The best laptop ever made

I knew what laptop Marco would be talking about before I clicked on the link. Perhaps that says something about Marco, but I have the feeling it&#x27;s almost certainly about how widely-lauded the old rMBP was, and still clearly is.<p>Apple got so many things right with it, because all the design choices <i>made sense</i>, for exactly the reasons Marco gives.<p>The design choices being made at the top of Apple no longer make sense. Take the touch-bar, for example; it was a passable idea, but flawed in execution and production. If you want another example, how about DongleGate™? The most recent USB-C trend was not handled the way Apple used to handle standards progressions. Yes, they annoyed us in the past with too many FireWire ports, and an overly-futureproofed candy drop iMac (USB)... But even then, those choices made sense because the rest of the ecosystem was thought about. This is clear when you compare it to today&#x27;s offering, where you <i>cannot</i> plug a new iPhone into a new MacBook, out of the box! Incredible...

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by <i>far</i> the best.<p>Being able to charge on <i>either side</i> is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo Switch work on the same cables. USB-C cables fall out with little tension so have had no pre-MagSafe style accidents so far.<p>The touchpad is better than my 2016, the touchbar is almost pointless to me but no worse in operation, and it runs <i>way</i> cooler and quieter - the past two generations used to burn my legs and were noisy. The only downsides are reduced battery life (not a big issue to me) and the keyboard. I <i>like</i> the reduced travel, but it can &quot;clog&quot;.. if they fix that, I prefer its design overall.

This makes me so sad. My laptop is a tool that I use for close to 12 (maybe even more!) hours per day. Every single day. It is the tool I use more than <i>any other tool</i>. It is <i>such</i> an important part of my life. It&#x27;s <i>so</i> important that it work well.<p>I remember when I got my first MBP (it was a 2010 model). I had long been a linux user, and getting the mac was something I had done begrudgingly. I remember how the little LED on the front would fade (not blink!) on and off. I thought it was really cool. I heard a story (maybe from here, actually?) that the apple engineers studied the way that humans breathe when they&#x27;re sleeping, and modeled the fade after that.<p>When I told this story to one of my friends (a long time mac user) she just laughed and said &quot;Welcome to mac, Ryan.&quot;.<p>I can&#x27;t imagine a &quot;welcome to mac&quot; story like that one anymore. The only version of &quot;welcome to mac&quot; I can think of is Apple seemingly crippling their own hardware. Can&#x27;t use your headphones on their $1000 (!) phone? Welcome to mac! Can&#x27;t plug anything USB into your laptop without an adapter? Welcome to mac! Can&#x27;t even plug your $1000 phone into your $1500 laptop made by the same company without an adapter? Welcome to mac!<p>The new MBPs are just such a downgrade. I totally get why they dropped the optical drive when they did. Online&#x2F;flash storage was getting cheap enough and ubiquitous enough that it was a real replacement for CDs.<p>This is <i>not</i> the case with USB-C, evidenced by the fact that apple doesn&#x27;t even use it on their own consumer electronics yet (!!!).<p>The new macs are really pretty. I do not understand and probably will never understand their hardware design decisions.

For me it&#x27;s the Lenovo T61 with a 14.4&quot; 4:3 display (or any of the older 4:3 IBMs).<p>Yes, compared to modern laptops it is heavy, slow, bulky and has a shitty display but: i) I can replace every single piece of it with a simple screwdriver and ii) 4:3 is still the best aspect ratio for reading and developing. If I am doing the latter I prefer a screen with a lot of height. A 4:3 aspect ratio gives me a tall screen while keeping the overall size of the laptop down.<p>When DVDs became popular there was suddenly the idea that a laptop _had_ to have a 16:9 aspect ratio (e.g. &quot;HD&quot;) and unfortunately this killed the whole idea of a laptop with a tall but narrow screen. Microsoft seems to go back to an older style with their 3:2 but I&#x27;d still love to see a modern T61 with a true 4:3 screen.

