Salam to All PG members and today I bring you something very controversal something very exciting something brand new 
As part of the teaser some of you must have seen it and the rest I am going to tag along.
My Mac story:
It was back in 2012 that I wanted to buy a MacBook for myself when the new unibody design came out then came the Retina display and then the solid state track pad….there were so many people with MacBooks in my family like all the brothers and cousins pretty much own one and some of them have been using a the same machine for 4-5 years and they are still going strong as my brother just commented last night that these things just don’t die lol so all in all I have always wanted to own a MacBook my self I was fascinated by the OS X of that time and I wanted to experience something different something new as I have been a windows user since 2000 thats when we bought our first PC. Started with windows 98 and used everything that came out since excluding vista and now every windows machine I own is on windows 10. To be honest I could never afford a Mac back then lol and by time I was able to get close to its base model price I had to make a choice between a Mac and a windows machine and I had to chose the later because of its price, ease of use and the gaming aspect as we all know you can hardly game on a Mac.
Last year in December I was able to save up the money for MacBook Pro 15 inches top of the line specs but the problem with that model was the 4th Gen CPU (I know 4980 is still topping the charts but this laptop is very close to that so no worries there) a 4 year old design (yes I dig the glowing apple logo on the back myself) and AMD 370X GPU….actually It was the skyline refresh that never came out and I decided not to buy so if any of you follow macrumors there was a thousand pages long thread with one issue…buy the MacBook now or wait for the skylake refresh lol and I decided to wait for it then came the rumors of the OLED touch bar on the new Mac on top that would replace the function keys so I remember back in March I walked into the Apple Store and asked one of their employees that when is the touch bar model coming out and he was like we don’t have information about such feature or laptop the newest one we have is right there lolzzz but I wasn’t expecting a complete redesign like they did.So the moral is that if you keep waiting in this technology game then this thing never ends as there is always something right around the corner that is better than previous one and so on. But I told myself that I am not going to buy the old MacBook I will get the refreshed model whenever they put a skylake chip inside and it happened now in October so yeah it came out late but it is what it is.
I have a gaming rig now with acer x34 screen a 980ti with 4790K so gaming wise I am covered which is part of the reason I didn’t go for the MSI dominator/titan or ROG with gtx 1080 or 1070 or even any windows laptop for the matter because of the fact that I wanted to buy myself a Mac just for the heck of it and I am currently using an iPhone 6s+ as well as the iPad Pro 9.7 which goes very well with the Macs. It was my dream laptop so I had to get one no other way to put it.
Specs:
MacBook Pro 15 Inch
Space Gray
I7 2.7
16GB Ram
512GB SSD
AMD 460
As you can see the AMD 460 in there so I went the custom route on this one heck I chose the 2.9 Ghz processor that bumped the price to 23768 RMB that is around 360K PKR for the current exchange rate I placed the order 6 weeks ago but there were some supply issues here and there then the MacBook speakers started having problems in bootcamp and so on so this was internally delayed and I almost decided not to buy the MacBook after all as I was frustrated about waiting that long to get the damn machine and because it was custom built I couldn’t just walk in the apple store and buy one….I got call two days ago that the 2.9Ghz model was still going to take time but they had the current one I have in stock with the AMD 460 so I decided to look up the difference between the two processors and there isn’t much lol they are identical to one another with 6920hq being 5% faster than 6820hq with a price premium of 23.5k PKR so I decided to go this one instead and saved some money which is going to the 1080Ti pool
Pictures
The shipping box itself the one we see in many Youtube videos
Now the MacBook Pro box
Here it is the beauty…….I mean words can’t describe how awesome it looks in space gray and my oh my this thing is built to perfection I mean the machining on this thing is simply amazing I couldn’t find a single fault in its built quality.
