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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.
These shady ifixit characters are peddling pure propaganda. You can repair a damaged or non-functional macbook pro with just a few clicks!
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.
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.
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
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
By that argument nothing is an engineering marvel.
And yet "current generation components" have to appear for the first time in something. And here it is.
The technology in this laptop is a fair jump from what was available yesterday. I'd say it qualifies.
I'd just like to read this article written without the mumbling sound caused by Apple's dick being firmly lodged in their mouths. The entire article read like they were trying, really hard, to write an objective article but then phrases like "engineering marvel" and "the hardware spec itself is flawless (and peerless)" come out and credibility is lost especially when those exaggerated comments are in the neighborhood of descriptions telling about what isn't any better (and in many cases worse) than the competition.
I think an objective article would have more of the following tone:
"Apple's new Mac Book is the first laptop to integrate a retinal display and standard USB 3.0. They also include a massive battery to keep the battery life high, 7 hours, in the face of the higher power drain of the screen. The balance of the components are on par with competing laptops or in some cases slower presumably continuing in their aim to keep battery life high. Apple also continues their black-box philosophy having no user-serviceable parts within the shiny package."
Fluff that out to make an article long enough for an editor and I'd be screaming less fanboi at this PR-grade article.
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.
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.
People like you are the only reason Apple is making money. Period.
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)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You use the full-disk encryption, so you don't have this problem.
Perhaps if you also added, "No other competitor offers this combination of features in this small a package. Most compact competitors do not offer discrete graphics, nor quad-core CPUs. No laptop of any kind offers a retinal display for any price. Most competitors are only beginning to offer Intel's Thunderbolt connectivity. Apple continues to design systems, while their competitors throw components together."