This is the most elegant critique to the current line of Macs I&#x27;ve read so far. I hope it reaches the right eyes and ears.<p>While Steve Jobs was unique, I believe Apple has the right people to continue delivering the same great products. They just need to let them do their jobs.<p>This said, I&#x27;m looking forward to test a Pixel 2 Chromebook.

I don&#x27;t know, I kind of think that the best ever is Macbook Air 2015.<p>I would also argue that Macbook Air was the first laptop ever since it was the first truly portable - not just transportable personal computer ever. For the first time a notebook was light, performant and run long enough on battery to be actually usable out of your office or home.<p>Yep, the screen is not retina but it&#x27;s also significantly lighter, thinner and has longer battery life.<p>The design, so perfect that hasn&#x27;t changed since 2010.

I&#x27;m using the 2017&#x2F;latest Macbook Pro for work and have the late 2015 at home and I totally agree with this post.<p>The trackpad isn&#x27;t improved, the touchbar is crappy and it runs for less time and runs hotter.<p>If any HW startup wants to do a Macbook Pro 2015 redux (maybe using an ARM core) i&#x27;d throw money at them.

As someone who just inherited one of these at work and who had never played with a MacBook before, my first thought when seeing the headline was “If it’s not a MacBook Pro 2015, I don’t know what it is”.<p>This thing is pure functional art. The first time my screen just magically unlocked itself because I happened to be wearing a particular watch was the moment nerd-like turned into nerd-love.

It&#x27;s odd that this was posted as I was thinking along these lines the other day.<p>I have a 2012 Retina 15&quot;. The first generation. I spec&#x27;d it out at the time hoping for it to last me at least a few years.<p>From 2015 I&#x27;ve been eyeing off every new release of Macbook Pro thinking &quot;yeah this time I&#x27;ll upgrade&quot; but then I realise there is actually nothing wrong with my current one. Like, nothing at all.<p>I realise the battery is going die eventually and software updates will no longer be supported at some point, but for now it really is the best computer I&#x27;ve ever owned.<p>Note: I&#x27;ve been on all sides of the fence (Amiga&#x2F;win95-&gt;winVista&#x2F;OSX) so I&#x27;m not just a fanboi.

I got myself the 2012 model shortly after it was introduced. Despite the obvious risk, I made an exception to the rule of never buying a 1st gen. It was simply everything I (until then) didn&#x27;t know I wanted. A machine truly worthy of the Pro label, pushing the state of the art at a fair price. I was happy to spend my money.<p>Meanwhile we lost both the quality and the fair price. It really makes me feel sour, to the point that I just bought a new 2015 model only to have the warranty that I&#x27;ll have a proper MBP for three years to come. It was no more than a contingency plan; a rational decision made out of a lack of options, involving no enthusiasm at all. During that period I&#x27;ll either have to find a good alternative to switch away to, or – hopefully – Apple will introduce something new that will make me want to be their customer again. Honestly, I can&#x27;t say I&#x27;m optimistic about either.

I loved my MBPr when it came out, had it for years abd then decided to buy a refreshed model basically for faster wifi and because I could.<p>Suddenly I learned that the SAME version of my mac but newer cost the same and REMOVED the dGPU.<p>I was flabbergasted... why the HELL would I pay the same money to lose the dGPU.<p>That day I had to abandon the mac and I got a Surface Book. The new line of Macbooks with their poorer battery life, silly keyboards and overdosed trackpads made me feel less like I was missing something.<p>First mac was the Macbook “white” one of the forst intel ones.<p>Magical is the only word I have. The breathing sleep led, the orange&#x2F;green charging indicator. The button on the underside which would light up a simple gauge indicating battery level. The media remote control. The terminal with Python and C installed out of the box.<p>I mean it was way way way beyond anything you could buy and although more expensive it was worth every penny.<p>Just doesnt feel like that anymore.<p>The new macbooks just cost too much and the features dont feel like an improvement.

