Quick decision - Buy 15.4" MacBook Pro or wait for new 16"

Hi all,

 

Quick decision - I have to make this immediately. Best Buy has this on sale for $2848:

 

Apple - MacBook Pro 15.4" Display with Touch Bar - Intel Core i9 - 32GB Memory - AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 - 1TB SSD - Space Gray

 

It's not the latest model - new 16" has come out, but that's going to be over $4,000, more like $4,500 with tax and Apple Care. What do I give up buying this older model? Use - edit RAW files from D700 and film scans from Coolscan V in Photoshop (I have an older laptop, the 2014 MacBook Pro I'm using now for scans).

 

Have to make the decision today as local store has only 1 laptop and sale is good for today (Friday, 6/20 only). FWIW 32 GB ram in new 16" is going to be very expensive.

 

Thanks

 

Gene

About 3 weeks ago, I got the identical spec MBP. I didn't see the need to pay a LOT more for the newer 16" because 90% of the time, it's hooked up to an external NEC SpectraView. Plus experience over the years buying many Apple Laptops has convinced me not to buy the newest generation which the 16" certainly is.

There were serious design issues with the 15" touchbar that were never worked out-namely the keyboard which went through I think 4 revisions before Apple finally ditched it for the 16".

 

If I were buying now, I'd get a 16" and not look back.

 

With all of that said, if you're doing film scanning do you NEED a laptop? I'm using a Mac Pro 5,1(2010) with both my V and 8000, and it works great. Among other things I have it stuffed full of RAM(currently 88gb) which is more than any reasonable need for this kind of work but does avoid Photoshop bogging with big files.

Good to know. Just spec’d out a new 13” with 32 GB ram and 1 TB hard drive for about $2500. Don’t know if retired teachers qualify for educator discount but I’ll give it a try. FWIW my 2014 MBP is the 13” model.

The new MCB has a "scissors" key spring, vs the older "butterfly", which is susceptible to failure due to dirt contamination. However that is easily avoided with a thin keyboard protective cover. I have the older keyboard and find the cover is almost invisible and does not affect my typing (which is actually pretty good).

 

Since I use laptops for business (audio recording), I have two - a 13" and 15". If you use a laptop at home in lieu of a desktop, the 15-16" is okay, but a 13" is much better as a traveling companion.

Ditto, I always use a keyboard cover (condom), I've had no issues with the older butterfly keyboards (previous 2016 MBP had one too) but again, 90% of the time, I'm working with an external keyboard anyway. Which is why I can't comment about the Touchbar; don't use it, even when I'm using the MacBook solo. I just don't see it being all that useful for my work.

I can't give a fair comparison as I went from a 2014 to a new 16" model and the specs aren't the same. I notice the screen is noticeably larger which was a nice trick as they kept close to the same footprint. I will say I like TB3/USB-C connectors much better than TB 2. The older style was really easy to accidentally move the computer and disconnect the port. The new standard seems to lock the connectors in solidly. The keyboard is nice, no worries, but then I had an old style keyboard on the 2014.

I have too much legacy software that still works with the older systems and machines, so I'm sticking with them.

 

However, if I were coming to the Mac de novo, I'd go with the newest and most powerful I could get. That I did so in the past is one reason I'm ABLE to stick with the older stuff now.

I just the other day was given an old PowerMac G5. So I found a nice used Apple Cinema Display for under a hundred bucks and am going to use it with Nikon Scan. Its really kind of cool, though its quite large and when the fans get rolling feels like its about to take off. For all its size, its amazing that my little laptop is orders of magnitude more powerful. But I always liked the Power Pc Macs. Very stable. Not that new ones aren't.