As much as I loved the Surface Pro 3, I simply don’t make use of all the tablet functionality that’s included so I found myself wanting to go back to a nice lightweight and ultra portable laptop.
So I’ve passed it along to some lucky person on Ebay.
Enter the 2015 Macbook, crazy light and a retina display, fantastic.
I intend to triple boot the system and so far have OS X and Windows 10 running on it. I have it partitioned for Kali 2 if I can get it to install. Seems there is an issue with using Linux EFI on this particular model, although I was able to get Ubuntu to start the install whereas Kali simply locks up when trying to initiate the install. Anyway, I will keep trying.
So there are a couple things to mention with this model. It does use a mobile processor so running VMs is really not recommended, but that’s the price you pay for something so light and no fan noise, because well, there are no fans in it. But if I can get it to triple boot, VMs most likely won’t be necessary.
And the processor is certainly powerful enough for doing most other things especially since it has a decently fast Flash drive. Using Blackmagicdesign’s disk speed test app, I was able to get around 530 MB/s write and 830 MB/s read.
The other item I’m not sure about is the USB-C port. That’s the only port and you have to purchase and use adapters for everything so we shall see how that works out and if it starts to drive me crazy.
A few other note worthy things:
- It will drive a 4k monitor at 30Hz
- Retina screen is amazing, but you have to use a third party app to force it into native resolution mode
- If you dual or triple boot, you can encrypt the various partitions so currently I’m using Filevault on the OS X partition and Bitlocker on the Windows 10 partition.
Anyway, if I can get Kali on the Macbook and the single USB-C port doesn’t drive me crazy, I think this new Macbook will be one of my favorites.
- Update: I actually returned this to the Apple store. It was essentially too slow with hesitation occasionally while simply navigating around the OS. Personally I think Apple sacrificed a little too much on the processor side in the name of thinness, lightness and no internal fan.
- I also didn’t like the single USB-C port and needing to purchase a myriad of different adapters.