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Analyzing the New MacBook Pro
MrSeb writes "Late yesterday, Apple released a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. It has a 2880×1800 220 PPI display. The normal 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have also been updated, but the 17-inch MBP has been retired, in effect replaced by the new Retina display MBP. Without a doubt, this new laptop is an engineering marvel in the same league as the original iPhone or MacBook Air. ... The Retina display MBP really looks nothing we've ever seen before. Here, ExtremeTech dives into the engineering behind the laptop, paying close attention to that new and rather shiny display — and the fact that this thing has no user-replaceable parts at all."
Fleshing things out a bit more, iFixit has a teardown of the internals. Their verdict: effectively unrepairable by the user.
And it's made by Apple?
shocking.
Next I suppose you're going to tell me the battery in my iPod can't be replaced like my other MP3 player could.
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"Without a doubt, this new laptop is an engineering marvel..."
Oh give me a fucking break. The LEM was an engineering marvel. The Roman aqueducts were an engineering marvel. Apple has done nothing of the sort, what bologna.
Appliance buyers don't tear down their toaster very often either.
That said, it's cool from my perspective since it will result in "dead lappies for cheap" which will motivate people who like to tinker and build machines from organ donors.
I won't be buying one. The ability to quickly repair Thinkpads is a key reason I buy them instead.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
apple has perfected separating fools from their money.
I likes me optical media in a laptop still. The time to do without is coming very soon, but not quite yet.
At least Apple is recognising that there is a market for monitors with more than 1080p. Hopefully, the new display will be a success, and other manufactures will finally some out with truly high def monitors for less than a car payment again.
This is quite annoying. When I bought my macbook three years ago, it had a 160GB harddrive. If I wanted to upgrade to 250GB I had to pay €130. I went to the nearest computershop and bought a 320GB drive for less then €100. That means I had a spare 160GB drive as well. The same goes for memory. I buy it via ebay in the US, for half the price. I hope there will be shops who will replace these parts for normal prices.
Why is something made with the current generation of components considered "an engineering marvel "?
The 17" model has always lagged behind.
When they can procure 17" 3840x2400 displays, the 17" will return.
These shady ifixit characters are peddling pure propaganda. You can repair a damaged or non-functional macbook pro with just a few clicks!
No matte option, only glossy. Useful for attractive Mac users that enjoy a good look in the mirror. Useless for anyone who writes code or uses computers to produce value.
It's sad that the mbp has finally died, I really love mine. Hopefully in a decade Dell or HP or someone will make something as good with a matte screen.
Just throw it away and buy a shiny, shiny new one! Or are you opposed to planned obsolescence? We have a few decades of resources left to consume before they run out, so don't worry!
The fact the current 17" model is no longer sold at all seems an indicator they might be dropping the model for a while.
The new display has enough pixels to fit a retina iPad display within... as much as I like the larger space of the 17" laptop I think with the new screen I could shrink fonts down a bit and be OK with it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While all the fanbois ooohed and aaaahed over the mac air, Toshiba had a laptop that was thinner, lighter, had gigabit ethernet, and contained a DVD drive.
Toshiba had an engineering marvel. Apple just had a laptop with tapered edges so that it LOOKED thinner, even though it was actually thicker.
Who engineered it? Americans, Chinese or Koreans?
I guess because of the load just the background picture of that article loaded on the first go. What the heck is it? It looks like a wooden table and a chair in some farm house in the third world with an oxygen tank sitting on the floor next to it. It looks like some place you could imagine "enhanced interrogation techniques" being used, but not on laptops. Funny.
What you are confused by is the scaling for elements (like images) that are not built for a hi-res display. All system text, and all of the applications that come with the Macbook have everything at the full resolution.
Anything built for a high-res display can be displayed in pixel perfect accuracy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I read a few articles on the new shiny, but there seems to be no information on how the thermal and related noise situation is. How does the smaller design and needed computing power to drive that screen impact the temperature (under stress)?
My old MBP already gets annoyingly hot and loud when i am doing stuff on it.
That's how Apple does high DPI - it's basically a 2x mode. The idea is that programs not designed for a Retina display will still act like they're running on a 1440x900 display (and thus will be of a decent size on the screen) but programs with 2x assets will display with the increased sharpness. Non-Retina-aware programs still get some of the benefit in terms of font and UI rendering (as standard system widgets are always displayed at Retina resolution regardless of whether the app is Retina-aware). This is the same way that it works on the iPhone/iPod touch 4 and the iPad 3.
This is where the fact that Apple chose to use unhinted fonts is a big win. Windows can't easily do high DPI because many programs are not designed for it, font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
FC Closer
If I'm going to pay a premium for a laptop, I'd like to be able to upgrade the RAM and HDD. Or even replace the battery. Many users simply can't afford to buy the new model every year.
