Elephantears
Trunkated Aesthete
I firmly believe that the best value laptop for students and writers is still the old MacBook Air, 2015-2017. The machine reached its maturity in 2015, with the fastest SSD and best battery life. If you can get a second hand model between those dates from a reliable source with 8GB then it will do everything a Law student needs. The battery life is superb; it feels good to use, and it's light.
The biggest disappointment in Apple's history, for me, is that they didn't stick with that basic design and add a Retina screen. That would have been the perfect laptop.
All the later models have basic design mistakes; the butterfly keyboard is hard and unyielding, and even with the silicone underlay on the more recent models, the machine is highly vulnerable via the keyboard. My brother in law just spilled some coffee on his; that's the end of his machine, and about £1500 down the drain, with no sympathy from Apple.
The biggest disappointment in Apple's history, for me, is that they didn't stick with that basic design and add a Retina screen. That would have been the perfect laptop.
All the later models have basic design mistakes; the butterfly keyboard is hard and unyielding, and even with the silicone underlay on the more recent models, the machine is highly vulnerable via the keyboard. My brother in law just spilled some coffee on his; that's the end of his machine, and about £1500 down the drain, with no sympathy from Apple.
linnfomaniac83
I bet you can’t wheelie a unicycle!
I have no problem typing on the butterfly keyboards, it’s certainly no worse at all than typing on an iPad screen which I do frequently (including right now)... my biggest concern is longevity, I know the media can and vastly over exaggerate reliability issues, but it’s certainly something that’ll be at the back of my mind when the time comes to hand a couple of grand over to Apple... at the moment, my 13” mid 2012 i7 is still doing sterling service (albeit with 16gb of ram and a 1tb SSD). The keyboard on my MBP doesn’t get loads of use anyway because most of the time the MBP is on a stand over my mixing console and I have a magic keyboard and mouse in front of the console.
On spillage issue, I certainly wouldn’t expect Apple or any manufacturer to accept anything kind of liability for that one... but it wouldn’t hurt for them to fix it at a reasonable parts and labour cost (which should realistically be about a third of the cost of the machine), however Apple over charge for their repairs and due to the fact that they now only supply the keyboard and bottom case as one complete assembly and because the battery is bonded in (they won’t try and refit the old one)... so you’re buying a bottom case/keyboard, a battery, a logic board which has all the vital components (ram/cpu/gpu) soldered. The only original bits will be the top case/display and the bottom cover. And with Apple’s stupidly inflated parts cost, you’re near the cost of a new machine with a full warranty. Time to contact your insurance if you have it. Drinks aren’t allowed anywhere near my gear, if anyone tries to approach the mixing booth with one they are told, if they don’t listen, it is taken off them, never had a whoopsie in 15 years!
MVV
pfm Member
Mine is a 2015 retina pro. Been fab, spilt beer and wine on it and it seems fine. I also have a 'man' who fixes my 'vintage' kit. He can do anything . On my old black MacBook he replaced the keyboard and all kind of stuff very inexpensively. Mac had told me they were beyond repair. I'd go with yer man's suggestion above for the Air. Might even do it myself as a cheap back up machine.
The one thing I wish Mac would do is allow you to run two laptops that automatically clone each other so whichever one you take out of the house it is the same as the other. No I can't be arsed to do it manually.
The one thing I wish Mac would do is allow you to run two laptops that automatically clone each other so whichever one you take out of the house it is the same as the other. No I can't be arsed to do it manually.
