How long will a MacBook last?

Retina are not upgradable:

Storage

Your MacBook Pro comes standard with 256GB or 512GB of flash storage. Please note that the flash storage is built into the computer, so if you think you may need more storage capacity in the future, it is important to upgrade at the time of purchase.

Learn more

External storage via Thunderbolt is a possibility, and is frequently faster than the internal storage.

Shootist007 wrote:

It is not implying anything. That is all in your Tiny Little Head.

Good Bye.

Which takes us back to:

I would not buy the Retina if you want to keep the system for longer then 3 years.

So where does this come from?

The recent generations of MBP were not designed to deal with the heat they are generating under stress, causing premature logic board failures. With Apple looking the other way, repairs are not economical. So, chances are your machine is economically dead after Apple Care expires. I can only pray that the most recent model is an exception to the rule. Time will teach.

User expectation is high for perfection. Errors that do crop up are less than 1% of the time. Yet those show up 80% of the time on these forums. Save enough to buy AppleCare before your one year anniversary. And error won't matter until after the machine is three years old if at all, since that is when AppleCare expires.

I would only buy a computer with AppleCare...did that with my MacBook Pro and iMac, and the MBP AppleCare was at least double that of the iMac but that is the premium you pay for a portable, more likely to have problems.

The Retina is a fine machine, but be sure to buy one with all the memory you can afford as they cannot be upgraded. The non-retina MBP can be upgraded. And I agree with brody, external storage is not only good but a must...you need to have clean backup copies of the operating system and contents just in case things go wrong. You just never know when a failure will occur, or when you will make a mistake and delete something critical or important.

Go to an Apple store or reseller and spend time with the machines you are considering, get familiar with them so you can make an informed decision.

Sounds great, when you go spend enough time to be comfortable with the different machines so you can make an informed decision as to which will best meet your needs.

And don't believe all of the comments about Macs don't last...with care they last a very long time...I still have a Power Mac from the early 1990s that runs very well, just very slow by today's standards. And only replaced my 2005 iMac last fall because I wanted a larger machine with a current cpu instead of the old G5. So Macs do last very well if you care for them properly and do not abuse them...but no computer is going to last with abuse 🙂

Definitely have fun at the Apple store putting the new MacBook Pros through their paces 😀

Napoleon wrote:

But what is the problem with the new retina macbooks?

None that I am aware of.

Just jumping in here, macs last a very very long time just take care of your macbook and it will last. I have been a mac computer mac user for years now and my extremely old powerbook still starts up and runs, onto my 5 yr old white macbook it still starts up and runs just fine fans are loud but after 5+ years of heavy usuage I upgraded to a 13" macbook pro. This will last me long as well, I did not get the retina version, I purchased the 13 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 500GB and I installed my own 16gb of ram. Now if I really want the ssd harddrive I can purchase that later. The reason I went with this one was for the price and what I am getting with it, DVD drive-burner, ports that are not on the Retina. I just could not see spending the money on a retina and its not upgradable or purchasing all the accesories such as for example external dvd drive or ethernet port. My macbook pro is perfect I love the display its beautiful and the speed is great. I burn alot of photo dvd's