If this was an engineering marvel, Apple would have allowed users to do upgrades.
Generally, there's a reason why many consumer devices today aren't repairable. Repairability is inherently at odds with manufacturability. The easier it is to repair, the more expensive it's gonna be. Though, those special proprietary screws contribute nothing to manufacturability and really are intended to keep you from messing with your hardware.
...a crop of macbook pros and airs suddenly popping up for sale in your classifieds, for only a few hundred less than they are new? Mind you, these are last years models... I'd like to say I'm shocked at *just* how soon it is before the apple crowd can't resist that shiny new macbook any longer, but a matter of hours? Really?
No matte option, only glossy
The new screen has a much different front, they said in the marketing materials 60-70% less reflective than the older glossy models. It's why there's no matte option this time around (I have a matte screen currently and wouldn't go for a glossy option again either).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The limited writes are likely to be a factor for some uses, surely? I certainly wouldn't want to be using one as a development machine, or for serious photography (my other main computer use).
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
I was reading about the display on AnandTech, but one thing I don't get is what the actual resolution of the retina display is. From what I can tell, the images are rendered at 2880x1800, but can't actually be displayed at that size with pixel-perfect accuracy. Text cannot be read on higher resolutions without increasing the font size, which I thought was the whole point of having a higher resolution.
It seems to make sense, they will either have an option where you can get the display to act like it's 2880x1800 (and everything will be super fucking small like you are saying) or you can have the display scaled to a slighly more normal 1900x1200 aka 1080p-like but at the cost of having the GPU do some upscaling so that all the apps still pump out a lower number of pixels, but the screen gets all the pixels it needs thanks to what is probably a pretty well thought out smoothing algorithm. And as the screenshot suggests, this is probably what murders the performance and/or battery life on the unit since you basically need to have a high power GPU running all the time to keep up with that process.
I already have a new iPad 3, and desperately need a new MacBook Pro -- with 1080-capable display, "normal" connectors, and Bluetooth 4 -- I do NOT need a new "MacPad Pro" which this thing basically is -- its a large-screen iPad 3 with a permanently-attached keyboard, not a workhorse laptop.
Where you can call something like this an "engineering marvel", and convince a significant % of the population that it is so.
I wonder why the fans are enclosed in plastic shrouds? http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/macbook-pro-retina-display-innards-labelled.jpg
"The battery has a capacity of 95 watt-hours, some 20% larger than 77.5 watt-hour battery in the non-Retina MacBook Pro. As far as I know, this is the largest built-in laptop battery ever produced â" and yet the new MBP "only" has a battery life of seven hours."
It's amazing how many hours laptop makers can squeeze out of batteries. This may be the largest battery ever produced, but would still only power my reading light (40 watt bulb) for 2 and 1/3 hours...... they ought to put some of that technology into a desktop to make it low-power (and green).
"If you run out of flash storage (and 256GB isnâ(TM)t a whole lot), your only option is expensive external storage. "
Only? Sounds like a lot to me. And external storage isn't expensive... $70 for a 500GB and $90 for a 1000GB drive.
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Why should the only measure of a laptop be its thinness?
I want a laptop that's light, cool (thermally), powerful, reliable, cheap, good A/V and silent. Thinness is at least 8th on my priority list. Make it 4 inches thick as long as it maxes out the 7 higher priority goals first.
Why is there is fixation on thin laptops? What do you "get" out of a laptop being 1/2 inch thinner than another laptop?
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If you run with XP style scaling, yes (which is the default and what all sites I've seen actually demonstrate, they always forget to change the setting). But not with Vista style scaling, in which case non-DPI apps will also employ pixel doubling, if DPI is set to 200%.
W8 has a preset option for this (W7 this must be done manually).
font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
I'd thought cleartype and the font system in Vista and later had gotten a lot better. I'd thought the reason Windows can't do high DPI well was more related to things like toolbar icon assets etc.
It's 2880x1800. Your confusion stems from Lion's text and OS UI element handling, which basically gives you choices about how big you want text and UI elements to appear. It looks like you can specify a kind of effective resolution, telling Lion to fool all the old software that doesn't know about high dpi screens into not rendering things too small to see.
OpenGL and the Cocoa drawing APIs have full access to high resolution screen.
It looks 100% user replaceable to me. Replace it with a whole new computer!
Your new notwindows is shiny and stylish! When you go to starbucks to check your facebooks people will totally think you are an artistic writer!
No, not really 2880x1800. Make no mistake, this is not a 2880x1800 display, at least in the sense that most people would think. It's effectively a 1440x900 display, where each pixel is actually four.
By which I mean that if you currently can fit 40 lines of code in a single editor window on your existing 1440x900 display, on this new 2880x1800 "retina" display, you will be able to fit those same 40 lines of code, just with extra clarity.