Review:
I want to write a mini review of this machines and it has only been with me overnight so lets just call it a preview or my initial thoughts
Design:
The upgrade feels refreshing its thinner and lighter with a new color and it also has a smaller footprint which means that if you put two 15 Inch Macs side by side you will notice that this one is actually smaller than the last one. I am a fan of lightness but did we really needed a thinner laptop? I mean last get was thin already so a bigger battery instead of thinness was more welcome.
The space gray color gives the 15 inch and 13 inch models a fresh look I would say as they have been coming in silver like forever so it was nice to see this change….I really loved the space gray color on the MacBook but it was way too underpowered for my taste so never went for it.
The hinge on this one is just perfect just like every other Mac that came before it I mean all it takes is one finger to lift the entire lid. Yes the glowing apple logo is gone which has been one of the most iconic things about the Macs but in return you get a better display……that’s what apple says but I think its the thinness that is to blame.
Display:
Its the same retina resolution as before which I think is fairly adequate don’t need a 4k screen on a 15 inch laptop and yeah the brightness levels are crazy high on this laptop and I don’t think I will ever use it at that much brightness anyway but its good to have it I mean it can definitely help outdoors in Starbucks or costa when I am waiting for another class etc. The wide color gamut and quality of the screen is undeniably there and its one of the best screens I have seen to date so no complain there at all. If you already have a Mac from last year you will not notice much of a difference unless you put them side by side.
Touchbar:
As of right now those of you who followed the reviews online will know that most of them are calling it a gimmick and according to them they function keys would work just fine and yeah I mean is it really necessary? No not at all but boy oh boy it definitely looks cool and it has given a refreshed look to the laptop its self. I find myself using it quite a lot its cool that its there and I didn’t really buy it for the touch bard it just came along with the 15 inch model so its an added feature or a bonus
People are doing those emoji bar demo on youtube and what not but as I am typing this review on the said machine I am loving the predicting keyboard that made its way from the iOS. i have tapped and selected words from the touch bar and to me its fast and seamless.
The safari tabs view is something fresh though they don’t look detailed they rather look like a smudge lol but it gives you the idea of which website it is nonetheless and changing brightness and volume is kind of fun but one of the best use case scenario was the timeline for the video playback in safari the way you can jump to a timeline in a video is just amazing and it really works quite well.
Touch ID:
This is one of the best iOS feature that made its way to the mac its just seamless and it can save you a lot of hassle I mean just forget about typing your password every time you log in and you can use it with 1password software so dont even have to write your passwords for different websites just use touch ID for every login it just cant get any simpler than that and one major feature is the apple pay from the mac which is an added bonus and something that I actually use here....i will try to link it with taobao and see how it goes.
Track pad:
OMG this thing is frigging huge lolzz this one should not say designed by apple in California rather someone in Africa lolzzz damn length wise its as big as my 6s+ and width wise there is still some space left on top. There were some people saying that there is a bit of a learning curve coming to this giant trackpad from last Gen but for me everything is new so I will adopt just fine….the palm rejection works very well on this trackpad of course a bit of my palms are resting on the trackpad but I haven’t noticed any interference so far so I’d say it definitely works. I only know a handful of short cuts right now will learn gestures and stuff as I go and yeah this is one of the best trackpads out there on any laptop on any platform the only thing that comes close or now equal to this is surface book by Microsoft.
Here’s a picture next to my Logitech trackpad for size comparison
I/O:
This one is going to be brief I mean four USB C thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack…see like I said brief they took out everything else I mean that is batshit crazy…one of the features that I will miss or I loved seeing other people use it was the SD card slot I mean for this review I could just plug the SD card in from my camera and copy the photos but now I have to take an adapter route also Mag safe is also gone which many people loved.
But since its my first Mac so I am not used to any of those things so I can simply just use it as it is and take it from here.
Keyboard:
This is the second gem butterfly switch keyboard and to be honest I like it better than the previous generation keyboard on older MacBooks its much faster to type on and there is enough response from the keys. Of course it doesn’t compare to the razer blade chroma but to be honest its still good enough and I wanted to test It out so decided to write this whole unboxing and review experience on the MacBook to get the feel of the keyboard and by now I am almost used to it and my typing experience has been mostly positive I mean I do hit some wrong keys here and there but its bound to happen as its the first time I am using it and to be more specific its been 2 years since I typed on a laptop so it will only get better.
