4 ms·
The non-retina 13" Macbook Pro seems less and less relevant.
by saint-loup 12y ago
The non-retina 13" Macbook Pro seems less and less relevant.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- abrowne 12y agoI'm surprised they didn't get rid of it today.
- netcan 12y agoI agree. One thing Steve Jobs seemed pretty keen on was a rational, minimal product line. Allowing the product line to evolve and fit all the little niches crevices is not Apple's style.
- smackfu 12y agoOTOH, keeping some out-of-date products around just for the educational market is a long-time Apple trend.
- abrowne 12y agoThe education discount for the non-retina MBP 13 is (and has been) $200, rather than the $50 for other models around that price. At least now the MBA 13 starts at a lower price after the discount.
- oleganza 12y agoThey will, after MacBook Air with retina display.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoIt has a slightly faster processor (don't be fooled by "1.3GHz", the MBA's top CPU speed is 2.6GHz) but there's a 500GB non-solid-state hard drive, it's heavier, the graphics are older, and it has a lower-resolution screen. Why would anyone want it?
- _delirium 12y agoIt's probably a diminishing use-case, but I personally still need an ethernet port. There's a surprising number of times when I visit somewhere (offices, universities) and they can't figure out how to get me logged onto the guest wifi, but I can just plug in to the wired network without a problem. Also some hotels have only ethernet, though that's getting less common.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoYes, I suppose the Ethernet is useful. But it doesn't seem worth sacrificing everything else for. Why not just get a USB or Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter?
- _delirium 12y agoHuh, I hadn't seen the Thunderbolt ones. The USB ones are notorious for not really working (they seem to have driver issues). Hopefully the Thunderbolt ones are better?
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoThunderbolt is just PCIe under the hood, so it would hopefully work as well as a PCIe Gigabit Ethernet one. Although the fact it's Apple-made is probably more important, since they'll have made sure it works.
- acdha 12y agoI'd second the thunderbolt recommendation but I would question the concerns about USB – until upgrading to Thunderbolt, I had no problems with daily heavy usage (along with several coworkers). The main drawback is that the USB devices can't go over 100Mb.
- JamesBaxter 12y agoI really hope they keep the 13" Macbook Pro around. The Macbook Air is a fantastic machine but being able to stick a reasonably priced SSD and 16GB of ram into my work 13" MBP has improved my output dramatically. I wonder how long it will be before Apple prevent after purchase customization at all.
- ssharp 12y agoThe 13" Retina should persist for some time. That model's entry price is only $100 more than the non-Retina 13" MBP entry price. I don't really see the appeal of the non-Retina version at this point. The Retina display is really great and worth the extra $100, in my opinion, and I think the MBA offers much better value.
- JamesBaxter 12y agoThe appeal is you can upgrade to 16GB RAM after you've bought it. OWC $142 Apple $300 Apparently the SSD in the retina models is upgradeable but only to PCI based SSDs