Now don't get me wrong, the increase in pixel density is a good thing, but calling it a "2880x1800" is incredibly misleading (albeit technically accurate). You won't fit any more actual data, the same data you can currently fit will just have a higher resolution.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
... like 10 years ago? Well, hopefully since apple stuck their logo on it, high ppi displays will be the next big thing. It managed to convince people that tablets aren't the totally useless toys they are. Maybe it will do the same for something that's actually useful.
In the comments someone noted that the built-in storage appeared to have the same connector as the Macbook Air, which would mean you could replace the storage.
The RAM seems soldiered in though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple fanboi has the most intense orgasm of his life.
needing a "magic screwdriver" to open X just means that in a couple months your local electronics Shoppe will have some thing new to sell you.
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Could Linux on there actually use the whole 2880x1800 without doubling everything? Basically, does OS X double the size of everything or does the hardware do that. If it's a software "feature", I could theoretically put Linux on there and use it with that insanely high screen resolution, right?
I can remember a day when geeks would have been hopping-mad about a computer which comes with a feature to "forget about replacing or upgrading any component". Apple seems to exist for the sole purpose of seeing how much abuse it can inflict on it's user base - and the userbase seem to love them for it. Very odd.
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FFS, buy Apple because you like OSX or you like using software made for OSX. I will even go so far as to say, buy it because you like the look and feel of a Mac. Don't buy a Mac because you think it has great hardware. If that is your reason for buying a Mac, go buy a PC and turn it into a Hackintosh, it's much cheaper.
A 15inch MacBook Pro has Core i7-3720QM CPU(2.6 Ghz boost to 3.6Ghz, 8 GB DDR3 RAM(1600 Mhz), 750 GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive, and a Geforce 650M with 1 GB of dedicated RAM for $2200. I can get an Alienware M14x with the exact same CPU, exact same size and speed of RAM, same size but FASTER hard drive(they don't offer a 5400 RPM option), and the exact same video card but with twice the video ram, for $650 less than the Mac.
Let me put it another way. If I add $49 to the price of the Mac and spend it on the Alienware, I can get the next fastest CPU, max the RAM at 16GB, and add a 256 GB SSD!
I certainly wouldn't want to be using one as a development machine, or for serious photography (my other main computer use).
It works fine for both things, which are more often read constrained...
If you really need something with fast write speeds you can attach an external spinning drive (which is what I do with photography since no SSD is large enough to be practical for serious photographic use). WIth Thunderbolt external storage can be every bit as fast as internal storage, and even the USB 3.0 is not bad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was only a matter of time that the clued into the fact that they were losing precious profits to after-market RAM and Storage upgrades. Now Apple can be assured that their consumers will be paying FULL APPLE PRICE for RAM and Storage instead of pennies on the Apple Dollar by purchasing at cheap hardware vendors who can't offer the Apple® experience.
I want a laptop that's light, cool (thermally), powerful, reliable, cheap, good A/V and silent.
The new macbook pro is built with all of those things in mind, not just thinness...
For A/V you can't beat thunderbolt. In theory you could attach two huge monitors.
The fans are specially designed to be much quieter than other laptop fans (though how silent they really are remains to be seen).
Thinness to me is not inherently that useful either, except it is an indicator of reduced weight which is really important.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
About the only thing stopping me from buying something like that is that I can't swap batteries.
I tend to charge the batteries in the evening/night, and then use them both during the day, occasionally flattening them both. That's despite using a normal battery (~3+ hours) + a double battery (~6+ hours) and being careful with how much the Wi-Fi is switched on.
I'm okay with parts not being replaceble on laptops (after all, when we do want to replace something, we usually want to replace the lot) but at least give me option of swapping battery!!!
if you currently can fit 40 lines of code in a single editor window on your existing 1440x900 display, on this new 2880x1800 "retina" display, you will be able to fit those same 40 lines of code, just with extra clarity.
That's not true. With the extra clarity you can shrink font sizes down a bit more. I can read really small text on the iPad or iPhone retina displays.
Your argument also would mean that you could have the resolution of a laptop and it would not be a loss of resolution either! Come on.
And for photo work the pixels matter very much. You can get a much better sense of actual sharpness and details of an image with the new display.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm curious about something with the pentalobe screws. Other than being used for tamper-resistance, I wonder if they allow for additional torque to be applied without camming out (a la Robertson or Torx.) If this were the case, it would make sense for Apple to use it.
Actually, it actually renders at 2880x1800. It just scales the UI elements, text and such, not the complete rendered screen. They're not just upscaled like some crappy DVD on a 1080p monitor. Basically, anything that can be rendered full-res is done so, for anything that can't (like say, custom UI widgets) will however be upscaled.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I have a matte screen currently (the 17").