The current MacBook Pro should&#x27;ve been a separate product line, like the MacBook Air was. Those who are happy with the sacrifices it makes could switch over, but they wouldn&#x27;t have to leave everyone else out in the cold.

I use one at work and never thought much about it. But reading this I have to agree. It simply works. I never had to think about my hardware because it silently and adequately does its job. If I owned any other Apple devices, I imagine the experience would be even better.<p>I have an expensive Windows laptop for personal use. The much more impressive specs aside, the experience is admittedly inferior. Why is it taking so long to build a similarly seamless laptop on Windows?

Sadly my 2013 MBP logic board died after some spilled beer. I purchased and quickly returned a 2017 15&quot; MBP. This is not the MBP which made me switch from Windows.<p>Apple laptops are becoming too thin at the expense of features I care about: larger battery, more diverse (HDMI and USB3) port, the mag safe connector and a longer travel keyboard. I could care less about Apple having the thinnest laptop. That&#x27;s what the Air line was for.

A fixed but fast declining battery is what I mostly remember from the hardware side, and how fucking hot it got under normal load. The dated gui and always broking developer workflows from the software side.<p>It wasn&#x27;t a bad Laptop but I would place pretty much any Thinkpad Tsomething above it in usefullness every day.<p>Edit:&#x2F;&#x2F; forgot the horribly glossy screen. I really like sun, not like hiding from it to see my work.

I bought this in 2016 for an urgent project, just before the update. I had planned to buy the new MBP when it came out, figuring it would result in the same great form factor, but faster.<p>When the new Macbook pro came out, I just kept my old one. Apple lost a guaranteed $4000 sale.<p>Why didn&#x27;t I upgrade? I needed the ports for audio&#x2F;video work, I didn&#x27;t need the touch bar. I needed an SD card and HDMI. I would have had to buy an awful amount of dongles just to use the laptop.<p>I&#x27;m going to hang on the the 2015 version until it is obsolete, or until something better comes out.

Every year I ponder getting a new laptop to replace my mid-2012 MacBook Pro.<p>Every year I don&#x27;t. Instead I wipe the hard drive, reinstall the OS, and I have a brand new machine. Even the battery is still going strong 5.5 years into ownership.<p>This article hit the nail on the head. The laptop fulfills every need I have better than anything else I&#x27;ve tried.

Reparability is the main downside to the retina MPBs for me. With my old MBP I could swap out the battery in 30 seconds, and I could upgrade the RAM. Neither of these are possible any more.<p>That said, I&#x27;m still using my 2012 retina MBP and it&#x27;s going great. These things are built to last!

Nope.<p>The best laptop is the one with 7 row keyboard, like ThinkPad T420.<p>While Macbooks have nice aluminium body and are very light and thin they are far from being &#x27;the best&#x27;.

While I agree with Marco (and would add that generations Air was the best consumer laptop every produced), I always feel like it&#x27;s unfair to judge the final iteration of one architecture with any other iteration of a new architecture. A lot of things had to fall in place for the RMBP to be &quot;perfect&quot;, specifically the move away from optical, the prevalence of speed of 802.11ac, etc.<p>The Touch Bar Pro is an equally great model, when used in a similar &quot;perfect&quot; world (USB-C peripherals, connected to an LG 5K). But it&#x27;s a terrible model &quot;in the field&quot;, as very few things are ready for USB-C (including USB-C in some respects).

