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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.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"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."
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 "?
These shady ifixit characters are peddling pure propaganda. You can repair a damaged or non-functional macbook pro with just a few clicks!
While a wholly proprietary pinout(and a different wholly proprietary pinout than the last model's wholly proprietary pinout) the storage card is at least socketed... Given that there are likely to be a reasonable number of these sold, and to deep pocketed buyers, 3rd-party options will likely exist sooner or later. RAM, though, may leave you with a case of buyer's remorse...
I agree, it sucks pretty hard from a consumer standpoint but I can also see why it might have been (emphasis might) necessary in this case. That thing is crazy thin and if you look at the teardown they don't really have any room to mess around in there. Looks like they made it possible by taking all the things that used to be self contained (RAM, hard drive, etc.), pulling out their guts and soldering/plugging them directly onto the main board. Think about the space you save over having to include hard drive enclosures and sockets for the RAM. Again, not saying I like this, but I would sooner attribute it to a desire to make this thing as streamlined as possible rather than assuming they were trying to screw people over. In fact, the new non-retina Macbook Pros are still totally user replaceable.
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.
Most laptops require a screwdriver to replace the hard drive. This one is no different. Except that in this case, the "hard drive" is a chip, third party versions of which will undoubtedly be available soon, just like the were for the Air.
RAM soldered to the motherboard is disappointing, although looking at how things are crammed in, I'm not really surprised. iFixit's point that it's "the first MacBook Pro that will be unable to adapt to future advances in memory and storage technology" is incorrect - Intel laptop motherboards have almost always been limited to memory that existed when they were sold, and you CAN upgrade the storage.
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.
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.
Because Apple isn't selling a Thunderbolt -> Ethernet adapter for a whopping $29 or anything.
How many user replaceable parts has your TV got?
What's that you say? A little louder. None!
So does that make you a fool too?
The fool is the person that didn't realise that computers will go the same way as every other technology. More advanced, more integrated, more miniaturised, less user serviceable.
unless you're a digital hoarder who feels the need to keep more music and TV/movies than any reasonable person can watch in a lifetime hard drives are large enough.
Never say that kind of stuff around a video editor like my wife. You take maybe 25 to 100 hours of uncompressed high def documentary video, per project, times a couple simultaneous projects, oh whoops that's why I have a full size tower full of hard drives in the basement along with what sounds like a jet fighter auxiliary turbine power unit to cool it. Just one of her projects is about the size of my complete lifetime mp3 collection, or about the same as a full set of low-def star trek ... and she still has more projects. My digital hoard is pretty big by /.er standards, at least a TB, but compared to her half dozen half finished projects I'm just a rounding error.
Someday, someone will make a laptop that can hold everything a semi-pro video editor needs, but that day isn't here yet, isn't even on the horizon. Maybe by 2020 or 2030?
Apple is popular with the artsy craftsy AV crowd. There are people that do that kind of stuff on PCs, but they're kind of far and few between.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The Alienware M14x has a 14" 1600x900 monitor (I assume TN). It's 1.71" thick, It weighs 6.45 lbs. I can only assume you're the stereotypical "all that matters is performance per dollar" type who will not be swayed by any argument...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
You are wrong. It's a 2880x1800 display. You can address each and every one of those pixels individually.
If your code editor uses Lion's text rendering APIs but is not aware that the display is high DPI, Lion will lie to it and tell it that it's on a lower resolution screen so the text isn't ridiculously small. If your code editor IS aware that it's on a high DPI screen, it can display the text as small as your tired eyes wish.
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.
I deeply wish to know this, and shall take an Ubuntu usb stick into the Apple store to find out.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
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.
All right, I'll bite.
M14x has a 14" display, not 15".
Its battery lasts around 4 hours in standardised tests, not 7 hours.
Yes it's cheaper, but you're not comparing like with like. Also, at the risk of facing derision from the tough (blinkered?) Slashdot crowd, just look at the thing http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=61197. When I'm choosing where to spend my disposable income, two of the factors are how the thing looks and feels, as you suggest. Not the most important factors, but definitely on the list.
I've ordered a 2.6GHz Retina machine, with 16GB RAM, plus the Ethernet dongle and the MagSafe2 adapter. Other than one very old Compaq laptop at a previous employer, I have never felt the urge to upgrade RAM or storage in one of my machines so I couldn't care less about the lack of upgradeability. The battery can be replaced by Apple if that's an issue (I've taken advantage of that with one previous machine). It will be used, like all of my machines for: coding (Vim/Netbeans), system management (Solaris, Linux, MacOS, Windows servers, Cisco and HP network equipment), photography and film (LightRoom, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X). It replaces a MacBook Air which has served me well, travelling around the world with me, tucked into a Tenba Roadie II Universal case. The MacBook Air shuffles over to my wife, to replace her 1st gen MBP15 which I'll donate to whichever friend or family member needs it most at the moment.
Yep, I'm in a happy Apple bubble. I like the simplicity, style, look, feel and quality of Macs. I love the functionality of OSX. And I certainly don't fit into the moronic image that other replies have alluded to (Starbucks, hipster etc.). I'm a systems and networks guy for a hedge fund, working from home, and the Mac hardware has been the right hardware for me and my job for many years now. I may not get 730fps on Diablo III, but I do have reliable, sturdy, smart and well-designed computers that do the job for me.
Your mileage obviously varies, your criteria for computer selection differs from mine and I can respect that. But I do buy a Mac because of the hardware - that Retina screen is a hell of piece of kit and for photos/film it was enough to get me to order on day one. Similarly, the MacBook Air had exactly the right mix of performance and portability.
Same argument for laptops. Anything bought today will have a long useful life. Thunderbolt will provide an array of various input & output expansion ports.
Yes, there will be new machines next month/year. But that doesn't make the current ones useless. Any more than the 60" 120Hz plasma displays made my old SD tv in the basement obsolete. The kids still play Wii on it just fine.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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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Ethernet sockets are too high. HDMI is low. It's not about horizontal space for the ports, it's about making the laptop thinner.
Nerd Rock In Progress
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.