I also did not like the older Macbook glossy screens.
From seeing the display in person the new Macbook Retina screen doesn't seem much more glossy than the matte display.
The thing is that matte displays ALSO reflect light, just not as much (or more diffuse).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm pretty sure the manufacturers know that the smart users will figure out how to open whatever electronic gizmo they've used special screws for. Hell, the dumb ones will as well. The difference they make is that they do mean you have to actually put in a bit of effort to get into the case, stops idiots from opening up their hardware, breaking it and then claiming it was already broken...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Sure there's tons of reasons not to get this, such as, well, apple. And the horrid price point.
But this kills any interest it has for me:
and the fact that this thing has no user-replaceable parts at all.
I'm not paying 2k+ for a disposable laptop.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I've done a fair bit of looking around at this and I can only find two opinions:
1. What ifixit said. Can't replace the battery, screen, RAM, disk or anything. It's an iPad with a keyboard.
2. Fanboy drooling and the sound of Hipster's credit cards melting. Please can someone explain how these individuals even crawled out of the oceans!
I own a 5 year old Thinkpad T61 (running Windows - there I admitted it) that's had more replacement parts than the queen's hips so I'm firmly in (1) or vagina.
"As with the iPhone and iPad, the MacBook Pro with Retina display was really rather unexpected." As far as I knew, EVERYONE was expecting this. All the key changes - no CD, no Ethernet, Retina display - had been leaked several months ago. What kind of lame journalism is that?
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Why do most of the top comments have to be about bashing Apple? It's not news that they have questionable business practices. I, for one, am glad someone put out a laptop screen with this resolution in an industry that has just settled for 1900x1080 max years ago and doesn't seem to be very interested in changing it any time soon. Maybe now they'll be forced too.
with user serviceable paint either.
The tinkerers don't like it for the same reason that they don't like modern cars with electronic fuel injection systems.
You can't pop open the hood and get at the system's guts.
If it was easy to do, we'd all have cheap, reliable, fast flying cars already.
The component layout, the integrity and holistic design approach make this an assembled piece of industrial art.
As for Apple's achievement... I'll let the lick-worthy-ness of all of their pieces of functional industrial design speak for Apple's real genius.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Computerworld reports that Apple Macbook Pro sold out before 11am eastern Wed., June 13. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228046/Apple_runs_out_of_Retina_MacBook_Pros?taxonomyId=66&mm_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fnews%2Fi%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26source%3Dmog%26gl%3Dus%26tab%3Dwn
I'll admit... it's expensive, it's not user upgradable, it's a close environment, but it works for me (and is not for everyone). Besides, it's shiny and we wants it. It's my precious.
And why is everyone excited and asking why it hasn't been done before?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
I like user replaceable parts. I don't want to buy a laptop that won't let me upgrade the ram, swap the hard disk, or change the screen if I crack it.
This really is for people who just fall for Oh! Shiny!
I take it you need to repair your Thinkpads often? You might reconsider your purchase decisions...
There are a million things I could say to flame the new MBP. Why am I not excited about it like so many others are? 5400 RPM hard drives on their non-retina base line models is a start. Did Apple buy millions of these things before the floods in Thailand and they're still trying to get rid of them? Yea, there are things like short-stroking, but it's still a piece of crap 5400 RPM drive that is slower and less reliable than a SSD. I simply question some of the choices Apple made in regards to the hardware for their other models. I suppose $2199 is a fair price for their actual retina model even though it's way out of my personal budget. But to me, it would have said a lot about their character to just include a stupid 128gb SSD drive with their non-retina base line model without having to spend an extra $200. It's just ridiculous to even give people an option to chose such outdated hardware for being such a cutting edge company.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
If our firm had these laptops and they broke down, how am I suppose to remove/wipe the hard drive? I would have to take a Sludge Hammer to the laptop in the parking lot, just to be sure no sensitive data gets out.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
First off let me be adamant about that : This new MBP is really nice looking. And it is quite slimmer which is nice I suppose.
Now back to that engineering crap : I don't know who the OP is, but it is not the work of a engineer to make this laptop nice and shinny, they pay designers for that. And it is certainly NOT an engineer who had the brilliant idea to make it "effectively unrepairable by the user".
See in a rationnal evaluation of the product this is indeed a con, and a very big one. It mean it will be harder to maintain and therefore probably have a shorter lifespan, and it also means it is harder to provide support.
So is it a designing marvel ? Sure why not. It is an ingenious marketing ploy (goodbye $150 batteries, hello $300 battery replacement service !) HELL YES ! But cramming a current gen CPU and a mid range current gen GPU with 8GB of standard ram in a laptop, whose battery is so huge only because they got rid of the DVD player... meeeeeh... Anyone can do it.