We are two years in since the new MBP, and likely three years before we see a new model. ( Might not be a new design )<p>Very rarely have we doubt and not see the gain from an Apple transition two years in.<p>USB-C: I dont have problem with bringing in every connection to one standard or Apple dont ship iPhone with USB-C yet. These are all timing problem that will be solved one day. I have problem with USB-C itself. The quality, standard, and execution of USB-C in the public market with lots of different standard of cables that doesn&#x27;t support PD or whatever feature. It is basically shit. At the moment I just wish they make a new version called USB-D and clean things up, for both the Transfer spec and the plug.<p>Keyboard: While most do like the bigger keys, it is still no where near as good as the old MBP. And there is a 5% chances ( The amount of new MBP repair due to Keyboard failure ) that the most important input devices on your Notebook does not work. And the repair cost $799. The 2nd revision of the Keyboard tries to solves the key travel problem by making a bigger noise, trying to trick your brain that you have typed and &quot;felt&quot; it. Cant we just have a extra 1mm thick MBP that has much better keyboard and cheaper to repair, or even no need to repair?<p>TouchPad: As mentioned, no one has yet find a use case as to why we need such a large touchpad on MBP 15. Apple manage to keep the keyboard same size in both MBP, but not the touchpad. It frustrate you by various misfire from time to time, which was NEVER an issue with previous MBP.<p>Touchbar: It is useless, and does not work 100% of the time. Which align with Apple&#x27;s new Keyboard design very well. But it doesn&#x27;t annoys me since I rarely use it for anything other then those default keys. Trying to work with it for 2 years, it never clicked.<p>But I dont think any of these blog from Marco or rant in Reddit or HN matters. Tim Cook is much more of an Data &#x2F; Number person. And the recent quarter shows there are more people buying the Mac then ever.<p>I miss Steve, i think he better then anyone else understand what the users need, and when to make the call or jump. The Apple now is trying to continue that way, but it is different. And it will never be the same.

Using it right now - it&#x27;s... so reliable. Had zero problems. Love these zero-problem products in life (and they are not that easy to find to be honest)

My first retina worked worked well for a few months. Until the screen started looking like it was being burnt by the keyboard (a now known factory defect<i>)<p>My second one, around a year later, had the same screen problem! Not only that, it had a logic board failure that took me months to resolve and left it practically unusable (random crashes etc). Three times to the mac store to sort this one and a multi week wait at the end for a new logic board.<p>On both laptops: Wifi doesn&#x27;t connect to half the hotspots I ask it to. Boot times become long even with a bare minimum installed after a few months of use. Charging cables have a lifespan of less than a year and cost a fortune to replace.<p>Im a heavy user and admittedly I don&#x27;t take care of my stuff as much as I could. But Id always bought macs because they were reliable and durable (My ancient powerbook is still in use) and not had any problems.<p>Indeed - after swearing off macbook pros I had the chance to try and later buy a 2012 macbook air. Damn - it reminds me of macs of old. 5 years old and it just.. works. I couldn&#x27;t be happier and am seriously considering buying another to do me when this dies.<p>Im not sure if the tide will come back in but I think the high water mark was perhaps before the retina.<p></i><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-mbp-ar-coating-quality-program-staingate&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-mbp-ar-coating-qu...</a>

The glossy screen is a showstopper for me.

The best laptop ever made came with not one, but two ports for an utterly failed connector standard (Thunderbolt), long since ditched?<p>And those replaced the ubiquitous RJ45 Ethernet jack?<p>At least they had the good sense to include HDMI and not go <i>full TB</i>.

And best of all, it might even last a long time without breaking down. Since it has an SSD, those can last 10 years+.

I have a 2016 MBP with TouchBar and I&#x27;m mostly happy with it. I love the quality of the screen, its the brightness, and the overall performance of the computer, and I honestly prefer macOS over any other desktop operating system.<p>My main gripe is the keyboard. I know some don&#x27;t prefer the feel, but I could honestly get used to that (I mostly use an external mechanical keyboard at my desk, but often have to use the laptop portably). However, the keys get sticky <i>real</i> easy and I hate having to constantly clean it&#x2F;blow the keys out just so it works like normal. I think that&#x27;s ridiculous for such an expensive computer.<p>I don&#x27;t experience any <i>downsides</i> to the TouchBar honestly (besides the annoying non-tactile ESC key), but I don&#x27;t use the TouchBar for anything more than I used the function keys before (brightness, volume controls mainly) so it&#x27;s really not worth the extra $$$ that they added onto for this thing. In hindsight, I probably should have went with the 2015 model.<p>With all that said, it&#x27;s the <i>unreliability</i> of the keyboard that bugs me the most, because this laptop should <i>work</i> PERFECTLY for this price (even if I don&#x27;t agree with some of the decisions that were made regarding the design). If I didn&#x27;t rely on macOS for work I probably would have got a Lenovo laptop instead. That makes me sad, because my first Mac was the unibody WHITE model and that was probably the best &quot;new computer&quot; experience I&#x27;ve ever had.

