Tried to buy a Macbook pro today, but they had nothing to sell me

lusid1

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I suddenly find myself without a laptop, so I need to buy one a year ahead of schedule. So I walked into my apple store ready to drop a few grand, but came home defeated. For some reason, they only stock 13" laptops with 8gb of ram. For what I do, a 16gb config is minimum viable product, and still extremely confining. I stared in disbelief at the 15" for long while. I tried to convince myself, its only an extra pound, its only an extra $600, I'll only need a slightly larger laptop bag, but I just couldn't do it. I can't believe I have to do a custom order for such a common config.
 

Just_Me_D

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Based on what customers typically buy in that particular Apple Store, they probably made the decision to stock more of the 8GB models than the 16, but I can't say with any certainty. In any case, you still were able to order the one you want so it's still a win for you, in my opinion.
 

lusid1

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I haven’t found a win yet. I checked all the apple stores in the region, none stock a 13” rmbp with anything more than the minimum spec. And the Apple website has the same problem. 13” laptops are only stocked with 8gb. I can order one custom built, but I’ll be weeks without a machine.
 

Just_Me_D

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I haven’t found a win yet. I checked all the apple stores in the region, none stock a 13” rmbp with anything more than the minimum spec. And the Apple website has the same problem. 13” laptops are only stocked with 8gb. I can order one custom built, but I’ll be weeks without a machine.

Via the Apple Store app, I selected a space gray 13” MBP. IN addition, I selected to have 16 gigs of RAM installed. Anyway, the delivery date would have been the first week in March. Anyway, have you tried Best Buy?
 

Lee_Bo

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First week in March is delivery date

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lusid1

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Early march is what I'm seeing too. I checked BestBuy, they can get it to me faster but only in the 2 dongleport version. On the plus side it has the full keyboard, but I know from my usage patterns I'll need all 4 dongleports a good portion of the time. I'll probably pull the trigger on a custom build, but it won't solve my today problem. On a side note, I see some good port replicators for the left side. Any good ones for the right side?
 

lusid1

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One would hope, but they are unlikely to produce a better machine until at least cannon lake, and they're usually at least a year behind on chipsets, so we are probably looking at late 2019 or 2020 before something better comes out.
 

Blackcash

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Just a thought. Is there anything in the refurbished section that would work? If there is, you can usually get that shipped within a day or 2.
I picked up a refurbished 15" and I'm liking it.
 

lusid1

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Success. I went back in to take one last look before placing the order, and they had one in stock. 13", 16gb RAM, 1tb SSD and 4 dongleports. Now I can get on with with living the dongle life, trying not to hate on the keyboard, and learning to VIM with no escape.
 
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msm0511

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Success. I went back in to take one last look before placing the order, and they had one in stock. 13", 16gb RAM, 1tb SSD and 4 dongleports. Now I can get on with with living the dongle life, trying not to hate on the keyboard, and learning to VIM with no escape.

Congrats! That's similar to the model I have except I have the 512GB model. How are you liking it?
 

lusid1

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So far so good. Battery life definitely took a hit coming from a comparably spec'd 2015. The keyboard is taking a little getting used to, but I'm adjusting. I'm testing an app that adds haptic feedback to the touchbar which helps a lot. Still waiting for some dongles to get here but between the hyperdrive and an apple HMDI dongle I have most things covered. Still trying to solve the ethernet problem though. I'd like to avoid daisy chaining my old thunderbolt ethernet dongle and a new TB3->TB2 dongle, but the only other options I've found are USB. Aside from that puzzle and the big battery life hit, I'm liking it.
 

msm0511

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So far so good. Battery life definitely took a hit coming from a comparably spec'd 2015. The keyboard is taking a little getting used to, but I'm adjusting. I'm testing an app that adds haptic feedback to the touchbar which helps a lot. Still waiting for some dongles to get here but between the hyperdrive and an apple HMDI dongle I have most things covered. Still trying to solve the ethernet problem though. I'd like to avoid daisy chaining my old thunderbolt ethernet dongle and a new TB3->TB2 dongle, but the only other options I've found are USB. Aside from that puzzle and the big battery life hit, I'm liking it.

I was coming from a late 2011 MBP that only worked when plugged in, so I'm fairly happy since I can actually use the battery.
 

lusid1

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Thats a huge step up. I would be thrilled.

For me, with my usual assortment of apps going I'm getting just shy of 4 hours on this one, vs just short of 6hours on the 2015. It seems whatever power management they use to hit 10h running iPad-like workloads isn't helping in my case, so I'm seeing the impact of them removing 1/3 of the battery capacity directly on my runtime.
 
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