I'll start this with a disclaimer, Apples for me are something to eat !

I have to get a news computer for my wife, currently she has an old mac book pro from about 2009 and wants a new one.

Not excessive use, Internet, bit of Word, bit of Excel, movies, bit of on-line banking, skype/whatsup and photos is the basic use.

I like the Mac Book Pro 13" retina with touch bar.

She has an iPhone (6s/128gb) an iPad.

What model do i buy and why ?

All help gratefully accepted.

tks.

New or second-hand Macbook Air or the Macbook (non Pro). The new Pros are crazy over-priced.

The iPad Pro isn't a computer, it's a tablet. Same OS and apps as her iPhone, just with a pencil to stab at the screen and draw things.

But the retina display is orgasmic eye candy.

I'd get the MacBook or MacBook Air, also. Don't need the pro for that kind of usage. Get a MacBook not the iPad... there are things that you just can't do/won't work on an iPad, also I don't think you can alter the screen angle in respect to the keyboard, or balance it on your knees when using keyboard.

Macbook Pro total overkill for her needs IMHO
Vote for Macbook Air 13", will allow her to do the typing and other things not so easy with the iPad, nice camera and speakers for video calls, extremely portable, and SSD drive usually hold up well. If go the used route, lots of good deals out there on used market too but try to buy newer (< 2 years old) due to battery cycles/life (they do wear out and age.) Good luck!

It is. A second-hand one from 2013 or 2014 would be perfect (I have a 2013 Macbook Retina). The new ones are stupidly priced.

The touch bar sounds ridiculous to me not to mention the lack of any standard port. I'm happy with an older retina mac. If it dies one day I don't know if I will stay with mac, dell XPS 13" 4k with ubuntu is also awesome.

I had iPad but I realised I don't have time to use it as anytime I wanted to use internet I quickly realised that I need the keyboard so I switched to laptop. Finally I donated the iPad as it was barely used by me.

Any peripherals?

The retina MacBooks (12") are nice, too.

The Core-m5/256 GB should do for most users.

You need adapters galore, if you want to connect anything legacy. But USB-C is the standard of the future. So, if you don't have invested a lot in "legacy"-devices, it's a good notebook.

That said, the non-touchbar 13" rMBP is also nice - and at least has a removable SSD. But no legacy connectors, either.

Apple was always good at getting rid of old cruft in hardware.

Getting rid of "old crud" would be ok if it was actually old.

Basically, if you go to the Apple store now and buy the latest iPhone and latest Macbook Pro, you can't connect them to each other without a dongle.

Even the magsafe port has gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU

So, there's no direct lightning to usb-c cable, yet?

(Not my problem, as I don't have the latest iPhone and never connect it to the work rMB 2016).

Whether there is or not, it's not shipped with either the phone or the laptop so has to be bought separately.

Yeah, that's a bit of a bummer.
But then, they'd either have to ship two cable/power-plugs (the power-plug would need an USB-C socket) or some sort of adapter.
Or a lot more SKUs.

At the scale of the iPhone, that's actually quite a lot of e-waste.
The amount of people who buy an iPhone 7 and a notebook with USB-C is actually rather small (compared to the absolute number of iPhone buyers).

The upshot is that they maintained legacy USB compatibility with the iPhone 7 - what all the people are whining about when they didn't do in the MacBookPros....


They'll sort it out with the next iPhone, I'm sure ;-)

Thankyou everybody for the input so far.

1) I'll be buying new.
2) Not much to connect, in fact can't think of anything
3) We want Retina display, Slammers orgasmic comment sold me !
4) A Mac book (512gb/Intel 5) is about Chf 1'600.-.- a Macbook pro (256gb/Intel 5) ios about Chf 1900.--, not really a big deal
5) Macbook air seems to have old connector system (?)

6) Difficult decision....

I wish they would just finally get round to make a iPad pro that connects to a macbook pro chassis al la Surface book

get them all

Which one you want ?

Just installed a gaggle of imacs at a customers, all with retina display.
THEY ARE SOOOOO SHINY

I moved to Macs when I realized I had little desire to keep fannying around with PCs

2007 iMac which is used for downloading/media
2013 MBP for everything except for
2010 Air for travel
iPhone 6 - which I am reluctant to upgrade due to the lack of a effing headphone socket

Mrs DK has just bought a 27" iMac - I have screen jealousy.

While it's a true statement .. and a kinda strange concept for us old timers.

Why would you want to connect them together? The only reason i can think it might be useful is to charge the phone maybe, but you'd use a charger for that usually no?

Everything else can be done without a physical connection between the devices.

Not quite true - if you have to do a DFU reset on an iToy then it needs to be connected to a computer via USB to reinstall the OS and the baseband firmware.

Also using a wired connection is mostly faster than using WiFi, which helps an awful lot if you're frequently transferring large amounts of data.

But apart from that you're right.