Honestly I'm waiting to see what's out there in a year or two when I actually have to upgrade (:

Could've just as easily been any other OS that has applications I need. I need Linux on my desktop, for example.

Though in my case that should've been "strongly prefer" rather than "need".

Heh. Well, I got my MBP in 2011 and did more or less the same upgrade you did. Actually Think I did a 500GB spinny disk first, then went to an SSD later. I expect a few more years out of this guy...

I don't really like VMs. I actually tried setting up a VM on my Linux desktop to do video editing and photoshop. This is when my desktop was new, and I like to future-proof my desktops by building them to be fairly overpowered so that they'll still work well 3-4 years down the road. VMs were still really, really horrible for all that. And we're talking a VM with two dedicated CPU cores and 8 gigs of RAM. It was still not a pretty sight. I don't even think I could call it functional.

VMs are great for testing or running servers, but any intense hardware stuff, especially GPU-related hardware, I've just not ever got it to work really well.

Yeah, if you want a hack OS that only sometimes works, doesn't support 100% of your hardware 100% of the time, has troubles with updates, etc.

That is, unless that got a LOT better since I checked last, a year or two ago. It may have, but I doubt there's any 100% Just Put The OSX Install Media In And Go laptop.

That's what I have now (: Had it since a bit before they came out. Hoping to get at least another year or two out of it.

I didn't think OS X does very well on any (current) laptop. Definitely a hack, either way.

I'm told that the Develop tab in Lightroom is pretty much identical to ACR, so you can go there. You can adjust the exposure, brightness, saturation, lens compensation etc.

Hehe. No OS Holy War on MY end. People can use whatever they like. I prefer not to us Windows, and that's my choice.

ACR, or Adobe Camera Raw, is a lot more basic than Lightroom. It comes with Photoshop. Lightroom basically replaces Bridge+ACR, and from what I understand (and remember from the one time I tried to use it) is a LOT more complicated. I have a friend who's a professional photographer, and has been for many many years, and I learned a LOT about post-processing from her. She used to use Bridge+ACR (which is why I learned to use is). When she moved over to lightroom it was quite the transition. Even for a pro. ACR is a LOT simpler. Buncha sliders on the side, couple of tabs, etc.

In Bridge you can right-click and go "Open with Adobe Camera Raw". I have no idea how (or if you can) get to that from Lightroom... but if you have a copy of Photoshop "lying around", Bridge and ACR should be a part of that.

I don't have Windows anywhere except work. Everything at home is Linux except one OS X laptop. And I'm actually very happy with my MBP.

I have... doubts about running OS X in a VM and having it reliably use stuff like a Wacom tablet, and use Adobe Creative Cloud (more that I trust Adobe to somehow break). I'd be willing to try but not experiment with. This is stuff I actually use a lot.

Hey my birthday present when I was 14 was an upgrade from 512K to 640K. I don't even WANT to know how much that cost...

I have no choice about using Windows for work. I managed to run Linux for a few years without anyone noticing, but sadly that's not possible anymore.

So I'm hearing, and noting for the future.

You might be correct on warranty. I've never bought Applecare for any Apple product I've ever owned. But I think OP meant "repairable" as "I can go buy a battery online and install it myself".

I've minimised the money I've spent on them by buying the cheapest HDD/RAM options and upgrading myself, easily saving at least $500 on the actual computer. I believe that's what the OP means by "upgradable".

And with those specs, i.e., the lowest-end high-end machine (if that makes sense), a MBP came out on top. There was not even any close competition. Any other i7 laptop cost hundreds of dollars more.

It's not just Photoshp. It's the whole workflow thing with Bridge->ACR->Photoshop. I used to use GIMP+UFRaw and I thought that was great... until I tried Adobe's stuff. GIMP doesn't even come close, it is unbelievably unintuitive and later versions have made this worse. And there is no RAW processor that comes close to ACR for Linux.

I have no idea if Creative Cloud will run in Wine. I've never tried. Why would I? It would never run as well as it does natively, and getting a Wacom tablet to work correctly on a multiple monitor Linux setup is a pain in the butt under normal circumstances.

There are other applications I use that come with OS X. I don't use them that often, but I do tend to use iMovie and GarageBand on occasion. Those have alternatives in Windows... I assume... possibly even free ones of the same quality (and I use the term loosely for iMovie). But I'd have to relearn stuff, and I'm betting I couldn't export my old projects to them.

I've not used Windows at home since Win2K, and that was a dual-boot for games (then I got a PS3). I've not EVER used Windows at home as a primary OS. I had DOS, but the versions of Windows that ran on top of DOS did not support my hardware. Neither did OS/2 (but then again that thing barely supported anything). I was stuck with DOS till Linux came along and since I was a UNIX geek already I just hopped on that bootstrapping bandwagon.

So yeah, I might not /need/ OS X as such, but I much prefer it to Windows.