Weight and footprint:
This thing weighs less than the previous gen and its tad smaller and thinner but it feels really dense and nice in hands don’t know how easy or hard its going to be on my back will find out once I start carrying it around in my backpack.
Apple family:
Here are all my apple products I currently own that is ipad 3rd gen 2 ipad pros iPhone 6s plus and the mac
Computers:
Now the apple family plus the surface pro 2 and xiaomi pad 2
Thickness comparison:
Performance:
There isn’t much to write here as of right now because Macs are all about software and how the hardware is integrated with the software and how it utilizes every ounce of performance out of any given hardware let it be ram utilization, SSD management etc its just another level really.
This is one beast of a performer in terms of MacBooks I mean the whole thing wakes up and its up an running in a matter of seconds but that’s nothing new whats new is the SSD with 3GB/s write and 2GB/s read and the AMD 460 GPU is close to what vanilla PS4 is in terms of power so its a nice little bump of graphics performance for the Mac it comes with 4GB of dedicated vram.
I haven’t tried any of the benchmarks yet but from what I have seen over the internet for the geek bench this one should be 4k plus in single threaded performance and 13k plus in multithreaded which is adequate I mean even for a couple of years.
I know they are not meant for gaming but I am a gamer at heart just like everyone else here on this website hence pakgamers so I decided to upgrade the GPU to the available max and this alone costed me 6 weeks otherwise I would have just walked into the store and pick up a pre built model top of the line which is the exact same as mine but it comes with 455 GPU anyways I know I know these GPUs are garbage in front of Nvidia’s latest offerings but no worries there as I will get the 1080Ti for my PC anyway I might do some occasional gaming on this machine here and there lets say when I will visit Pak next month this will be my only laptop so maybe I can play some civilization Vi or star craft or age of empires etc on this one.
Mac OS:
WOW thats how I would like to start this because its just really amazing though its complex and a I don’t know much about it coming from a windows machine but I mean it looks nice and clean its very responsive and my laptop came with the updated version of Sierra that is 10.12.2 so whatever the battery and other GPU related bugs were are gone it just simply works out of the box. I love the integration with the iPhone that it offers I mean I can operate my phone entirely from my laptop I can receive calls I can sync effortlessly then there is air drop and so on I am just loving the way it works and how it can make things easier for me going forward. I might upgrade to 7S+ or iPhone 8 whatever they call it next year so yeah this will go a long way. One thing that I didn’t like was the fact that the apps I bought on my iPhone are not carried over to my Mac lets say I bought GTA San Andreas on my iPhone but on my Mac I have to buy it again which sucks I would love to see a feature where you buy it once and its yours across all apple devices whatever the software or architecture differences are they are not my headache lol I love the way Microsoft play anywhere program works so I bought gears of war 4 on windows machine and if I ever decide to get an xbox I can just play it there as well no need to buy another copy this is something I would like to see here as well. I have yet to use this OS to really know what it offers and how it is different than the windows but so far so good.
Battery life:
Well there has been a lot of talk on the internet and a lot people are not happy with the battery life that they are getting some of them are reporting an improved battery life after the latest software update and in the morning I read an article over wccftech that they designed a new battery type but it failed a key test so they used the old style battery for now and will put the new kind in next year’s refresh and fix the battery issues…For me I mean the battery life has been fantastic so far as I unboxed it last night and haven’t charged it even once so far and still sitting at 41% at this point in the review…I will have more concrete numbers later but for me personally its better than any other laptop that I have ever owned so I am happy with what I am getting but of course if you ask me I would still stay that we didn’t needed a thinner MacBook I would still take the old thickness with the new design and color with a beefier battery I mean software optimization can only go so far but it can never replace the actual amount of battery available. I like what Microsoft did with the surface book refresh I mean they said it so bluntly in their presentation that we just decided to put more batteries to increase the battery life lol I hope apple listens to this and increase the actual capacity next year.
