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Is now a good time to buy a macbook pro? I heard there might be an update/new model soon..
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Sock_Monkey • June 11, 2013 at 5:34pm
Hey Royraad, this is the very situation that I'm in -- I want to buy a new MacBook Pro since I have a Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (bought in 2007). If this is your first new Mac laptop then now may not be a bad time to buy one. But here are a few speculations I've made which may help you better-decide:
- At WWDC 13 (which was yesterday), they only refreshed the MacBook Air as far as the laptop-line go. A New-Generation MacBook Pro was released last year at WWDC 12, so I'm guessing the MacBook Pro may be (silently) refreshed within the next 3 months. I think that if they do refresh it, they may make minor changes (at best, a better battery, or a larger SSD storage capacity?) If they do make a big change, it could be a new processor (the one the MacBook Air was upgraded to yesterday) + a new graphics card to accompany it -- you may be better off waiting if you are going to use it to do graphics-intensive stuff.
- Also consider that the new OS Mavericks has not had a official release date yet, and is only said to release sometime in the fall. If you buy one now, you may or may not be eligible for a free upgrade (so it's taking a risk) since usually they offer free OS upgrades to all machines bought within a 3-month period before the OS-release-date. If this is not a huge concern and if you don't mind paying 20 to 30$ upgrading to the latest Mavericks (worst- case scenario) then there isn't a harm in buying a MacBook Pro now.
- That being said, what I'm personally worried about is that if the MacBook Pro line is to be refreshed, they may probably get rid of the in-built optical drive altogether. To most people, this is not a concern but to me it is since I still have many movies on DVD, and it's a good feature to have if you're at waiting at an airport terminal. I would say buy one now if you think this is one of the features you really and truly want.
It seems that if you were to buy it now, you would not necessarily be shooting yourself in the foot especially if your machine is more than 3+ years old because you would be gaining more. If you're ok possibly paying to upgrade OS, then buy one now. The Mavericks OS does not need an entirely new hardware to run, so another reason why design-wise or hardware-wise you may be safe to buy one now.
Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any more questions.
- At WWDC 13 (which was yesterday), they only refreshed the MacBook Air as far as the laptop-line go. A New-Generation MacBook Pro was released last year at WWDC 12, so I'm guessing the MacBook Pro may be (silently) refreshed within the next 3 months. I think that if they do refresh it, they may make minor changes (at best, a better battery, or a larger SSD storage capacity?) If they do make a big change, it could be a new processor (the one the MacBook Air was upgraded to yesterday) + a new graphics card to accompany it -- you may be better off waiting if you are going to use it to do graphics-intensive stuff.
- Also consider that the new OS Mavericks has not had a official release date yet, and is only said to release sometime in the fall. If you buy one now, you may or may not be eligible for a free upgrade (so it's taking a risk) since usually they offer free OS upgrades to all machines bought within a 3-month period before the OS-release-date. If this is not a huge concern and if you don't mind paying 20 to 30$ upgrading to the latest Mavericks (worst- case scenario) then there isn't a harm in buying a MacBook Pro now.
- That being said, what I'm personally worried about is that if the MacBook Pro line is to be refreshed, they may probably get rid of the in-built optical drive altogether. To most people, this is not a concern but to me it is since I still have many movies on DVD, and it's a good feature to have if you're at waiting at an airport terminal. I would say buy one now if you think this is one of the features you really and truly want.
It seems that if you were to buy it now, you would not necessarily be shooting yourself in the foot especially if your machine is more than 3+ years old because you would be gaining more. If you're ok possibly paying to upgrade OS, then buy one now. The Mavericks OS does not need an entirely new hardware to run, so another reason why design-wise or hardware-wise you may be safe to buy one now.
Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any more questions.