The New Retina Display MacBook Pro

[SparkleDJackson]

I hate how they have made it completely non upgradeable. Ram soldered in. Battery is a bunch of battery modules and the ssd is an apple only so you cant rip out a hdd and fire in a ssd you cant get the one with the lowest cheapest amout of crappy ram and upgrade it yourself. I aint feeling it. I wanted one until i found those deets out

 

[Josh Weston]

I hate how they have made it completely non upgradeable. Ram soldered in. Battery is a bunch of battery modules and the ssd is an apple only so you cant rip out a hdd and fire in a ssd you cant get the one with the lowest cheapest amout of crappy ram and upgrade it yourself. I aint feeling it. I wanted one until i found those deets out

Yeah, that kind of sucks. At least you could change the RAM in the older models, even if it was a little bit of a pain to do. On the upside, they do give you 8gb@1600MHz as standard, which is a real improvement.

 

[Big WigglyStyle]

sort of off and on topic, but the Razer "Blade" is basically the same, unable to be upgraded in the GPU/CPU area.

 

[IsaacJDean]

You never know what they might bring back in the next model of Retina Macbook Pro. I really doubt it, but perhaps they might bring back upgradable Ram, if they can actually fit the DIMM slots in. After all it is super thin, which is one of the reasons that nothing is user replaceable. That's also the reason for the new magsafe connecter and lack of other ports like ethernet and firewire. I wasn't keen on the idea of having to have adaptors just to run ethernet put the adaptors look ok. If you really want upgradable parts just get the non retina display version, I'm sure you could live without it.

 

[Josh Weston]

sort of off and on topic, but the Razer "Blade" is basically the same, unable to be upgraded in the GPU/CPU area.

Pretty sure 98% of laptops have non-upgradeable CPUs/GPUs

 

[pickyantivirus]

It could be the best thing on the planet and I still wouldn't buy it. It's Apple. I hate their way of business, pricing and constant attempts to sue competition. I'll take an ASUS Zenbook instead any day.

All Apple are is a ripoff company, they use OLD ideas and change them a bit, make a big fuss and re-sell them. Retinal display is about the only thing apple have done in the last 5 years which will change the way we look at certain technology. Maybe they could focus on making products a reasonable price and spec, giving their users more freedom and not constantly bombarding everyone with slogans and adverts which simply aren't true.

Yes I hate apple.

 

[Big WigglyStyle]

Pretty sure 98% of laptops have non-upgradeable CPUs/GPUs

I thought that most of the "gaming" laptops had upgradable GPUs

 

[Josh Weston]

I thought that most of the "gaming" laptops had upgradable GPUs

Really? That's pretty cool, if true

 

[Vicey]

Some laptops use Mobile PCI Express Modules. More well known as MXM Graphics Cards.

Basically inside the laptop near the edge of the board you'll find a standardized MXM PCIe connector where a very densely packed GPU with its own memory will plug in to. It is possible to upgrade these but the options can be very limited due to firmware compatibility, available slot power and thermals. It is also not meant to be user serviceable so you won't find it easy to replace a graphics card on your laptop unless you take the whole thing apart remove all the heat pipes and so on.

I have a friend of mine that changed the graphics card in a laptop he had and he switched from NVIDIA to ATi and lost some functionality. He could no longer use the HDMI port on his laptop but the built in screen worked fine. That is just one example of why it isn't really a good idea to upgrade the graphics yourself even if you're able to get a MXM card from ebay.

Bonus Fact: Apples iMac did at one time use MXM cards for its graphics. I don't know if that is still true with the current models however.

 

[demonking]

I hate how they have made it completely non upgradeable. Ram soldered in. Battery is a bunch of battery modules and the ssd is an apple only so you cant rip out a hdd and fire in a ssd you cant get the one with the lowest cheapest amout of crappy ram and upgrade it yourself. I aint feeling it. I wanted one until i found those deets out

thats marketing for you. instead of paying a small amount to upgrade you spend a fortune buying a new one

 

[hmmblah]

Some laptops use Mobile PCI Express Modules. More well known as MXM Graphics Cards.

Basically inside the laptop near the edge of the board you'll find a standardized MXM PCIe connector where a very densely packed GPU with its own memory will plug in to. It is possible to upgrade these but the options can be very limited due to firmware compatibility, available slot power and thermals. It is also not meant to be user serviceable so you won't find it easy to replace a graphics card on your laptop unless you take the whole thing apart remove all the heat pipes and so on.

I have a friend of mine that changed the graphics card in a laptop he had and he switched from NVIDIA to ATi and lost some functionality. He could no longer use the HDMI port on his laptop but the built in screen worked fine. That is just one example of why it isn't really a good idea to upgrade the graphics yourself even if you're able to get a MXM card from ebay.