The Trackpad they had, that was a nice bit of engineering, both on the hardware and the software front.
Problems with the new MBP Retina:
An MBP is not a foldable iPad. It is a high-end general purpose computer. I think the App Store is a cool idea, but I hate feeling like Apple is herding me into their system to control my purchases.
I think it's safe to say you won't see me buy another MBP if they are serious about heading in this direction. I can go buy a cheaper boutique laptop that does most of what I want. I may just buy a mini for the wrest.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
I'm amazed that Apple can make a 15" 2880x1800 LCD and make all the tiny electronics that fit in that little laptop... I am certain that all the parts and components are engineered, designed, produced entirely and exclusively by Apple.
</sarcasm>
pancreatic cancer? ...
Too soon?
Soldered ram, FB, etc. etc. Apple is going downhill faster than I thought they would
And I say this as a long-time Mac user. Bumping the Retina Mac Book Pro from 8GB to 16 GB RAM costs $200.
I know the RAM in this machine is very new, but 8GB of standard laptop RAM is currently around $50 - $75.
If adding 8GB cost $100, I would agree with your analysis. $200 is standard highway robbery for Apple RAM.
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It is better than XP, but when you hammer the fonts to the pixel grid, you change the spacing in subtle ways that add up quick. Ever noticed how glyphs are weirdly spaced in Word on Windows? It's because they're positioning the glyphs according to the unhinted version (essentially) but still displaying it with full hinting.
FC Closer
In this case, non-DPI aware programs don't gain the benefit of higher resolution text, UI widgets, etc. They're still rendered at the original resolution and upscaled by the DWM. This may also cause the whole thing to be less crisp because the GPU will likely apply interpolation to the image, softly blurring it. From what I've seen and experienced, Apple's 2x implementation uses simple pixel quadrupling, which I personally prefer.
FC Closer
The Slashdot article has a typo: .org should be .com
I was hoping I could get the non-retina version and swap out the hard drive for a slightly more reasonably priced SSD, but it looks like that won't work.
Unrepairable by user is a surprise? I thought Apple computers shipped with a screw driver detecting alarm that invalidated the warranty if an unlicensed screwdriver got within five feet of one.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Would the Apple II designed by Wozniak be considered an "engineering marvel"? Or is "engineering marvel" geek speak for "my dick is bigger than yours"?
Here.
I don't like it, but it's clear that consumers are not all that interested in upgrading their computers anymore. The local box stores (Staples, Best Buy) failed to carry laptop DDR3, and often don't have any for desktops in stock either. When you look at their selection of RAM, it didn't fit in *any* of the products they sell.
The distinction is meaningless when individual pixels can not be resolved by the human eye. The limiting factors are now screen size, distance from the screen, and the resolving power of the human eye. In essence, this is a crude version of resolution independent display.
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This is where the fact that Apple chose to use unhinted fonts is a big win. Windows can't easily do high DPI because many programs are not designed for it, font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
I guess you have never tried it. High DPI works flawlessly in Windows 7. Newer apps scale properly, older ones just get zoomed in the same as Apple have done. Fonts look excellent and scale as expected, no kerning issues or anything like that.
Apple has to make its fonts thicker because they don't snap to the pixel grid and thus you can't expect a 1 pixel wide line to look good. That isn't a good thing, it means thin fonts look terrible.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Really, Macs are not good for gaming. I've owned quite a few and I eventually went back to a Win7 tower for gaming. Far quieter and far better.
My wife attempts to game on her MacBook pro and it gets really, really hot and the fan runs like crazy. I did WoW for a while on my iMac and had to install the SMC fan control software to crank up the airflow, still managed to destroy two video cards. I love the design for Apple products, but don't kid yourself, they aren't for gaming. Why the reviewers insist on talking about that I'll never know.
I'm obviously an outlier on this discussion, but I admit it: I ordered one less than 24 hours after it was announced. There gone well over 3000 euros, hope it's good. I'm not exactly short of money. But on the other hand: I live in a country with pretty strong consumer rights framework, and there are precedents on how much laptops are expected to last on regular, non-abusive use. They certainly apply to a laptop costing more than triple an average laptop does; if it has design defects, they're going to suffer here.
OTOH, there aren't many "user serviceable" parts on a laptop of size people expect these days. Laptop and hard drive/SSD by some chance, but beyond that, laptops have been mostly non-user-serviceable for a good while. Only user serviceable feature I can really miss is battery replacement; it's certainly stupid to wait for replacement for a week or something, but cost is of no concern when you think of the price of such laptop to begin with. I have always assumed laptops to be essentially non-upgradeable and desktop systems to be only marginally so. How often you have doubled CPU performance of *any* consumer-grade system through an upgrade, or how often you have increased amount of memory fourfold, being a power user already when you purchased the system? I thought so.
