Thinking of getting an APPLE laptop; need advice.

[everwinter]

I bought a retina Macbook Pro last week. Refurbished 2015. Couple points.

- Congrats to the OP on the purchase. Enjoy the force touch track pad. I've read where a lot of people think it's a gimmick, but I really like it. It's great for news sites & for reddit where I'm not sure if I want to read the article/link, but I can use the force touch to preview it.

- I also compared the Air & the Pro. The display on the Air is not bad at all. It's certainly good enough & wasn't a deal breaker for me. I played around with both for a long time in the store & found I got used to whatever display I was using. The retina effects wore away on me after awhile & I just got used to it. I initially leaned towards the Air, but went with the Pro after learning that Macs need a lot of RAM (well more than 4 GB). The price of an 8GB Air is very close to the price of the entry retina macbook pro price which includes 8 GB of RAM. They had refurbished ones that were $200 less than the new Pros, so that pushed me over the edge to decide on the Pro.

[davebarnes]

Originally Posted by JasonF

Once again, no.

I stand corrected.
I did recommend the 21-inch iMac, but I have only purchased 27-inch models.
My mistake.

[DinsdalePirahna]

I am a long time mac user, and recently purchased a top shelf 27 inch iMac. I am a graphic designer so I needed the screen size and power.

but I just picked up a Windows laptop for under $250 (with rebates and cashback from my bank), for the same purpose you that you are looking to buy a laptop, in addition to being able to review web design on an Windows Machine.

I figured it was too good a deal to pass up. While it is a bit slow (I plan on adding a bit more ram) it does everything i want it to, including using three basic Adobe Creative Cloud Programs (illustrator, InDesign and light Photoshop work).

I have to admit I am very pleasantly surprised with the way windows 10 works and looks.

Once I installed apple iTunes. I discovered that I can sync all my apple information to the PC through the cloud. I was going to buy MS Office, but Apple has also release cloud based beta versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers .

[SD4020]

Originally Posted by Regina14

Thank you all for the advice.

I wanted to get the computer from the Apple store, but they had a line lasting longer than a half-hour, and I didn't have the patience to stand around that long. So I did end up at Best Buy. Luckily, some Apple specialists had dropped in to support the Apple dept. during the tax-free weekend, so I had most of my questions answered.

I considered the option of getting a new iMac with a 21 inch screen plus an iPad; but decided I wasn't crazy about the iPad and didn't really want two computers.

I would have bought the 13" MacBook Pro w/Retina Display, but I found the fonts on the browser tabs, etc. easier to read on the 15". So I bought a 15" High Performance MacBook Pro with Retina. It's got a 2.2 GHZ quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (which I surely hope is as good or better than the 3.01 GHZ Intel i5 processor on my old iMac); 16GB memory, 256 MB flash storage, and the 10.10 Yosemite OS. The Apple man told me that it was the latest MacBook Pro, and had come out in May (or March, can't remember) 2015.

It was on sale for $100. I bought a lot of extras - insurance, protection, someone to come over and install it and transfer my old data to it, Microsoft Office for Mac, etc. Plus an Apple TV thingie that will supposedly enable my non-smart TV to get Netflix.

I'm buying a keypad protector from Amazon that I will hopefully be able to type on, this minimizing chances of damaging the thing with a soda spill.

Hope I can get used to it.

You made a good purchase and a wise decision.

[thelopez2]

Originally Posted by Regina14

It's got a 2.2 GHZ quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (which I surely hope is as good or better than the 3.01 GHZ Intel i5 processor on my old iMac);

The I5 Processor should have been adequate. You have something else going on if you consider it slow. You probably would have been fine with a just a memory and SSD hard drive upgrade on your old computer.

I regularly use a macbook Mid 2010 with a 2.4 Ghz Core2 duo, 8GB SSD, NVIDIA, there isn't much difference been that unit an a MacBook Pro for what you're doing. The MacBook Pro does have a lot higher resolution screen.

I'm buying a keypad protector from Amazon that I will hopefully be able to type on, this minimizing chances of damaging the thing with a soda spill.

Maybe consider an external keyboard and mouse to protect the unit and an external monitor if you feel the screen is too small.

Hope I can get used to it.

There aren't a lot of moving parts, it will easy last you 4 years.

[~HecateWhisperCat~]

Originally Posted by JasonF

Once again, no.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205040

With the 27 inch one you can.