Dongle gate:
Yes its real we need adapters for this computer most of the things that you currently own will simply not connect this machine lets say your keyboards, mouse, flash drives and so on but to me its alright I really need those things I can just plug them into my desktop and for this laptop I bought a couple of these adapters and they were ridiculously cheap I mean I ordered 6 for about 4$ total with shipping…they are available locally and work just great. Lets say you use a SD card reader or a mouse quite often so you can just leave this adapter attached to the said accessory and plug it in everytime you use it no need to reattach or detach again and again.
Now this one is my favorite....kingston flash drive with both type C and A
The official apple adapters are also quite cheap now so I bought the iPhone lightning to USB C 1 meter cable for 9$ as well as this USB C adapter for 10$ so no big deal there I mean this is a 3500$ laptop so yeah we can put in 25$ for adapters. But seriously I would have loved to see one shipped with in the box just so that you didn’t really had to buy one to get started.
Cost:
This generation is expensive just like when they introduced the retina MacBook pro back in the day and its expected whenever there's a redesign and I am sure it will come down next year with refresh but it's alright I mean I can get another after lets say 3 years and enjoy all the advancements then and macs they live much longer in terms of performance, software, hardware etc so this baby can last me 3-4 years easy. The price is 22248 RMB for this configuration which is 3200$ and in US its about 2899 or something before tax so no idea how much it is after tax but yeah usually things are more expensive here so there's that. In comparison other windows machines like dell xps 15 can be had for less but the surface book refresh which is critically acclaimed and like the reviews call the ultimate windows 10 experience still costs more than this when specced out GPU wise its better with 965m nvidia but processor wise its weak with a dual core i7 and SSD speeds are nothing to write home about but the form factor is bit different without the base but all in all on the windows side of things there are laptops that are quite expensive. One comparison that i wanted to make was the MSI gt73vr and asus ROG forgot the exact model with i7 6820hk and gtx1080 were going for 22k RMB so yeah this MacBook costs even more than those gaming monsters.
Conclusion:
Is the MacBook Pro worth it? To me yes most definitely but for someone whose only computer will be this machine well maybe or maybe not as this is very good for content creation and for general computer usage but suck at gaming also you need to deal with the dongle issues and compatibility issues and so on but if you are already invested in the apple eco system then its pretty much worth every cent. Am I happy with it? Yes I am. Am I going to return it to apple within next 14 days? Most definitely not. Am I going to buy another Mac again? Yes I will but next time I will buy it when its perfect for me because now that I already have a Mac I can wait 3 or 4 years for next one.My next laptop will indeed be a gaming laptop lol I really like the MSI and ROG gtx 1080 laptops they even cost less than this and are insanely powerful but you know it will only get better as volta gpus will come out so I will only gain when I buy those after few years and I will get back to the roots but for this year for this laptop purchase it had to be the Mac if i bought the gaming laptop then on the go there will be windows 10 gaming machine which is bulky to carry and you need power bricks like always and when you come home you have windows 10 gaming computer it would seem the same however I wanted to experience Mac OS I wanted to own a MacBook I was craving for something different some change and I have used everything ranging from iPads to android and windows tablets, Symbian, android, windows, kindle, iPods, iPhones everything you name it windows 98, 2000, Me, xp, longhorn(early vista), win 7(legendary), win 8, 8.1, win 10 I even had dual OS boot on my HP Dv6T laptop with win 7 and Linux Ubuntu to get the feel of Mac OS back in the day lolz but I have had never owned a MacBook so yeah it was personal it was emotional it was something I always wanted and now Mashallah by the grace of Allah I have it I love it.
Note: Since I am new so those of you who are Mac users please do mention here and if there are some awesome apps and tricks that you know of do share help a newbie out.
I would like the like button but more than that your valuable input and your comments so please do write do comment.
