What's your guys' opinion on Macbooks?

Hey duders! I'm 22 y/o and transferring to a University next semester, so I was gonna buy a laptop for school this week. I've been a PC guy my entire life, mainly because of video games but I have used Macs before and I do enjoy using them. I guess for me the one big negative of getting a Macbook over a Windows laptop would be not being able to play videogames, but I already do have a gaming PC that I built a couple of years ago so it's not like I'd be missing out on PC gaming if I got a Macbook.

I'm just kinda curious what you guys think. This would mainly be for schoolwork, but at the same time I would love to have a more mobile option to play my steam games.

I have a Macbook air for school. It is super light and I love it. I too also have a gaming PC so I dont really give a shit about playing games on my laptop, I wouldn't be doing that at school anyway. I only wish it was had a higher resolution screen because sometimes it does feel a little cramped.

I love my MacBook Pro. I'm the type of person who likes to segregate work and other stuff so my MacBook is purely for schoolwork. I don't keep steam or battle.net installed or anything so I never get distracted. I have a desktop PC at home for gaming, and an old thinkpad I repurposed into a Linux machine for certain stuff. I also enjoy using multiple desktops on OS X to further segment my work and social stuff. I keep my messaging, twitter, and facebook on one desktop, my email on another, programming homework on another, physics homework on yet another, etc. This really tends to help me get my work done faster. Not necessary, but very nice. Another plus is that the hardware is more reliable than most other laptop manufacturers (in my experience) so I appreciate knowing that it's going to be pretty rock solid in my day to day.

It plays games just fine, but remember that not all games have OS X versions. Also they are much more expensive than alternatives, so keep that in mind. But generally the reasons I like my MacBook over other laptops I've had is the quality of the hardware, the design of the OS (easy to run many desktops), many of the applications are better than mainstream PC alternatives (Pages is a very flexible and powerful word processor if you get to know the UI), and interactivity with my iOS devices. Remember that everything an OS X machine can do can be done cheaper on a PC or Linux machine, but the ease of use and reliability is what I pay for.

I prefer Apple computers but some of Apple's decisions on their products has me considering PC or just staying in the iPad world. My gf used to laugh at all my Apple products until she took a Photography class and the computer lab was Mac based. She was willing to buy a new $1,800 MacBook Pro. I looked up all the specs over her slow as shit 7 year old Dell laptop. I upgraded the hd to an SSD drive for $50 and was able to replace the processor for $17 on eBay. There are still 2 more faster CPUs for her laptop. Those were $70 or $100 online but I wanted cheap. That 7 year Dell is lightning fast for her uses now. Apples soldering of ram and processors to motherboards is BS. This is one of the biggest reason I don't see myself dropping money on an Apple computer anytime soon. Buy yourself a decent laptop and a gaming PC for the price of a good Mac.

I think Apple makes the best (non-gaming of course) laptops in the world. The MacBook Pro is a thing of beauty but it is REALLY expensive. If you can afford it it's the best laptop money can by in my opinion.

Thanks guys! I think I might head out to the apple store and do it tonight. I really like the Macbook Pros.

Depends what course you're doing. If it's a science or computer oriented course I would stick with a Windows PC, as there's a lot of software in that area that can't be run on a Mac. For most other courses I'd say you should be fine with a Mac.

I generally like my MacBook Pro, but I feel like I'd probably be perfectly happy with a Windows laptop these days--something like a Dell XPS 13, specifically. When I bought my MBP about six years ago, Apple had a real edge when it came to trackpads - a major concern for me, since I generally use my laptop in situations where a mouse would be impractical - and outside of big ThinkPads with giant battery humps, it wasn't possible to find a Windows laptop with similar longevity. The competition's really caught up in both areas since, and now I'd say that a Mac isn't really worth the premium unless you really, really like OS X.

I do have something of an anti-Apple bias, though, to be fair.

I have a Macbook Pro and it's great. I think the quality is well worth the price, the battery easily keeps it running for over 8 hours if you are not doing intense stuff like running games, and it is super lightweight. The retina screen also really helps with reading on screen.
Many people argue that other laptops have better performance, but for me build quality, weight and battery runtime is far more important than processing speed. I need to carry my laptop to work every day and always take it with me when traveling. The apple support is also really great so far and as long as you have warranty or apple care, you can walk into any apple store or authorized reseller worldwide and get service. Try that with a Lenovo, HP, or Dell....

Another big bonus (for me) is that you can send SMS and imessage over the laptop, but that only applies if you have an iPhone.

That said, if you need to run any CAD software or other specialized software, or you want to play games, then this computer is not for you!

