Purchasing strategy for New MacBookPro (with bonus iPhone problem)

this is kind of a sideline comment but: i recently upgraded from a 2007 MBP to the (previous) latest model of 13" MBP -- i'm a viual designer working in 3D, photoshop, the usual processor-hog stuff. i've been totally happy with the machine, and i expect to keep it chugging for a decent number of years. purchasing on the cheap: if you have a http://www.microcenter.com/storefronts/apple/index.html nearby (scroll down; add to cart to get pricing), you can add open box stock to your cart via their website and then pick it up in-store. there's a substantial price difference once an apple object's been opened. this means, in my case, i got a 13" MBP for $800. this one's box had been opened, and that's it. everything else, mint. also! i am not a microcenter spokesbastard. just cheap. :)

Re: upgrading the iPhone, I bet if you got the right personGenius at an Apple Store, they'd do it on the spot.

You get a http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2011/02/macbookpro-benchmarks-early-2011/ between models, as well as a larger hard drive. Seems like a decent deal, but it depends on what you're using the computer for, I guess.

I'm not totally sure what you're asking about, but if you want to share my personal theory about buying Apple, price points and longetivity, you go middle of the road. Avoid fancy options and don't get seduced into shelling out major bucks for the fastest processor speed. Buy the minimum number of memory sticks from Apple and go third-party for the rest. Having said that, I've owned a number of MBP's and have always been the most satisfied with the 15". I'm currently on my 3rd year of MBP 5.1 and no signs of slowing down. If I was looking to refresh and wanted to make a cost-effective decision, i would get the 15" 2.0 at $1,799. Piece of cake. The i7 performance is supposedly really ripping compared even to the i5. Obviously you'll see the impact of this mostly in video/audio/graphics/hyperthreading apps. If you look at the 15" they are sporting quad-core i7's, where as with the 13" you are choosing b/w dual-core i5 and dual-core i7.

I very much doubt that that difference in processor speed will ever be a limiting factor in what you can do with the machine. I'd spend the $300 on getting some awesome software, now you'll have a machine that it runs on. I have a similar purchasing strategy to you, and in 2009 bought a MacBook Pro to replace a G4 tower that had lasted me 10 years. I paid a bit extra to get the discrete graphics card (not an option on the 13") but didn't go for the top rated CPU, and have no regrets.

get the cheap one unless you'll be rendering 24/7. I fail to see how a failing iphone could ever force you to change you computer though.

Not to derail, as I know this isn't exactly your question, but have you tried using a different cable to sync your iPhone with? The phone itself might have gone screwy, but it's possible that the cable is causing these problems, and if so it's a much cheaper fix than buying a new machine! I had this once with a friend who'd just switched to a Mac. Loved the machine, but was turning the air blue because the free iPod nano that came with it was failing to sync (seemingly at random). I took one look at the cable, and noticed it was very oddly shaped. Turns out he'd bought a spare cable from eBay, and the regular cable worked flawlessly. Not quite the same thing, but I have had official Apple cables go weird for me on occasion, so it's worth trying if you haven't already.

Obviously it's not possible to predict the future, but would the extra 300mhz have a reasonable chance of getting me an extra year of usability from a 2011 MBP and thus be worth the $300 extra? Given what you've said, I would say... maybe (but not for the reason you're saying). First, you've already done the first best thing and chosen the MacBook Pro line over the MacBook. That will eek you out an extra usable year or two right there. These are both quad-core processors and that's the biggest gain. That extra mhz in the top end model is likely far less important given your usage, not now or 5 years down the line. The bigger hard drive in the top end model is also a non-issue right now. You'll be able to buy a bigger, faster hard drive in the next 5 years that will be less than the $300 extra you're spending now. The biggest difference between these two models in the dedicated GPU, the AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB GDDR5 (low end) vs the AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5 (high end). This is something you will not be able to replace later on, so you're better off thinking about this now. Given how Apple makes everything graphically intensive (like OS upgrades!) this might help you in the 5 year timeline and may make the last year of ownership more bearable. Also: I am not a Genius. I am not your Genius. (har!)

Spending $250 on the "128 GB Solid State Disk" will provide a much greater performance boost than the difference in cpu speed. If 128 GB is too little space for you, I'd keep the $300 safe for 2-3 years, and you'll probably be able to get 512 GB for $250 at that time. cpu speed did matter a lot in old days, but today it doesn't matter that much. A SSD is much more important.