The prime reasons I ordered this laptop were: it being only laptop able to offer something comparable to my 2560x1600 desktop displays, and having features engineered to sufficiently compact size in combination with the above. There is no reason me to "pay" for user-serviceability or upgradeability, which is essentially a marginal prospect on laptops, anyway. I accept the compromise wholeheartedly, even without ever having been an Apple fan. There just isn't a laptop to compare with when it comes to the display. I'd like there to be competition on this segment, but obviously there's a bit too little of it there. I saw what I had been waiting for years, and I decided to get it.
It's as simple as that. For user serviceability I have my desktops, servers and gadgets to tune and solder to my hearts' extent. For portable devices, portability and features matter more; I relegate my hardware hacking instinct to subjects which won't have drastic drawbacks because of these demands.
They ought to use actual separate ram as a ramdisk for temporary files. And no virtual memory (pointless with SSD).
Windows can't easily do high DPI because many programs are not designed for it, font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
DirectWrite (and frameworks which use it, like WPF) use ideal rendering rather than pixel snapping by default.
Why would a corporate shill working for apple try to downplay a design flaw in the most recent Apple product?
Because that's what shills do.
Could you elaborate on how Microsoft is on the losing end of the high DPI displays? I've heard this argument before regarding the fonts but something isn't clicking.
If pixels get smaller as the DPI goes up (true?) then doesn't pixel snapping mean less at higher densities?
Pixel snapping and unhinted fonts should converge at infinite resolutions, no?
Keep on shilling for Apple, bonch, that those checks mailed from Cupertino come in handy.
is the only thing that can save Apple now.
Will it blend? (I hope he tries) http://www.willitblend.com/
Apple had better be careful about pissing off tech savvy people. We are the market leaders. We set the trends.
And of course, you are also TEH K-R4D AW3$0M3 !!!
I'm curious about something with the pentalobe screws. Other than being used for tamper-resistance, I wonder if they allow for additional torque to be applied without camming out (a la Robertson or Torx.) If this were the case, it would make sense for Apple to use it.
I doubt it. The Torx specification was specifically designed for machine insertion with controlled torque. The big advantage of a Torx drive is that the driver tip can have a relatively acute angle to the screw without damage to the head and with the ability to control the screw easily. This makes it easier to design automated construction equipment. The Pentalobe, even if it had some of those properties is really unlikely to be any better.
Just different.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
My predictions about complaints before reading any comments include:
No physical media (wah).
No ethernet and/or have to spend money on cheap ethernet dongle (wah).
No 17" version (super wah).
Something about random slashdot guy's opinion about glossy/non-glossy screen and/or other insignificant personal preference
I bet it will run too hotly.
Not enough USB ports.
And then a whole bunch of technically incorrect gripes about resolution, screen size, and dpi...
Oh and let's not forgot the popular:
OS X sucks (even though you can still run Windows on it if you like)
no user-replaceable battery
merely an expensive fashion item/social status
And one last prediction is I'll have to correct some snarky fool who will say something stupid like "no right click" or something track-pad related where they miss the entire point of gestures because they've actually never used an Apple notebook and are trying to wedge their Dell-centric worldview onto Apple hardware.
This should be fun.
to just the essential components.
Elegance comes from the Latin E (meaning out) and LEGARE (meaning to choose).
Elegant design has all unnecessary crap out-chosen from it.
Jonathan Ives and the rest of the people at Apple, just happen to be brilliant at it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
in its day.
Its sold in huge numbers because it was elegant (In some respects it was MORE elegant than the MacBook because it used another ubiquitous component, the TV, for its display.)
Commodore's only fault was that they didn't know it, and couldn't follow it up, (otherwise you'd be up to your butt with nautically named products, instead of Lion this and Panther that...)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Back in 2000 IBM created a 22" 200ppi display and ViewSonic OEMed some of IBM's displays under their own brand-name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
I'm more amazed by the fact that I had to buy a 27" desktop screen just to get a tiny resolution of 1920x1200, even though technology is capable of making higher pixel density. And I didn't WANT a 27" monitor, I wanted a smaller one with higher resolution, but it just doesn't exist (except these super expensive medical or industrial ones).
At least there seems to be ONE thing on which Apple and me agree.
You need to look around a little more. For several years now I've been using a 23" monitor with 1920x2100 resolution from Apple http://support.apple.com/kb/sp77 and in the 27" size *you* bought Apple would be happy to sell you one with a resolution of 2560x1440 http://support.apple.com/kb/SP597.
Neither of those are "super expensive medical or industrial" displays (like the old IBM T220 and T221 that folks will reference) so it's quite clear that you did not "have" to buy a 27" monitor for real HD resolution. Heck, people are now selling the 23", DVI-using Apple HD-res monitor that I use in good-but-used condition for under $300.