Bonus Fact: Apples iMac did at one time use MXM cards for its graphics. I don't know if that is still true with the current models however.

Yeah, it really depends on the model. A lot of laptops, even with MXM, can't be upgraded because of space or BIOS support. There is a member here though who upgraded his laptop with a little modding to the heatsink.

http://forum.overclock3d.net/index.php?/topic/43815-project-kali-small-size-massive-punch/

thats marketing for you. instead of paying a small amount to upgrade you spend a fortune buying a new one

Yeah, stupid IMO. In the macbook air it makes sense. They do it to save space. Space/size shouldn't be as much of a concern in a MBP.

 

[Josh Weston]

Yeah, stupid IMO. In the macbook air it makes sense. They do it to save space. Space/size shouldn't be as much of a concern in a MBP.

That being said, they're being made thinner now. The new ones that I checked out at the apple store are a fair bit thinner than the last gen.

I only wish they'd kept the 17" model

 

[AuxiliaryPotato]

I'm actually on one in the apple shop right now, the retina display does look pretty damn nice. But as with everything apple makes, it comes with a bloody high premium

 

[yassarikhan786]

Ownage Pranks asking about the new Rethyna Display

http://youtu.be/l0-X1-1lk-Q

 

[wassupdoc]

I think you're missing the point. The stuff on the screen is the same size as a 1440x900 MacBook Pro. The old 15".

The difference is this new display uses 4x as many pixels to deliver that same virtual resolution. This results in extremely fine grain text and images that rival what you see in printed books. No longer do you see pixelation around curved letters and numbers or jagged edges around circles.

They have put this amazing display in not to increase the work area and make everything teeny-tiny that you need a magnifying glass just to read this post but to increase the pixel density and thereby increase the overall quality of everything on the screen.

Just like they did with the iPhone 4 and iPad 3.

My fanboy sense is tingling

 

[xdaax]

I hate how they have made it completely non upgradeable. Ram soldered in. Battery is a bunch of battery modules and the ssd is an apple only so you cant rip out a hdd and fire in a ssd you cant get the one with the lowest cheapest amout of crappy ram and upgrade it yourself. I aint feeling it. I wanted one until i found those deets out

Apple products just aren't made for guys like us who upgrade their system by them selves, but for rich people who are to lazy to open any kind of technical device on their own and instead of upgrading buy a new laptop every year.

 

[Josh Weston]

Lol. It's not quite as simple as that. I'll agree that Apple products aren't built for people who enjoy customization, but as a general rule neither are 95% of the computers sold. The vast majority of people have never even seen the inside of their computers.
If I had the money I think i'd still go for a Mac for my every day computer, because I prefer the OS to Windows. It's all down to personal preference.
I still have a desktop Windows computer for gaming and, for the moment, folding, but I still spend the majority of my time on my MacBook Pro.

 

[Stryker64]

Well I actually got one for a bit over 2 weeks now. And here are my thoughts on it.

Value for money, the Retina display version is better than the non-Retina MBP 15", and significantly better than the Razer Blade in almost anyway .

Vicey pointed out that by default everything on your screen appears to be the same size as it was on the old MBP with the 1440x900 screen, only 4 times the pixel density, which does make things appear sharper. BUT certain apps, anad more importantly, basically every webpage isn't yet optimised to run at the higher resolution and you get blurry text and images. I'll post screenshots in a second as proof. However you can overcome this problem by simply increasing the scaling so it's at 2880x1800, however this means everything is 1/4 of its original size, so some people may find it hard to read text.

The GPU, GT650M it's decent (better than the GT555M on a certain 'true gaming laptop'), but running things at 2880x1800 is quite taxing, especially when it only has 1GB GDDR5, would have been better if Apple made it 2GB imho. The MBP also offers GPU switching between the Intel HD4000 and the GT650M to save battery life, however the HD4000 isn't great, and with only 512MB of RAM, it can actually cause the system to crash, but if I disable graphics switching (force the GT650M on) or plug the MBP into a 1080P monitor, that problem is gone.

Random crashes with Google Chrome, not sure about you, but Google Chrome is my favourite browser and judging from forums all the new Ivy Bridge MacBooks, Airs and Pros seem to crash at random. I have experienced this btw.

 

[Stryker64]

This is at viewing webpages at the 'best for Retina display' setting, where everything is the same proportion as the 1440x900, only 4 times the pixels.

Note, pretty much every website suffers from this problem OC3D, Google and even APPLE!

Now the following screenshot is scaling everything as it would appear in 1920x1200 screen.

You can even download a third party app to scale everything as though it was 2880x1800, but that makes everything so small, that I rather have the slightly blurry 1920x1200 text over it, since at my normal viewing distance it's better.

 

[Vicey]

My fanboy sense is tingling

So let me get this straight, because I explain how the Retina display works on the MacBook Pro I'm an Apple fanboy?