If you are a student, check out if you can get discounts through "Apple on Campus" or the Education Store.

I have a 13" mbp retina that I haven't booted in about 6 months. It's a fine computer but I cannot stand OS X. Should probably just list the thing for sale somewhere.

Here are my general thoughts of the two (from my personal experience):

• PCs are more open in terms of hardware which can make it easier to fix malfunctions. I dropped my laptop and the screen wasn't working. However, I could just pop it open and reconnect some wires and it worked again! In general, a broken Mac means an expensive trip to the Apple store
• Price. My friends rarely broke their Macs but when they did, that was a hefty loss in terms of money. For the price of a macbook, I could buy two pretty good Windows laptops.
• I tend to enjoy programming on a Mac more than a PC. I struggled a lot trying to find the right terminal and shell for Windows and it was never quite right. I have been programming on my macbook for a year now and I love it. Obviously, this point is rather subjective.

I've become more fond of Macs over the years but I'm not sure if I've been sold on it given the price.

Overpriced.

I bought a more powerful Dell laptop about 6 years ago for half the price, which I still use to this day. I don't use Apple products (aside from an iMac we used for the newspaper in college), so I honestly have no love or attachment for the brand, though.

Pretty much this. My family has been lifelong Mac people, as my dad is in advertising and needed some of the video stuff Mac used to be known for. In the old days, Macs used to be a lot easier to fix. In college, for example, I needed to replace the hard drive on my Mac. This was one of the older ones where you could actually easily replace bits. It was about a five minute process involving a screwdriver and all I needed to buy was a new hard drive.

Now? You can't get the thing open and have to drag it to the Mac Store, where you will immediately be assaulted by about 15 sales people. You'll then need to deal with some neck-bearded hipster "genius" who knows fuck all about computers and repeatedly asks you if you've "zapped the PRAM." This is followed by them taking your computer for three days and installing a new hard drive, which despite costing all of $100, you get charged about $500 just so they can crack open the case.

I mean, I like Macs. I think PCs tend to feel cheap and I find using Windows is a colossal pain in the ass. Actually using a Mac feels really good, but everything on the periphery of Mac use really, really sucks.

I use both Windows & OSX daily, but I don't know if I'd buy a MacBook.

MacBooks are no longer overpriced and they still have the best trackpads and keyboards available on a laptop; I've tried every windows laptop out there that's well liked right now, including the XPS 13 and Spectre X360 and they both have little annoying issues that drive me crazy. The one negative about the current round of MacBooks, excluding the Macbook 12 is that they are getting long in the tooth. At one point they felt nimble and light but now they feel a bit bulky and dated. I'm hoping for a refresh soon; however, they are still the best laptops out there.

I've only been in an Apple store once and it convinced to stop buying Apple products. The hold switch on my ipod classic was broken and i went to see if they could replace it quick. Lucky for me the "genius" wearing a puka shell necklace, flip flops and a wizard hat stopped to ask how he could "help" me today. He told me that none of the "geniuses" could open the ipod so I would have to make an appointment with a technician and all appointment slots were filled for the next week and a half. He said that once the technician "figured" out the problem they would still have to send it out because they don't do parts replacement at the store. So then I asked him if they just sell the part I need and he looked at me like I had three heads and said no. I walked out after that and am now convinced the Apple store is hell on earth.

If you asked me about Macs 10 years ago, I'd say they're pretty awesome and that the Apple ecosystem was better than Windows XP and Vista. But now that I'm more tech savvy, or at least less ignorant of tech than I was as a teen, and disillusioned to Apple's designer allure, I personally see no reason to ever get a Mac of any sort based on how I use computers these days. Adobe pretty much dominates the content creation market so there's no reason for me to learn how to use Final Cut. Most games run on Windows which means that I can't use a Mac to play games unless I use Boot Camp. Then there's the pierce-to-performance ratios in that Macs are overpriced and under-performing compared to equally priced PCs. And though I don't have any first hand experience with Apple's tech support, I'll take people's word on the hipster douchebag comments since I wouldn't want to deal with that bullshit in top of already being frustrated because of something not working.

But, within a general use case where someone doesn't need a desktop replacement grade laptop for playing games or editing video, I guess I can rationalize why people would consider getting a Mac over PC. OSX is fine despite some of my nitpicks with it, and I'm sure that their laptops are pretty decent. At the end of the day, I feel the same way about Apple as I do about Alienware.