I hope that software vendors start updating to work with high DPI displays. Key failures in this area are Firefox and (ironically) iTunes on Windows. Both don't handle high DPI settings properly.
...you be careful with all that watery fanboi jism on those nice new Retina displays...
Pentalobe screwdrivers aren't really that proprietary.
I don't care much about this particular computer, but I am glad to see Apple leading the way to higher resolution screens on laptops. I am amazed that many laptops sold today have the same vertical resolution (768 pixels) as my 15-year-old Pentium II laptop from 1998.
Saw this when their site was experiencing problems and some dev decided to print out arrays upon arrays on the prod site:
dbmaster.ifixit.com
PW: ps4Kj90an3
UN: ifixit
Seriously, that resolution *and* IPS in a laptop?
I'm glad they put a 16:10 screen in it, but 2880*1800 on a 15" doesn't really make sense IMO. Putting that kind of res on a 24-27 monitor (in 16:10 format) would make more sense.
I can live with the glued battery and proprietary SSD, but the non-upgradeable RAM is a turn off.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Now... If there was only an Apple product not made in communist countries... I'd be interested.
And how many PC users buy a new PC laptop or change the memory/hdd "every year".
As a developer, I don't have a need for a retina display. If it becomes standard in years to come, I wouldn't refuse it. But I like my 17" and so do my old eyes, regardless of the dpi. I'm soooo glad I got the last of the 17" MBP last January, maxed the memory, swapped the disk for an SSD and put the "old" disk in the CD/DVD slot. This will last me for years - just about the time OSX gets dropped for iOS. The "upgrades" to OSX 10.8 are BORING. I soooo don't care about social media. Even though apple doesn't court developers, their machines have been great for us (thanks VMWare Fusion). But I think this is the end of an era for developers who care more about scientific applications than social media.
If you consider the Applecare as part of the purchase price, which is pretty much what is needed, there is no repairs.
Yep - the Apple model is pretty well set in stone now: max out the specs when you buy it, buy AppleCare, and after 3 years get rid of it (possibly selling it for more than it should be worth) for a new one.
If you're willing to give Apple $1K/yr they'll give you a pretty nice laptop and a nice experience. For many people that's a worthwhile bargain. Me, I'll wait until they repudiate their attacks against bloggers in court (as 'not real journalists'). Maybe without an ecomaniac in charge they could do that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If they want to design it like an appliance (no upgradable parts), then they should price it as an appliance (cheap enough that if it breaks, it is no big deal to toss it and buy another one).
I've been waiting for a new Macbook Pro to come out for a while - mine is at 3 years old this month and limping along on 4GB (one slot mysteriously died). I was going to buy a Retina when it came out....but the glossy display is a deal breaker - regardless of anything else. The lack of traditional hard drive doesn't help matters anyway. It's overpriced - but I'm used to that - but the design itself keep me from buying.
In the end - I went from 12 months of being prepared to buy the moment it came out, to holding on to my current Macbook Pro until it dies completely. Good job, Apple!
p.s.: Man, I miss my PBG4 13" ):
If you don't like it, don't buy it. There is no gun pointed at your head, this isn't the only Laptop in the world. Apple wants you to buy the extended warranty, any people using any machine for business would do that anyway. The machine gets replaced when the Tax deductibility runs out, so long life is not an issue. Bah! just children looking for something to complain about.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
DirectWrite (and frameworks which use it, like WPF) use ideal rendering rather than pixel snapping by default.
And every time someone moves a major application to this framework, the users complain because it looks blurry as hell. We saw this with Visual Studio (I believe Microsoft eventually backed off and fixed the rendering) and with Firefox (fortunately, starting with FF7, you can tell it to use "GDI Classic" mode while keeping hardware acceleration on).
DirectWrite was one of the first examples of one of the most destructive tendencies in Microsoft today: Apple envy. Windows 8 is the apogee of this trend. What they don't get is that they're not Apple, will never be Apple, and most of their users - especially the business users who pay the bills - don't want them to be Apple.
And every time someone moves a major application to this framework, the users complain because it looks blurry as hell. We saw this with Visual Studio (I believe Microsoft eventually backed off and fixed the rendering) and with Firefox (fortunately, starting with FF7, you can tell it to use "GDI Classic" mode while keeping hardware acceleration on).
Yes, because ideal rendering is crappy on low-res (read: what's average today) screen. Pixel snapping was there for a reason.
DirectWrite still lets you do pixel snapping - that's what "GDI classic" actually means; it's not that GDI is used for rendering, it's that it mimicks the original GDI algorithm. VS was fixed by fixing WPF, which basically exposed the ability to turn on "GDI classic" as a new property you could apply to any control.