Jazzak Allah
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As part of the teaser some of you must have seen it and the rest I am going to tag along.My Mac story:
It was back in 2012 that I wanted to buy a MacBook for myself when the new unibody design came out then came the Retina display and then the solid state track pad….there were so many people with MacBooks in my family like all the brothers and cousins pretty much own one and some of them have been using a the same machine for 4-5 years and they are still going strong as my brother just commented last night that these things just don’t die lol so all in all I have always wanted to own a MacBook my self I was fascinated by the OS X of that time and I wanted to experience something different something new as I have been a windows user since 2000 thats when we bought our first PC. Started with windows 98 and used everything that came out since excluding vista and now every windows machine I own is on windows 10. To be honest I could never afford a Mac back then lol and by time I was able to get close to its base model price I had to make a choice between a Mac and a windows machine and I had to chose the later because of its price, ease of use and the gaming aspect as we all know you can hardly game on a Mac
.Last year in December I was able to save up the money for MacBook Pro 15 inches top of the line specs but the problem with that model was the 4th Gen CPU (I know 4980 is still topping the charts but this laptop is very close to that so no worries there) a 4 year old design (yes I dig the glowing apple logo on the back myself) and AMD 370X GPU….actually It was the skyline refresh that never came out and I decided not to buy so if any of you follow macrumors there was a thousand pages long thread with one issue…buy the MacBook now or wait for the skylake refresh lol and I decided to wait for it then came the rumors of the OLED touch bar on the new Mac on top that would replace the function keys so I remember back in March I walked into the Apple Store and asked one of their employees that when is the touch bar model coming out and he was like we don’t have information about such feature or laptop the newest one we have is right there lolzzz but I wasn’t expecting a complete redesign like they did.So the moral is that if you keep waiting in this technology game then this thing never ends as there is always something right around the corner that is better than previous one and so on. But I told myself that I am not going to buy the old MacBook I will get the refreshed model whenever they put a skylake chip inside and it happened now in October so yeah it came out late but it is what it is.
I have a gaming rig now with acer x34 screen a 980ti with 4790K so gaming wise I am covered which is part of the reason I didn’t go for the MSI dominator/titan or ROG with gtx 1080 or 1070 or even any windows laptop for the matter because of the fact that I wanted to buy myself a Mac just for the heck of it and I am currently using an iPhone 6s+ as well as the iPad Pro 9.7 which goes very well with the Macs. It was my dream laptop so I had to get one no other way to put it.
Specs:
MacBook Pro 15 Inch
Space Gray
I7 2.7
16GB Ram
512GB SSD
AMD 460
As you can see the AMD 460 in there so I went the custom route on this one heck I chose the 2.9 Ghz processor that bumped the price to 23768 RMB that is around 360K PKR for the current exchange rate I placed the order 6 weeks ago but there were some supply issues here and there then the MacBook speakers started having problems in bootcamp and so on so this was internally delayed and I almost decided not to buy the MacBook after all as I was frustrated about waiting that long to get the damn machine and because it was custom built I couldn’t just walk in the apple store and buy one….I got call two days ago that the 2.9Ghz model was still going to take time but they had the current one I have in stock with the AMD 460 so I decided to look up the difference between the two processors and there isn’t much lol they are identical to one another with 6920hq being 5% faster than 6820hq with a price premium of 23.5k PKR so I decided to go this one instead and saved some money which is going to the 1080Ti pool
Pictures
The shipping box itself the one we see in many Youtube videos
Now the MacBook Pro box
Here it is the beauty…….I mean words can’t describe how awesome it looks in space gray and my oh my this thing is built to perfection I mean the machining on this thing is simply amazing I couldn’t find a single fault in its built quality.
Review:
I want to write a mini review of this machines and it has only been with me overnight so lets just call it a preview or my initial thoughts
Design:
The upgrade feels refreshing its thinner and lighter with a new color and it also has a smaller footprint which means that if you put two 15 Inch Macs side by side you will notice that this one is actually smaller than the last one. I am a fan of lightness but did we really needed a thinner laptop? I mean last get was thin already so a bigger battery instead of thinness was more welcome.
