Macbook Pro 13 or 15?

GMac11 · 13 Oct 2014 at 18:30

I'm sure this is a question as old as time itself among the Apple faithful but I would just like to hear some thoughts and opinions on the matter.

I am planning to take my first plunge into the Apple world - I've always given Apple Inc the cold shoulder but with regards to Laptops the Windows offering this last few years has been abysmal in my eyes.

The main reason for going with 13 is obviously the price, portability not much of an issue for me.

As it stands I can get the 13 from "PC Planet" for £999 with £100 off from O2 priority, however, I have spied a 15 inch 2013 model on the Apple Store site for £1,189.

So just wondering for those more in the know than myself which one represents better value for money.

I should add that the main uses will be web browsing, general faffing about and of course Footy Manager! I do a small bit of audio/dj work now and again but nothing that I'm sure the i5 CPU can't handle.

Thanks.

OhEsEcks · 13 Oct 2014 at 18:44

I liked my 2010 13" MacBook. But the screen resolution was only 1280x720 or whatever. The new 13" retina will allow a greater resolution and I think 1440x900 is the sweet spot for a resolution on a screen that size. If I was buying another MacBook it would be 13" every time, unless I didn't have an external monitor and needed a large res on a bigger screen like the 15" for some reason (such as image or video editing).

However, I gave my 2010 to my brother and moved back to Linux. So am now rocking a 15" Clevo with 1080p screen. If I could have found a 13" with a chassis design I liked, I would have chosen it. But any I could find didn't have a screen resolution that I thought was acceptable, or they came out more expensive than a retina MacBook. I like the aesthetic of a lot of business notebooks, but the specs they come in sucked. Especially the screen resolutions. Asus 15" business notebooks with a 1366x768 just doesn't cut it. Especially not at the prices they were asking.

GMac11 · 13 Oct 2014 at 19:41

Yeah the more "consumer" and "business" ranges just tend to suck at different things. I love the look of the 2560x1600 res in the shop from the 13" rMBP. How 1920x1080 isn't at very least the norm for a notebook display is beyond me. Others tend to let themselves down with weight or girth or by sticking an hdd when an ssd would be a much better call.
Or even more so nowadays when you find a laptop that you think could be well worth splashing out on it's damned near the price of a macbook pro anyway - sure even the Surface pro 3 isn't a kick in the backside off the RRP of the Macbook Pro 13 - and virtually the same price as the Air for that matter.
I do have a Samsung 1440p monitor that I could hook the 13 up to if I so desired, I assume thunderbolt outputs to displayport via I would also assume a minidp adapter?

OhEsEcks · 13 Oct 2014 at 19:58

GMac11 said:
I assume thunderbolt outputs to displayport via I would also assums a minidp adapter?

Yup. My 2010 only had mDP so I could connect it to my 1440p DGM, the early 2011s switched to Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt uses the mDP connector, but it can trasmit all sorts of data over it beyond video / sound.

silvagti · 13 Oct 2014 at 21:13

There are rumours we're going to see a 12-13" MacBook air with a retina display in th near future and this will be the model to go for IMO. The screen on the MacBook pro 13" is nice but for a model without a discrete video card its not particularly thin or light.

GMac11 · 13 Oct 2014 at 21:34

Would a subsequent Macbook air not be held back by the customary low voltage cpu?

GMac11 · 14 Oct 2014 at 16:17

OhEsEcks said:
Yup. My 2010 only had mDP so I could connect it to my 1440p DGM, the early 2011s switched to Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt uses the mDP connector, but it can trasmit all sorts of data over it beyond video / sound.

Just to ask again, I have seen the cheap thunderbolt to DVI things on fleebay, do these also work or are they another one of these things that inevitably cause more problems than they solve? Same for the minidp, does it need to be official apple, I understand they have loads of proprietary stuff going on so not sure what the truth is.

OhEsEcks · 19 Oct 2014 at 00:10

GMac11 said:
Would a subsequent Macbook air not be held back by the customary low voltage cpu?

Apologises for late reply was suspended for a few days.

The limit of the Air CPU will be what you're doing with it. The most strenuous things being football manager and I think you mentioned audio/dj work.

Games will tax the CPU and it's onboard GPU hard, but depending on how you play the game, it might not be that bad as I don't think you're playing like FIFA or Pro Evo Soccer or whatever it is (I am not a sports game fan, if that isn't obvious

).

The audio work will be much more RAM intensive than CPU intensive depending on what you're doing. If you're producing, final rendering of tracks will be all CPU. But having a lot of VSTs open in a DAW will be all RAM and how quickly that CPU can deal with what is in RAM.

DJing with a digital controller won't be a problem at all. Whether you're using Tracktor or Mixxx, dual core and 4GB of RAM is more than enough for that.

GMac11 said:
Just to ask again, I have seen the cheap thunderbolt to DVI things on fleebay, do these also work or are they another one of these things that inevitably cause more problems than they solve? Same for the minidp, does it need to be official apple, I understand they have loads of proprietary stuff going on so not sure what the truth is.

Doesn't need to be official cable. I bought a generic mDP to full size DP from Amazon and it worked fine. If you're outputting to a monitor that doesn't have a DP input, or doesn't have a DP input but that has a resolution greater than 1200p you need to make sure it's a dual-link DVI connector. Standard DVI max resolution is 1920x1200 (so will do 1080p fine), dual-link DVI does some black magic that allows larger resolutions (so will do 1440-1600p).

GMac11 · 19 Oct 2014 at 14:04

Thanks for the response OhEsEcks. Just a quick update, I did eventually purchase the rMBP 13 so that argument is now closed as far as I'm concerned - don't want any pro 15 lobyists on here now after I've just dropped £999!

While in PC Planet I picked up a cheap (£4.99) DVI adapter for it just to tide me over but since my monitor is 1440p I'll be needing some sort of resolution boosting tech in the coming weeks.

I bought a minidp to dp plug off the Rainforest and the description says it should go up to 2560x1600 so it should do the trick. Had to stretch to £15 for that but if it works then happy days, if not I'll just return it.