The New Retina Display MacBook Pro

[NRG!]

Screen tech is nice, but mac = money making scam.

 

[Vicey]

Screen tech is nice, but mac = money making scam.

Come on, was a comment like that really necessary?

They make very good computers.

 

[Lauralarry]

i think it's neat but 2199$ I really don't care for that eye popping exprience if my banks gonna be calling me every hour of the day lol..

 

[Josh Weston]

Let's see if the local Apple store have these laptops yet.

Edit: nope, they do not. A shame, would have been nice to see how it performed.

 

[Lollipop]

The pricing is actually a little better even if the starting price is higher.

If you pick the 2.6GHz IB model it comes standard with a 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. If you add the adapter for ethernet and the $79 super drive it's about $2900. For comparison, this MBP I'm typing on now was about $3200 with a 256GB SSD, 2.5GHz SB and 4GB of RAM about 7 months ago.

Who the hell pays for that? This is one of the reasons i don't like Apple, even tho i have an iPhone.

 

[Stryker64]

The Retina display laptops won't arrive for another 3-4 weeks, due to the massive demand there will be for the product.

Also when it comes to pricing, yes it is overpriced, but compared to a non-retina display MacBook Pro 15, it's actually a fair price, since a Retina display is meant to cost $100 more than the older displays. The Retina display model also comes with a 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM as standard for an extra $400. Compared to the 4GB of RAM and 500GB 5400rpm HDD you get in the non-retina display model.

Also a GT650M isn't that too bad when it comes to graphics performance. However only having 1GB of GDDR5 for such a high res is somewhat questionable. Still beats the GT555M in the Razer Blade though

and it's a Mac it isn't meant for gaming.

Also regarding the axing of the MacBook Pro 17". That is actually the least popular of the MacBook Pros, also the current Apple CEO Tim Cook, is anti pc (personal computer in general), and thinks everything will be moved to iPads, iPhones etc. So they are focusing on smaller sized device.

 

[hmmblah]

Who the hell pays for that? This is one of the reasons i don't like Apple, even tho i have an iPhone.

A grant actually paid for it. It is by far the best built laptop I've ever used. There's no plastic other than the keyboard. MBPs are really high end products. Like any high end product there is a higher cost of entry. I know lots of people who would never dream of spending more than $500 for a total PC. They are dumbfounded when I explain to them that I pad $500 just for my graphics card.

 

[DT-525]

A grant actually paid for it. It is by far the best built laptop I've ever used. There's no plastic other than the keyboard. MBPs are really high end products. Like any high end product there is a higher cost of entry. I know lots of people who would never dream of spending more than $500 for a total PC. They are dumbfounded when I explain to them that I pad $500 just for my graphics card.

They are amazingly well built products but at the end of the day why pay that much for a laptop you going to use to brows the internet and create word documents on. you minght as well save a few grand and buy a ultra book. which will be just as powerful if not more.

I have a top end version of the 2011 mac book pro but i would never have gotten one if i had to pay for it. (Company Laptop)

 

[Rastalovich]

I don't think I would have paid for mine tbh. I'd have just carried on with something like an Elitebook, although they're not exactly cheap.

One thing I would say, Apple products, including the OSes, aren't half as well prepped as they were maybe 5 years ago.

They seem to have had to adopt the Microsoft method of releasing updates in good frequency to fix things. Previously you could go a fairly long time between something like 10.5.4 to 10.5.6. Today the journey from 10.7.0 to 10.7.4 has been frightenly fast. 10.8 is out next month and you're in a Microsoft situation where alot of people still will prefer to stay on 10.6.

I can't honestly say I'd purchase one of the new mbp off my own back. Nothing to do with me building my own hacks either.

 

[Josh Weston]

Although I love my 17" MacBook Pro to bits, I don't think i'd have been able to justify the £2,400 it cost if it were to come from my own wallet. It's one of the best laptops, in my opinion, out there and it's one of my possessions that would make it out of my house were it on fire (after i grabbed my cats), but even so, the price is too high.

 

[Rastalovich]

I'm not so sure having a few fists full of cat is going to allow you to grab the mbp - so if I were you, I'd pre-plan your decision.

Check on the household-contents-insurance and see whether or not you're covered, or have an excess.

Cat vS Mac ... there should be a poll made.

 

[Josh Weston]

In which case, kitties, it was nice knowing you.

 

[hmmblah]

They are amazingly well built products but at the end of the day why pay that much for a laptop you going to use to brows the internet and create word documents on. you minght as well save a few grand and buy a ultra book. which will be just as powerful if not more.

I have a top end version of the 2011 mac book pro but i would never have gotten one if i had to pay for it. (Company Laptop)

I'm a net admin, not a secretary.

I wouldn't have paid for it either though if it came from my own wallet, but it is nice to have the grunt when I need it. Running multiple VMs, working with large compressed files, large video files, multiple programs etc, I needed something with balls. I'll probably be on this same laptop for the next 5 years so I also need something that will hold up well. My last laptop was an ASUS, had it for 4.5 years. It looks like it has been through a war and had been upgraded multiple times since it was purchased. All said and done, the total cost after upgrades was close to the cost of the MBP that won't need any upgrades save for maybe a larger SSD. Everything else is maxed out on it.

 

[Solidarity]

I like the idea. How many people will actually use all of that resolution.

 

[hmmblah]

I like the idea. How many people will actually use all of that resolution.

Everyone. Read this post again, he explained it much better than I tried to.

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.

Edit: You can run at higher than 1440x900, but then the display is no longer "retina". Running at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 will result in more screen real estate, but the image won't be as crisp.

 

[nex-s]

Well, tbh I wouldn't say that they are THAT amazing built products. Yes - the design is amazing, but in terms of quality I'm not so sure. I personally have an lower end Asus A52F laptop. Had it for almost 2 yrs now. Never a problem. Just before Christmas we bought my girlfriend a 13" Macbook Pro. She has had her screen replaced twice. The hinge on the screen is also very tight for some reason on one side. She had it repaired, but now the sound is back when you open or close it. My friend's AirPort card on his Macbook gets fried all the time. So I'm not so sure about the quality side of things. Yes, it was repaired really fast and the service in tems of that is very good, but still. Design though I do like. But then again, the new Asus Ultrabooks and all the rest of the stuff they make now looks and feels just as amazing. Partly because Asus listens to customer feedback...

 

[Josh Weston]

My number one gripe about my laptop is its charger. By making it sit flush with the unibody they've ensured that the wire is almost always bent. After many months of use, this causes the wire to split and, in the case of my current charger, the wires inside to oxidise. So, it looks as though i'm going to be splashing out on a new £70 charger that i'd much rather put towards, say, a graphics card.

 

[Vicey]

On my first MacBook Pro (2006 Model) it split like you describe Josh. But with the charger on my 2nd MacBook Pro (2009) they doubled the amount of heatshrink on the end of the cable and it hasn't frayed yet after all these years. Still looks perfect actually.

Also am I the only one around here that actually bought their own MacBook's ? haha

 

[Rastalovich]

hehe probably. I setup 5 new ones for one of our dev teams last week, at 2.5k a throw (almost the equiv of keeping a staff member for 6/12 months - but that's an argument I aint winning).

Seems companies are keeping Apple in business !

Gotta go fix entourage on an older one this morning. *tip of the day* install Office by all means, but entourage sucks at server syncing.

 

[Josh Weston]

Ok, so, just used one of the new ones and...there really is no discernible difference. Perhaps those of you with the eyes of a hawk would be able to notice the Retina display, but as far as I can tell it may as well just be 1080p, which, let's face it, on a 15" display is still pretty damn good.