Rejecting Apple MacBookPro11,4 (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

Outline
=======

1) I can't tolerate the appearance of Apple OS X Yosemite, and for
the worst problem there's no workaround

    --  "the title of the window isn't there" (Apple, WWDC 2014)
        <http://asciiwwdc.com/2014/sessions/220>
        <http://forums.macrumors.com/posts/21555268>

2) I'll continue to use Apple OS X Mavericks with compatible Apple
hardware

    --  or, that operating system software with a virtual machine
        (Oracle VirtualBox), probably without Apple hardware

3) given Apple's somewhat illogical and inflexible approaches to
the user interface (UI) in Yosemite and in El Capitan, I'm
switching to PC-BSD <http://www.pcbsd.org>

    --  some of the desktop environments with/for PC-BSD have
        UIs that are saner than Apple's (properly used title bars,
        and so on)

    --  at the time of writing my preferred DE is KDE.


Also: storage systems; PC-BSD uses ZFS by default. The combination
of Apple Core Storage plus HFS Plus is no match for ZFS.


Background
==========

I evaluated a new MacBookPro11,4 (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015). One
of five recently purchased by University of Brighton. The new Mac
will not run Mavericks (OS X 10.9.5), and I find the appearance of
Yosemite (OS X 10.10.x) intolerable <http://ur1.ca/mwpki> so I
rejected the Apple hardware. Someone else in my area (Brighton
Business School) will enjoy the software that's required by the
new Mac.

Instead I'll use one or both of the following Apple notebooks.

MacBookPro6,2 –
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010), serial …. 8 GB memory
maximum. Problems affect the display (local reference 79813). To
coincide with the repair I may arrange installation of a solid
state or hybrid drive.

MacBookPro8,2 –
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011), serial …. 8 GB
memory, upgradeable to 16 GB but 16 GB is unsupported by Apple. No
video (local reference 66730) but this Mac appears to be covered
by the MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues
<http://www.apple.com/uk/support/macbookpro-videoissues/>. To
coincide with the repair I may arrange installation of a solid
state or hybrid drive.

Essentially:

A) the MacBookPro5,2 that I normally use is limited to 8 GB memory

B) the MacBookPro6,2 may be repaired next week, at no additional
cost to me or to the University

C) the MacBookPro8,2 is is preferable, but it'll take a little
longer for me to arrange repairs and the nonstandard 16 GB memory,
and there'll be a cost for at least the memory.

With (B) and/or (C): if a hybrid drive is installed, then I'll
occasionally use a mobile external solid state drive with ZFS to
improve the performance of the hybrid. The mobile drive can
provide a removable cache (L2ARC).