Only downsides: I have had 2 screens replaced due to delamination and this 3rd one has developed a purple line down the middle. Also picking it up with one hand on the corner can register a false touchpad click. Magsafe2 was a totally unnecessary change. Bizarre really.<p>But all that aside it&#x27;s a champ and the only reason I would replace is because of the stuck purple line.

I totally agree, but I&#x27;m not happy to see this post for the selfish reason that I&#x27;m worried it will be harder to buy a refurbished one once the one I&#x27;m currently using dies. With the exception of the non-ergonomic keyboard layout, I could keep using this machine forever and be pretty happy.

I have a 2012 13&quot; Macbook Pro at the office. It&#x27;s still going strong, and I&#x27;m still just a bit more productive on it than on my fancy schmancy Asus laptop with a GTX 1070. Since I&#x27;m running Xubuntu in VirtualBox in seamless mode, installing software for cloud&#x2F;game server development is sometimes more convenient on the Asus, but I still have to deal with running a VM. The trackpad is better on the Macbook Pro. What&#x27;s more, Windows 10 startup got corrupted by an update last night, and I&#x27;m still dealing with that. I&#x27;ve had to deal with the equivalent level of problem on the Macbook (SSD failure) but the tools that come with MacOS make that at least 5X easier. (It has been a real saga with the Windows 10 laptop, which I will leave out the details of.)

A year ago I needed to upgrade my MBP and went for the 2015 model without a doubt.<p>I wrote about it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@Pier&#x2F;why-i-bought-a-2015-macbook-pro-fadf27ab4b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@Pier&#x2F;why-i-bought-a-2015-macbook-pro-fad...</a>

I&#x27;m staying with my 2014 MacBook Pro 15&quot;, trying to weather the storm. Perhaps I&#x27;ll be able to wait out the current &quot;Jony Ive running rampant and unchecked&quot; period. Perhaps next year somebody at Apple will finally speak up and say &quot;no&quot;. Perhaps next year we will have a split between &quot;Pro&quot; laptops (with useful ports, useful keyboards, keys on keyboards, and without trying to achieve extreme thinness) and consumer laptops, which have an entirely different set of compromises.<p>Today Apple is making all its products according to one specific set of tradeoffs: external out-of-the-box form over function, thinness over everything, usability comes last. This set of tradeoffs is fine for some products, but not for every product.

I like the new design better and I won’t switch to the previous version. The display alone is significantly superior.<p>While I like the previous design and think the 2015 model is pretty great, it is important to chronicle the history as it actually occurred so let me paint some light on some not so rosy features in 2012:<p>- MacBook Pros in 2012 almost universally had an image burn in issue (on the LG made displays) and it took Apple at least 6 month to reliably sort things out.<p>- MacBook Pro 2012 almost universally had a dGPU problem that made the machine crash on dGPU (presumably because of solder issues).<p>Those issues were very serious. Apple eventually did sort them out and the 2015 model is great but it is worth remembering that things take time to perfect. Issues will get fixed over time.

I just bought a lightly used 2012 model to use as my home laptop. I have been using the 2016 model at work for a little over half a year now.<p>I prefer the older one. I might prefer a 2015 model even more, but the 2012 is almost as good; close enough to perfect.