Funny, after years of dealing with cross-platform fonts as a web developer, I've found that thin fonts can look incredible on a Mac and be horrendously pixelated crap on a PC. Helvetica Neue Ultralight comes to mind as a perfect example.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
OS X renders fonts more accurately with the trade-off of less sharpness. The sharpness trade-off doesn't matter as much when you double the PPI.
Does the wireless in this model work?
We've had so many visitors come by here who have either had their wireless connections randomly drop out (requiring Airport disable/enable) or just altogether not work at all, and they've all had one thing in common - MBP. All others were fine (PC, MacBook Air, netbook, etc).
Those are recent models too. The 2008 MBPs had decent wireless (IIRC) but were much more likely to cook their GPUs, motherboards or screens. An utter nightmare.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So say the Apple "Fan Boys". I say Apple has yet to build a marvel, there are still on OK.
Hardware indeed. It's not even just the specs, it's the quality control. After 15 years of attempting to record and produce music/sound design on PCs, I've had nothing but problems with piss poor hardware, chipsets (making the simple act of recording audio often fraught with difficulty), horrid firewire implementation, and stability. Things that gamers (of which I am one but not exclusively) would never notice. Since buying a Mac, I've never had a problem. Software side, OSX has lots of useful features built right into the OS, like the ability to send MIDI time sync over wifi. There's lots of reasons most of us who create media content end up switching to Mac in the end. My troubleshooting time has dropped to a fraction of what it was when I created content on PCs.
Actually I take it back. PCs are good. I like PCs because their inferior quality control keepeth me gainfully employed:
I administer about ~80 PCs (laptops and desktops, HPs, Lenovos and Dells) at my day job (and have been for about 7 years now) We also have about ~30 Macs that are used pretty much every day for media creation. I can unequivocally say that in my experience we've usually had to give away our mac hardware or recycle it once it gets to be about 7-8 years old. It refuses to die. I've lost count of the number of PCs that we've had bizarre hardware problems on right out of the box, and I can't remember the last time we had to send a Mac back for servicing. I'm pretty sure we did once, but it's pretty rare.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
I just recently switched to mac (a macbook pro) from developing on windows for 10 years. I can say using it as a tool to make money it works very well. The window management is far more efficient than any version windows i've used. I find it saves me time and makes me more efficient at what I do which means more profit for me. I wish I had switched years ago.
However looking at it from a consumer point of view where your not really using it as a tool to make money but to consume content its not worth the extra cost. Windows is a good enough solution and I think windows 8 will be even better suited towards this with its metro interface. Plus you can get a close enough hardware-wise from dell for half the cost
I played with the new MBP at the Apple store yesterday. Had the non-Retina Macbook right next to it. Both I put on full-screen mode with the same webpage loaded and quickly scrolled up and down at the same time.
Non-Retina had no noticeable lag. Retina clearly lagged. Anecdotal for sure, but has anyone tested the pixel response time on the new display? Or perhaps the fill-rate on the new card can't quite keep up with the older one with 1/4 the pixels to push?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
From +5, Funny to -1 Flamebait in a couple of hours. WTF? Just how is that Flamebait? Maybe the moderator missed this post from the other day that gave rise to that meme:
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/06/11/1141253/raunchy-dance-routine-a-pr-nightmare-for-microsoft
Folks, it's become clear from the discussions here that there is a basic misunderstanding between the Mac and non-Mac people. (The people who are straddling the issue have a more realistic perspective, I think.)
In the Mac world, the battery is considered part of the device, and the rationalization is that you will want to buy the next new shiny device when it comes out anyway, which will surely be before the practical lifetime of the battery in your current device, so the fact that a consumable is not user replaceable is not an issue. Apple marketing tends to promote this mindset and Mac fans who have bought into it will sometimes go to amusing lengths (from the perspective of non-Mac users) to rationalize it.
In the non-Mac world, batteries tend more to be considered a consumable resource not directly bound to the device itself. The battery is something you expect to replace at some future time when it no longer holds an acceptable charge. There are exceptions, but this is generally the case.
Apple marketing operates on a "pull" mentality, where the company decides when fans will upgrade, by promoting a culture where the next incremental improvement is a "must have". This takes a special kind of mindshare and Apple has cultivated it brilliantly over the years. You don't see former Samsung customers lining up for the next model Galaxy... well, you do, a little. Perhaps that wasn't the best example. But in general, outside the Apple world, people tend to operate on a "push" mentality, where they replace a device when the current device no longer meets their needs. To people with this mindset, a battery powered device with a non-replaceable battery doesn't make any more sense than a car with the wheels welded on.
And so, with one side calling a battery replacement an "upgrade" or "repair", it's no wonder that the other side, who considers this action part of regular maintenance, doesn't get it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.