Marco Arment enumerates the reasons, “Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells.”

As we’ve progressed toward thinner, lighter, more integrated Macs, we’ve paid dearly in upgradeability, versatility, and value. There are many Macs to choose from today, but in some ways, we have less choice than ever.

When Apple introduced the 3rd generation MacBook Pro (MBP) back in the middle of 2012, it then came with the Retina Display and solid-state drives (SSDs) in lieu of the hard-disk drives (HDDs), but dismissed the optical drive altogether. Moreover, you cannot upgrade the memory (RAM) by yourself, it has to be pre-packaged when you buy it.

I own an Early 2011 13-inch Macbook Pro, and I’ll probably hold back from upgrading to the latest MBP in the near future. Why? Here are my reasons: 

  • I don’t consider the Retina Display compelling enough to upgrade. With my poor eyesight when not using eyeglasses, I can’t see so much of the difference between a Retina Display and non-Retina Display;
  • I had my RAM upgraded to 8GB, and I still have the flexibility to upgrade it further to 16 or 32 GB;
  • I had my HDD replaced with a 256GB SSD as my main (and boot) drive, and my optical drive removed in favor of a data doubler plus a 1TB HDD as my second drive.

Basically, that’s my current set-up, and I can’t see myself replacing that with a single 256GB SSD storage only machine at least in the foreseeable future.