I totally agree! Though I bought my 13&quot; non-retina MacBook Pro (mid-2012) on the day it was launched in 2012 (5 years ago!) and upgraded it with faster RAM and replaced the 750 HDD with 500GB SSD, and this machine is a beast in performance!<p>I have used and compared it to the other latest Macs, and though I can notice the performance increase, I find it a little minimal compared to the 5-year old machine I have! The Non-Macs are not even close, not even on the list, and no, I am not saying this just because of the MacOS, I find the overall experience to be shitty. I cannot imagine using HP&#x2F;Dell laptops, with that OS!

That&#x27;s what I&#x27;m using at work, and what I&#x27;ve got for my personal laptop too. Are the new ones that much worse? They don&#x27;t seem like there at all worse to me, I&#x27;ve been thinking about getting one.

I have one. Here is my next one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;system76.com&#x2F;cart&#x2F;configure&#x2F;lemu8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;system76.com&#x2F;cart&#x2F;configure&#x2F;lemu8</a>

the magesafe2 was bad ;( I&#x27;ve been trough ~5 adapters since I bought the late 2013&quot; in early 2014

It is interesting just how ahead of their time these laptops were. I wonder if it&#x27;s even possible to make such an innovative laptop in 2017; it seems like all the easy wins have been claimed.<p>Also notable: they hold their value exceptionally well, even for an apple product. The 2014 model price is actually trending upwards on eBay lately.[1]<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;us.bidvoy.net&#x2F;macbook_pro_2014_i5&#x2F;111422" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;us.bidvoy.net&#x2F;macbook_pro_2014_i5&#x2F;111422</a>

Do we maybe need some kind of Mac-Reformation? Maybe Johnny could print this out and nail it to the front door of the new Apple HQ? (assuming it even has a front door, of course)

It&#x27;s pretty good, yeah. I really would have loved it if they simply doubled the USB ports and re-included an Ethernet jack for the newest one instead of doing what they did.

I personally own the 2014 15&quot; MBP — and would agree with the post.<p>My work–issued 2017 13&quot; MBP requires 2x dongles to run a dual screen setup — at a total cost of $240 — which is just ridiculous. And I <i>have</i> to carry one everywhere, just in-case I want to jack into HDMI (ie; visiting customer, presenting research). HDMI will be the prevailing standard for some time, and is ubiquitous.

I have a 2013 high end model with Nvidia graphics. I love it. If all goes well, I plan to use it at least through 2020.

Completely agree. I use a 2015 model for work, and its glorious. Another engineer got a 2017 MBP, and its TERRIBLE.

Isn&#x27;t it also the revision that removed the possibility to easily upgrade the RAM &amp; storage ?<p>Personally, this is when I started seeing the MBP derails from my needs.<p>Culminating (so far) with the touchbar. Even after a couple of month with it, its disadvantages run deeper than its advantages.

I have two issues with the 2017 MacBook Pro work gave me, versus my 2015 at home.<p>USB-C<p>Touchbar<p>Otherwise, I dig the keyboard and larger touchscreen, and the rest is the same.<p>My guess is the Touchbar is a UX experiment<p>I&#x27;d prefer they just ditch the UI they&#x27;re moving and enable keyboard shortcuts to respond to notifactions

I have a mid-2014 model and I absolutely love it. However, weird spots have been appearing on my screen now on the black edge and I&#x27;m kind of nervous&#x2F;scared. Anyone else with these spots?

Agreed. I&#x27;ve not looked forward to new Macbooks since around that era.<p>The new ones are just horrible and more expensive. The touchbar does zero for me. So much junk for higher price and little utility.

&gt;Apple still sells this model, brand new..<p>How? Where?<p>I have the 2017 MBA 15&quot; . Hate how the thing crashes all the time from using USBC peripherals... arghh..

Disagree; it doesn&#x27;t have a pointing stick.

I don’t see a donglegate - I’m carrying<p>- current MacBook-Escape<p>- 29W USB-C Power brick<p>- USB-C Cable<p>- USB-C to Lightning Cable (iPhones and iPad)<p>- USB-C to HDMI&#x2F;USB Adaptor I bought for EUR10

This is the MBP I am using! I love it. I tried a new model and returned it after just 2 days.

