snail on a sunday stroll).

This place has been recommended to me for old/refurbed models:
https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/collections/macbook-pro/macbook-pro-retina-15-inch

They look reasonably priced, from what I can see, especially compared to the official Apple site (https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac).

Has anyone used Hoxton by any chance??

.

 

[White16valver]

.

Um... did you say something then delete it by accident? lol

 

[DivideBYZero]

I moved in 2011. The 15” MBP I bought back then is still in daily use today, but now has 1Tb of SSD storage and 16Gb RAM. I have never looked back.

Ignore the anti-apple BS in this thread and just do it.

 

[cjgower]

I’m a Graphic Designer / Web Dev by profession and had only ever used Mac before starting at my current place where I now have a decent spec desktop PC.

Have to say I was anti-PC but have kinda grown used to it. I find myself almost preferring it for designing in InDesign, Photoshop, editing videos etc.

My prior experience was a Samsung Laptop with vista installed - say no more. These days though all you’re really paying for is a fancy case/external looks with a MBP/iMac. Other than looks I can’t really see an advantage to having one unless you have specific software needs.