I lived in residence at my university for 4 years and Macbooks were definitely the most prevalent laptop in both classes and dorms. For the most part the users seemed happy but one of my years the floor I lived on had pretty shitty wi-fi but the internet was great when you plugged in with an ethernet cable. This was a bit of a problem for some of the students with macbooks because newer models do not have ethernet ports. I've heard you can buy an adapted but those take up USB ports and honestly I've never once seen someone with one of these before. I guess for most people this wouldn't be a problem though.

they're pretty good, but you're paying a lot for the Apple name. If you have a lot of other Apple devices, it might be worth the connectivity. I would look into a surface book. Try it out and see if you like it. when my MacBook Pro dies, that will be my next laptop.

I like mine and think it was worth the money.

At university I also see a lot of other students / lecturers using Macbooks mainly too.

Be different. Buy a PC laptop, install Ubuntu on it.

Slim, a fashion item, and too expensive for what you get in processing power or storage. They are sold machines, but there are less expensive Win machines that offer the same light weigh slimness for 3/4 the price.

I've used a late 2010 13 Inch Macbook Pro for my degree (Computer Engineering) as well as a desktop PC running Windows and Linux at home. There are a lot of good things with that machine. The battery is still great after six years, the track pad is great and I liked how easy it was to open up and swap out the RAM and the HDD but sadly, this isn't possible anymore since everything is soldered unto the mother board. I also liked OSX for some software development. You basically had access to a Unix terminal. Also, the design of it. Sure, the specs aren't amazing for the price but the overall industrial design of it makes it a pleasant piece of hardware to use. It's also a fashion accessory to a certain extent.

That being said, I feel like most other laptop manufacturers caught up to Apple in terms of overall design. If I had to change my laptop today, I'd probably get a Windows laptop and dual boot Ubuntu on it. Apple laptops are really nice but I feel like they lost their edge.

depends entirely on what you're using for. for very light tasks with an eye towards value, i'd get a chromebook. for light tasks and emphasis on materials, i'd go macbook. as a great generalist machine, i'd go with this:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/2/10888636/dell-xps-15-review-windows-10

and if i was in the creative industries (media, music, photography, video, etc) i'd go macbook pro.

I bought a Macbook Pro a few years ago when I was a sophomore in college, and back then it made sense when compared to what Windows laptops were offering. Now I would say the decision is a lot harder. Manufacturers have responded to the Macbook's popularity by increasing build quality and offering better performance for a lower price. As others pointed out, you can get a cheaper laptop that is more powerful than a Macbook. You're paying a lot for the Apple name, but the build quality is still some of the best, if not the best, for the price.

So it really comes down to which operating system you prefer and whether or not you own a lot of other Apple products (iPhone, iPad, etc.). Software might be a consideration as well depending on what you're going to be doing with it. My Macbook is showing its age at this point and I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon. I'll likely be buying a Windows laptop at that point. The Macbook just doesn't justify the price for me anymore.

I'm a graphic designer as a career. I use my mac for editing video, drawing, digital painting, vector illustration, photography and photo editing. I also, as a hobby, use my mac for playing Rocksmith with the real tone cable, recording music in Garage Band (I play bass), writing music with a midi controller that uses a USB cable, and recording podcasts with an external pro-grade mic. I also have my computer hooked into a smart-lighting system that controls the color of the lights in my apartment and interfaces it with itunes.

I say this because at any given time, I have a wacom cintiq art tablet hooked up as a third display, my midi keyboard, my guitar, a keyboard, a mouse, a game controller, and a microphone. I have NEVER had a problem switching from one to the other on the fly. I have never had driver issues. I have never had to reboot. (I've had to reboot my mac like twice in 4 years.)

I don't know if PCs are this stable in 2016, but back when I switched to using Macs, they were not. I think to myself, "I love my computer" pretty much every time I switch from one task to another with not so much as a hitch.

So, I recommend Macs wholeheartedly.

Yes, you can get a really cheap Windows PC for 3/4 of the price, but that means you are sacrificing quality. Quality of screen, trackpad, keyboard, and overall build. For laptops, the trackpad, screen, and keyboard are the most important components.

Outstanding build quality with not a great operating system. I install Windows on my Apple computers. Super easy.

The difference in cost used to be illusionary, as well.

I don't know how PCs sell these days, but many off-the-shelf PCs would come bundled with all kinds of garbage software and 3rd party ride-along shells to Windows. Those services would pay the manufacturer to put their content preinstalled on the PC. The manufacturer could then offer that PC at a discount because they were being paid off. So while a PC shopper might say, at Best Buy, "well this PC is 1/3 of the price of this mac!", in reality 3 months down the line they would be baffled why their anti-virus software doesn't work anymore and they are being prompted to pay for it. 4 months down the line they can't play their DVDs and they are being told to buy a "codec" and they have no idea what that is, and 5 months down the line they can't use MS Word and they don't understand why and they are being told to buy a copy off the shelf.