The downside: the cost for replacing a broken Retina display of the MacBook Pro are obscene.

I&#x27;ve got one at the office, and love it. Anyone want to sell me their spare?

I have a 2015 MBP I use for work. It is indeed everything that folks say it is, except that I absolutely hate the magsafe. Any little provocation pops that damn thing right out. I&#x27;m actually not a fan of the new MBP but thank God they removed that nonsense.

Keyboard layout makes it nigh unusable for my work, programming.

I love my X220. Still do!

If I could get one of the late 2000s 17&quot; MacBook Pros, but with updated internals, that would definitely be my next laptop. I know several people that bought them for college and are still chugging away with them a decade later.

I&#x27;ve had a 15&quot; Macbook Pro since late 2013.<p>It was perfect in every way.<p>It never crashed, it was never slow and it had GNU tools built right in, but out of the way so I could enjoy the simple and practical UI.<p>Then one day my X key started missing a keystroke now and then.<p>Later it started missing strokes.<p>Then after a while it started to input &#x27;x&#x27; when I wasn&#x27;t pushing the key once in a while.<p>Eventually the entire computer became unusable because as soon as it powered on it would start to repeatedly ghost type the letter X, resulting in the OS disabling the X key at boot.<p>So I took it to the Apple store.<p>&quot;They&#x27;ll just pop the key off and replace it, maybe clean out under it&quot; I thought. &quot;Worse case scenario I&#x27;ll have to pay $20 for a new keyboard.&quot;<p>Haha no.<p>Apple wanted $400 to fix the X key because they refused to simply fix one key. And they refused to simply replace the keyboard. No, the only way they would fix it would be to replace the entire lower deck and that would cost $400.<p>I had no choice. I needed my computer for business because all of my work depended on it. So I gave the $400.<p>My computer came back and it worked great for a while, about 8 months.<p>Then one day the G key started to miss a keystroke once in a while.<p>I think you know where this is going.<p>I continued to use the computer until the G key completely failed and began to ghost type G all the time.<p>This time I didn&#x27;t have $400, so the broken key rendered my computer completely useless because my disk unlock password had the letter G in it, rendering the OS unbootable.<p>Even using an external keyboard didn&#x27;t work because when the OS disabled the letter G at boot it disabled it on both the internal and the external keyboard.<p>So now I have a computer rendered useless by poverty.<p>If it was a Lenovo laptop, I would have called Lenovo and they would&#x27;ve overnighted me a free replacement keyboard, which I would have replaced myself in five minutes by removing a few screws, swapping it out and replacing the screws (I&#x27;ve done it on several Lenovo laptops).<p>I have a perfectly usable Macbook Pro sitting there in the corner rendered unuseable by a single broken key.

&quot;Best?&quot; really?<p>- Glued in batteries<p>- Difficult to repair, especially the poorly-manufactured logic board<p>- No Kensington security slot<p>- Soldered in RAM<p>This is why I still use an 13&quot; A1278 non-Retina from 2012: 2x SSD&#x27;s, 16 GiB of RAM, SD slot and KS slot. It&#x27;s a little thick but sturdy, not the fastest CPU but it&#x27;s solid.<p>The latest MBP&#x27;s have unreliable logic boards and Apple&#x27;s repair policies result in massive charges for binning whole boards instead of repairing cheap components. For such reasons, the &quot;best&quot; macOS laptop these days is arguably a hackintosh Lenovo such as T440 or P50s.<p>- Spill-resistant, awesome keyboard<p>- Nearly unbreakable<p>- Upgradable with commodity parts<p>- Repairable<p>- Crazy-long battery life<p>- Necessary ports included<p>It doesn&#x27;t make sense to go with over-priced, soldered-in components that lack sufficient repairability.

that being said I could see myself upgrading in two years or so