The space gray color gives the 15 inch and 13 inch models a fresh look I would say as they have been coming in silver like forever so it was nice to see this change….I really loved the space gray color on the MacBook but it was way too underpowered for my taste so never went for it.
The hinge on this one is just perfect just like every other Mac that came before it I mean all it takes is one finger to lift the entire lid. Yes the glowing apple logo is gone which has been one of the most iconic things about the Macs but in return you get a better display……that’s what apple says but I think its the thinness that is to blame.
Display:
Its the same retina resolution as before which I think is fairly adequate don’t need a 4k screen on a 15 inch laptop and yeah the brightness levels are crazy high on this laptop and I don’t think I will ever use it at that much brightness anyway but its good to have it I mean it can definitely help outdoors in Starbucks or costa when I am waiting for another class etc. The wide color gamut and quality of the screen is undeniably there and its one of the best screens I have seen to date so no complain there at all. If you already have a Mac from last year you will not notice much of a difference unless you put them side by side.
Touchbar:
As of right now those of you who followed the reviews online will know that most of them are calling it a gimmick and according to them they function keys would work just fine and yeah I mean is it really necessary? No not at all but boy oh boy it definitely looks cool and it has given a refreshed look to the laptop its self. I find myself using it quite a lot its cool that its there and I didn’t really buy it for the touch bard it just came along with the 15 inch model so its an added feature or a bonus
People are doing those emoji bar demo on youtube and what not but as I am typing this review on the said machine I am loving the predicting keyboard that made its way from the iOS. i have tapped and selected words from the touch bar and to me its fast and seamless.
The safari tabs view is something fresh though they don’t look detailed they rather look like a smudge lol but it gives you the idea of which website it is nonetheless and changing brightness and volume is kind of fun but one of the best use case scenario was the timeline for the video playback in safari the way you can jump to a timeline in a video is just amazing and it really works quite well.
Touch ID:
This is one of the best iOS feature that made its way to the mac its just seamless and it can save you a lot of hassle I mean just forget about typing your password every time you log in and you can use it with 1password software so dont even have to write your passwords for different websites just use touch ID for every login it just cant get any simpler than that and one major feature is the apple pay from the mac which is an added bonus and something that I actually use here....i will try to link it with taobao and see how it goes.
Track pad:
OMG this thing is frigging huge lolzz this one should not say designed by apple in California rather someone in Africa lolzzz damn length wise its as big as my 6s+ and width wise there is still some space left on top. There were some people saying that there is a bit of a learning curve coming to this giant trackpad from last Gen but for me everything is new so I will adopt just fine….the palm rejection works very well on this trackpad of course a bit of my palms are resting on the trackpad but I haven’t noticed any interference so far so I’d say it definitely works. I only know a handful of short cuts right now will learn gestures and stuff as I go and yeah this is one of the best trackpads out there on any laptop on any platform the only thing that comes close or now equal to this is surface book by Microsoft.
Here’s a picture next to my Logitech trackpad for size comparison
I/O:
This one is going to be brief I mean four USB C thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack…see like I said brief
they took out everything else I mean that is batshit crazy…one of the features that I will miss or I loved seeing other people use it was the SD card slot I mean for this review I could just plug the SD card in from my camera and copy the photos but now I have to take an adapter route also Mag safe is also gone which many people loved.But since its my first Mac so I am not used to any of those things so I can simply just use it as it is and take it from here.
Keyboard:
This is the second gem butterfly switch keyboard and to be honest I like it better than the previous generation keyboard on older MacBooks its much faster to type on and there is enough response from the keys. Of course it doesn’t compare to the razer blade chroma but to be honest its still good enough and I wanted to test It out so decided to write this whole unboxing and review experience on the MacBook to get the feel of the keyboard and by now I am almost used to it and my typing experience has been mostly positive I mean I do hit some wrong keys here and there but its bound to happen as its the first time I am using it and to be more specific its been 2 years since I typed on a laptop so it will only get better.