I know most people here have the brains to build their own PCs and clean-install their OS, but most people do not.

Not great because it's not great, or not great because you don't know how to use it? I'm not being accusatory, but i've heard this a lot as an argument for why people don't like macs.

As a college student and a human, Macs are expensive and PCs do everything you need without charging you $50 for a dongle. Mac's are fine, but you can do everything it can on a PC for less.

Bought a Macbook Pro for work (graphic design) thinking I'd be freelancing on site at agencies a lot more than transpired. It's a beautiful machine, but truthfully, I only really use it if I'm away from Desktop PC, which I use for work and games. I've always loved Macs, but I am pragmatic about their overall worth and cost, if your in environment where everyone uses them, its useful, but has been mentioned, a PC is much cheaper and versatile option.

At this point I wouldn't buy one, apple are being stubborn about releasing an updated skylake version while competitors have done so long ago and at a better price and the 1 year old MBPs out now still cost the same as when they came out here.

I bought a Macbook Air in mid-2012 and at the time it was absolutely the best ultrabook for the amount of money I spent. In the past year or so I really got tired of OSX and wanted to go back to Windows. It turns out that Windows ultrabooks are often now cheaper and of the same quality (or better) than a Macbook Air, notably the Dell XPS13. I'm currently using a Surface Pro 4 as my primary laptop and love it.

Depends on your area of study.

If you're going to be in a lot of lectures, I would really consider a Surface Pro 4. OneNote is a great tool - being able to take written notes with illustrations is great. On top of writing notes, you can set One Note to record audio. When you take a note, it'll time stamp the audio for you. When you click on the play button it'll automatically skip to the part of the lecture where you were taking that note.

Depending on your CIS department, they may look at Office 2016 for the Mac as a different product than Office 2013/365. If you're thinking of taking any computer classes where Office is a requirement, make sure the Mac version is something they'll allow. Otherwise, you'll need to bootcamp or run a VM.

It's a life saver in business meetings, when you record a meeting and have audio proof someone said XYZ.

Great computers for all aspects of life other than gaming.

Every time I get a non-mac laptop I format it immediately or I just buy a "signature" laptop from the microsoft store which doesn't have any of that garbage.

Until fairly recently, I swore by my Macbook - the hardware was solid, the OS was great, and it had decent software that wasn't easily replicated in a Windows environment (e.g. full UNIX tools, iPhoto, Subler).

Over the last couple of years, though, I've moved back over to Windows (main PC is a Surface 3 Pro, plus a desktop for heavy processing/gaming tasks). Apple's support is a nightmare (had my Macbook repaired 6 times, and then the store refused to deal with it anymore - had to escalate to executive support to get the issue resolved) and repairing your own machine isn't always straight-forward; hardware quality has gone downhill - I haven't owned a Macbook charger in years that hasn't had the plastic insulation fray/split. I've never had that issue with any other piece of hardware; the recent OS releases have felt more buggy and poorly designed than before; the UNIX tools have atrophied to the point that installing Cygwin on Windows is nearly as useful.

That's not to say that Windows fixes all of these issues, but the Apple premium just isn't worth it for me any more.

@jmurph_93: For university use, it might be worth considering a Surface. The pen it ships with is extremely handy for quick notes/diagrams.

I love my Air. I just bought my girlfriend the newest Pro and it is awesome. Super fast, and the screen is gorgeous! Bring your student ID and you'll get $100 off! I haven't tried games on it but my Air can play some stuff like Amnesia so I'm sure the Pro can do at least okay.

Apple has some of the best QC and components in the tech industry. As for build quality and design there isn't much out there than can touch them besides maybe those new Surface tablets and 2-in-1s from Microsoft and some of those smaller high-end laptop brands, but even then that's a bit of a stretch. The only (kind of serious, depending on what you are doing) downsides to the hardware is that much of what Apple does is proprietary in some way, so it's not like the typical PC laptops where you could replace or upgrade hardware if you needed to. I don't know if Apple still does this but to my knowledge they usually solder components on to the motherboard so they can't be fixed or replaced without replacing the whole machine altogether. Not something you or the local tech shop would be able to do on your own. Usually when a Macbook (or iMac even) breaks the only thing you can do is send it in to Apple and hope that they can fix it, and you'll have to wait for it. Another issue is that the specific hardware they use, while pretty good, is usually a year or two behind what the equivalent PC is doing, and Apple has a bad habit of charging outrageous prices for simple things like minor RAM upgrades or a slightly-larger hard drive or solid state drive. Typically they charge anywhere from $200-$500 more than what the same item would cost on, say, an Ultrabook or a Dell XPS laptop, so they definitely take price gouging to the extreme. They get away with it too because, well, they're Apple and they can do whatever they want.

