Which MacBook Pro

By Ray, 31 October, 2013

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

I'm in the process of purchasing a 2013 Macbook Pro and am undecided about whether to choose the 13" Core 2 Duo, 2.8Ghz i7 processor with 16GB RAM or the 15" Quad Core, 2.6GHz also with 16GB RAM with respect to Voiceover responsiveness and general performance. The 13" has an Iris graphics card while the 15" version has the pro version. I would appreciate any suggestions especially as to whether it would be worth spending the 20% or so extra to get the 15" version.

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Comments

By Ignasi on Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 20:00

Any of the two machines you are suggesting will work very well with VO, and to be honest in everyday tasks you probably won't even feel any difference between them. It all depends on what you want to do with your computer. Unless you are planning on doing some serious video or photo editing or a lot of audio work I don't see any reason for you to get the 15 inch one. As a matter of fact if you are blind and the display doesn't matter to you I would even consider a macbook air, which is a lot lighter and cheaper because it doesn't have the retina display and the graphics power needed to drive it. I recently bought an 11 inch air with all the specs maxed up (I7 processor, 8gb ram and 512gb solid storage) and it works great. I don't need the extra thunderbolt port or the sd card slot, and the display doesn't matter to me so I think this was a better decision for a similar price. Also in real life the difference between these models is really not that big. Of course the 15 inch with a quad-core cpu is going to be faster, but I personally don't need it. What's for sure is that in terms of performance the difference between a 13 inch pro and a macbook air is marginal. The pro's advantage is mostly that it has much better graphics and a much better display. Good luck!

Hi. I needed ot replace my Mac and I went with what I had. The retina ones are a bit more expensive, unless you don't care about the price. As for the 13 versus 15 the 13 is just that much smaller that it doesn't feel like you're holding this bug thing on your lap. when i had a 15 inch Windows laptop, I always felt like it was a large screened thing. Ok so there was maybe half an ich of plastic around the display. Unless you'll put Windows on your Mac, I don't see why you'd need the 15. I don't remember if they also stopped making slot load drives, yes they did, I remembered because the eject button on mine is your new power button. Anyway let us know what else we can help you with.

Hi Siobhan, Why would you need a 15" MacBook Pro to run Windows? From using one for a few days, Windows runs fine on a 13" MacBook Pro and on my 13" MacBook Air as well.