Weight and footprint:
This thing weighs less than the previous gen and its tad smaller and thinner but it feels really dense and nice in hands don’t know how easy or hard its going to be on my back will find out once I start carrying it around in my backpack.
Apple family:
Here are all my apple products I currently own that is ipad 3rd gen 2 ipad pros iPhone 6s plus and the mac
Computers:
Now the apple family plus the surface pro 2 and xiaomi pad 2
Thickness comparison:
Performance:
There isn’t much to write here as of right now because Macs are all about software and how the hardware is integrated with the software and how it utilizes every ounce of performance out of any given hardware let it be ram utilization, SSD management etc its just another level really.
This is one beast of a performer in terms of MacBooks I mean the whole thing wakes up and its up an running in a matter of seconds but that’s nothing new whats new is the SSD with 3GB/s write and 2GB/s read and the AMD 460 GPU is close to what vanilla PS4 is in terms of power so its a nice little bump of graphics performance for the Mac it comes with 4GB of dedicated vram.
I haven’t tried any of the benchmarks yet but from what I have seen over the internet for the geek bench this one should be 4k plus in single threaded performance and 13k plus in multithreaded which is adequate I mean even for a couple of years.
I know they are not meant for gaming but I am a gamer at heart just like everyone else here on this website hence pakgamers so I decided to upgrade the GPU to the available max and this alone costed me 6 weeks otherwise I would have just walked into the store and pick up a pre built model top of the line which is the exact same as mine but it comes with 455 GPU anyways I know I know these GPUs are garbage in front of Nvidia’s latest offerings but no worries there as I will get the 1080Ti for my PC anyway
I might do some occasional gaming on this machine here and there lets say when I will visit Pak next month this will be my only laptop so maybe I can play some civilization Vi or star craft or age of empires etc on this one. Mac OS:
WOW thats how I would like to start this because its just really amazing though its complex and a I don’t know much about it coming from a windows machine but I mean it looks nice and clean its very responsive and my laptop came with the updated version of Sierra that is 10.12.2 so whatever the battery and other GPU related bugs were are gone it just simply works out of the box. I love the integration with the iPhone that it offers I mean I can operate my phone entirely from my laptop I can receive calls I can sync effortlessly then there is air drop and so on I am just loving the way it works and how it can make things easier for me going forward. I might upgrade to 7S+ or iPhone 8 whatever they call it next year so yeah this will go a long way. One thing that I didn’t like was the fact that the apps I bought on my iPhone are not carried over to my Mac lets say I bought GTA San Andreas on my iPhone but on my Mac I have to buy it again which sucks I would love to see a feature where you buy it once and its yours across all apple devices whatever the software or architecture differences are they are not my headache lol I love the way Microsoft play anywhere program works so I bought gears of war 4 on windows machine and if I ever decide to get an xbox I can just play it there as well no need to buy another copy this is something I would like to see here as well. I have yet to use this OS to really know what it offers and how it is different than the windows but so far so good.
Battery life:
Well there has been a lot of talk on the internet and a lot people are not happy with the battery life that they are getting some of them are reporting an improved battery life after the latest software update and in the morning I read an article over wccftech that they designed a new battery type but it failed a key test so they used the old style battery for now and will put the new kind in next year’s refresh and fix the battery issues…For me I mean the battery life has been fantastic so far as I unboxed it last night and haven’t charged it even once so far and still sitting at 41% at this point in the review…I will have more concrete numbers later but for me personally its better than any other laptop that I have ever owned so I am happy with what I am getting but of course if you ask me I would still stay that we didn’t needed a thinner MacBook I would still take the old thickness with the new design and color with a beefier battery I mean software optimization can only go so far but it can never replace the actual amount of battery available. I like what Microsoft did with the surface book refresh I mean they said it so bluntly in their presentation that we just decided to put more batteries to increase the battery life lol I hope apple listens to this and increase the actual capacity next year.