When it comes to the software side of things... That's where things get iffy. While you can use bootcamp to dual boot Windows or even a Linux distribution, there are usually some odd problems with some drivers not working correctly on the hardware and some other weird things like performance issues that are really only specific to Apple devices, mostly because of the proprietary hardware they use. As far as Mac OS goes it is an extremely close-ended operating system that will only allow you do what Apple wants you to do, and to use the programs that Apple wants you to use. It just isn't as open-source as Windows or Linux is. While it's not a huge problem if you are just using basic apps or stuff that is available on Apple devices through the app store or from a 3rd party, you can run it to big problems if you want to play games or use the majority of programs out there that just aren't compatible with a Mac OS.

Personally, I'd just go with a high-end Windows based Ultrabook or something like a Dell XPS laptop. Not only are they cheaper, but they have better performance that the equivalent Macbook and you'll have more options as to what you can do with it (upgrading hardware, running Windows, running Linux, a larger variety of free and paid apps etc...), you can just do more with something PC based than Mac based. While the build quality of PC laptops was pretty sketchy in the past, the newer high-end options are built just as well if not better than what Apple is doing.

I mean this right here is pretty false. You get Python and Ruby on a default install, which is more than Linux and definitely more than Windows. There's also Homebrew to install most Linux tools. Yes, a default OSX install stops you from running apps from unidentified developers. But Apple do nothing to stop you from turning that feature off, or installing the command-line tools (gcc, git, et. al)

Okay sure but is that something that the average, non-developer or tech enthusiast will know how or want to do? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no.

If you don't care about gaming and you're looking for a light, comfortable, easy to use and practical laptop that doesn't give you headaches with trivial things and has a nice trackpad, keyboard and screen. Go for it! To be fair, I don't know how are the laptops from the competitors currently, but I was a big anti-Apple guy for some reason and I completely changed my mind once I got my Macbook Pro. Also, don't listen to people saying that it's too closed, you can't change anything and have to obey to what Apple tells you, you are just as free to do what you want with it as you are with a Windows PC, at least that was my experience.

As for videogames, you can still play some on Macbooks, but you'll need to invest in a beefier one for that, since the base models are focused on light work (internet, office, etc). You also need to have that in mind if you consider a Macbook; The Macbook is the lighter and thinner one, it's the bridge between tablets and desktops. The Macbook Air has more ports and, depending on the model, has more power than the Macbook. Macbook Pro are the more powerful ones, and the best for stuff such as design, audio, video and other multimedia work.

In the end, either Windows PC or Mac, just go with what you feel more comfortable with! All of them have pros and cons that change from person to person.

I have a top of the line iMac from 4 years ago, and I can play most games I want to play, which are basically all indy games. I have yet to see a game that I can't run, but I don't try to run many AAA games...

@bananasfoster: I've been using OSX for many years... before you could resize windows from anywhere besides the lower right corner. Before applications could run at full screen... in 2011. I bought it with the intention to learn the operating system so I could have an informed opinion. I learned it, and it's limited in a lot of ways. I'm an American. I like freedom. So, that's why I started installing Windows on MacBooks. I still use OSX to edit video in Final Cut, and it's great if you want to browse the internet, but when I want to do anything else I use Windows. Ubuntu, even. But yeah, I understand. A lot of people talk shit to talk shit. When I talk shit it's from first-hand experience.

Fans of the MacBook genre are sure to like the present line of MacBooks.

fair enough, sir.

@bananasfoster: Same here! I have a good 3 year old iMac with parts I selected to suit me better for work (graphic design) and I can still play some stuff on it. Mostly indies as well but even some more fairly recent AAA games can run at least in medium and sometimes running on a Virtual Machine, which really isn't the best way to play them but it handles it well enough. However, for someone who wants to play the latest stuff, a Windows PC is probably better. I use computers for work and Playstation for gaming, so I don't know how those things are nowadays.

@djhicks1: I've been using OSX since 2010 (and Windows since I was a kid) and, on OSX, I never felt that lack of freedom you're describing. You can do much more on it than just browse the internet.

Yes, you get a lot of Junk wear to take off, but you CAN take it off and then the cost is not an illusion at all. I for one, have never seen a DVD codec ever expire on a laptop or notebook. If you can point to one I'd love to know about it so I don't buy one of those.