I've been anti-Apple since I was a high school kid in the 90's. Those big colourful Mac's looked dumb. They're close to winning me over and I'm probably buying a new laptop within 12 months
I highly recommend buying a 2015 Macbook Pro, if you can find someone willing to part with theirs. Apple laptop hardware started going off the rails after they shipped that one with touch bar + keyboard shenanigans.
I have the previous generation hardware design as my personal laptop and a late-2019 macbook pro for work and I really don't hate the new one. I know some people have had some issues with keys getting stuck and what not, but I've actually had a pretty good experience with mine. I touch-type and I can type just fine on the newer keyboards. I would have liked to have a physical escape key, but besides that it's fine. I'm happy with the thinner and lighter design. The options of core i9 + 32GB of ram alone is worth getting one of the newer ones over a 2015 model.
Same, I own a 2014 15" and have a 2018 15" from work. I haven't had any keys break on the 2018 (yet...) and actually prefer the key travel on it to the 2014. The smaller size is an improvement and the dongle situation isn't a problem for my use cases. Not a fan of the keyboard layout and TouchBar, though.
If Apple let me spec a physical ESC key, inverted-T arrow keys, and native 1920x1200 point screen size @2x on the existing form factor I'd be VERY happy. Assuming, of course, the keyboard is actually reliable.
Ditto situation here. My work MacBook has been working great as well - the inability to charge my iPhone without a dongle has been frustrating but hopefully Apple switches out of lightning soon.
As for the ESC key, I rebound my Caps Lock key to Esc & Ctrl. Works great!
Ok, thanks. I know nothing at all about Apple hardware. It's still a very daunting decision to make. I like the ability to buy my own hardware, for desktops, and to build what I like at a cheaper price. Apple charges a premium but now I have more of an idea of what that premium will get me.
It would be a huge migration for me. Everything I own is tied to one of a few Gmail accounts. My photo history, my uni work in GDrive, my contact lists, my email history, everything about my entire online identity. I'm just increasingly fed up with how Google approaches privacy.
At my office every single one of the new macbooks (since about 3-4 years ago) has had the keyboard fail. Some of them have had the keyboard fail repeatedly after getting apple to fix it.
The ifixit tear down shows that the 2019 model has done nothing to fix the issue. I highly recommend the Dell XPS over a macbook pro. The form factor is very similar but the hardware is much more reliable and fixing it is way way easier as most parts can be replaced separately.
I own a 2016 Macbook Pro and 2018 Macbook Pro and I have to agree with the others in this thread: don't buy a modern Mac laptop. I really regret purchasing the 2018, my next laptop will probably a Linux based machine.
I recently switched to iPhone after using Android devices for many years to get away from Google and that was actually a purchase I can recommend. The Macbook Pro, not so much.
You can use everything gmail on Apple products. But, as he said, Macbooks 2015 were the top of their art, and it’s all going downhill now. Since 2014 they start to have kernel panics, since 2016 they have a failure-prone keyboard with no hardware “Esc” key. And it now costs 150$ for an external keyboard. Prices up, quality down, emojis in.
Moving to Apple/Mac has been amazing. The interface is just so much smoother. The UX is thought out with much more care than anything Google/Microsoft offer. And I don't feel like I'm selling my soul when I'm using an Apple product - a huge plus.
I have a Early 2015 MacBook Pro. I would not recommend it as a new laptop unless you're getting a significant discount on it, since it's starting to get old.
I agree it's not a perfect solution, and mine is starting to get old as well, but so far it's things that are replaceable (i.e. battery). And I still vastly prefer it to a 2018 MBP I had for a while and then sold at a heavy discount due to keyboard/touchbar/no Esc key/USB-C dongle hell. But if you don't care about any of that and just want the fastest CPU, it's not the best choice.