Dongle gate:
Yes its real we need adapters for this computer most of the things that you currently own will simply not connect this machine lets say your keyboards, mouse, flash drives and so on but to me its alright I really need those things I can just plug them into my desktop and for this laptop I bought a couple of these adapters and they were ridiculously cheap I mean I ordered 6 for about 4$ total with shipping…they are available locally and work just great. Lets say you use a SD card reader or a mouse quite often so you can just leave this adapter attached to the said accessory and plug it in everytime you use it no need to reattach or detach again and again.
Now this one is my favorite....kingston flash drive with both type C and A
The official apple adapters are also quite cheap now so I bought the iPhone lightning to USB C 1 meter cable for 9$ as well as this USB C adapter for 10$ so no big deal there I mean this is a 3500$ laptop so yeah we can put in 25$ for adapters. But seriously I would have loved to see one shipped with in the box just so that you didn’t really had to buy one to get started.
Cost:
This generation is expensive just like when they introduced the retina MacBook pro back in the day and its expected whenever there's a redesign and I am sure it will come down next year with refresh but it's alright I mean I can get another after lets say 3 years and enjoy all the advancements then and macs they live much longer in terms of performance, software, hardware etc so this baby can last me 3-4 years easy. The price is 22248 RMB for this configuration which is 3200$ and in US its about 2899 or something before tax so no idea how much it is after tax but yeah usually things are more expensive here so there's that. In comparison other windows machines like dell xps 15 can be had for less but the surface book refresh which is critically acclaimed and like the reviews call the ultimate windows 10 experience still costs more than this when specced out GPU wise its better with 965m nvidia but processor wise its weak with a dual core i7 and SSD speeds are nothing to write home about but the form factor is bit different without the base but all in all on the windows side of things there are laptops that are quite expensive. One comparison that i wanted to make was the MSI gt73vr and asus ROG forgot the exact model with i7 6820hk and gtx1080 were going for 22k RMB so yeah this MacBook costs even more than those gaming monsters.
Conclusion:
Is the MacBook Pro worth it? To me yes most definitely but for someone whose only computer will be this machine well maybe or maybe not as this is very good for content creation and for general computer usage but suck at gaming also you need to deal with the dongle issues and compatibility issues and so on but if you are already invested in the apple eco system then its pretty much worth every cent. Am I happy with it? Yes I am. Am I going to return it to apple within next 14 days? Most definitely not. Am I going to buy another Mac again? Yes I will but next time I will buy it when its perfect for me because now that I already have a Mac I can wait 3 or 4 years for next one.My next laptop will indeed be a gaming laptop lol I really like the MSI and ROG gtx 1080 laptops they even cost less than this and are insanely powerful but you know it will only get better as volta gpus will come out so I will only gain when I buy those after few years and I will get back to the roots but for this year for this laptop purchase it had to be the Mac if i bought the gaming laptop then on the go there will be windows 10 gaming machine which is bulky to carry and you need power bricks like always and when you come home you have windows 10 gaming computer it would seem the same however I wanted to experience Mac OS I wanted to own a MacBook I was craving for something different some change and I have used everything ranging from iPads to android and windows tablets, Symbian, android, windows, kindle, iPods, iPhones everything you name it windows 98, 2000, Me, xp, longhorn(early vista), win 7(legendary), win 8, 8.1, win 10 I even had dual OS boot on my HP Dv6T laptop with win 7 and Linux Ubuntu to get the feel of Mac OS back in the day lolz but I have had never owned a MacBook so yeah it was personal it was emotional it was something I always wanted and now Mashallah by the grace of Allah I have it I love it.
Note: Since I am new so those of you who are Mac users please do mention here and if there are some awesome apps and tricks that you know of do share
help a newbie out.I would like the like button but more than that your valuable input and your comments so please do write do comment.
Jazzak Allah
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