Roundup of Retina MacBook Pro Reviews

[nec207]

I don't understand why some of you think that taking away an option is "leading people into the future". Optical drives I can understand to a point, but all the various ports Apple keeps nixing to refine the "sleekness" of their machines? Their leading the way into the future quote unquote just makes things more difficult for some people.



Try 4-5 months or thereabout for the big public release. I've been downloading apps off their app store for about three months now.

The future of Optical drives will be like floppy very old relics.It just that apple moves fast and PC's move very slow so it be some time before this happan with PC's.

No one yells and screams that the iPhone ,iPad and Macbook air does not have optical drives .

But PC's still do not have app store like apple does . So there is lack of advertising and promoting to get apps at the app store and to educate the public that does not know what will happen when optical drives are gone.

Has for floppy they got replaced with USB drives and external hard-drive. I did put alot my data on CD and DVD but CD and DVD I ran into so many problems with disk getting damage and errors on the disk and the fact I would have to have CD and DVD has large has my room do to they do not old much now thanks to USB drives and external hard-drive.

 

[icarlos]

I'll wait for the next revision, hopefully by Christmas

 

[Mr. McMac]

Stopped reading when the first review said "inexpensive".

Am I the only one who agrees with you? It's freaking way too expensive!!

 

[AppleInMyBlood]

I'll wait for the next revision, hopefully by Christmas

13" well before Christmas, then revision of both some time next year.

 

[Renzatic]

I noticed the floppy drive is missing too, damn it! You know, tech changes. If the Ethernet port is very important to you, buy an adapter. Within a year or two, most laptops will not have optical drives, or Ethernet ports, so perhaps you should get used to it.

How can you even snarkily compare a floppy drive to an ethernet port? Wifi has yet to come even close to matching it for pure speed. If you want to move large files between machines and not take two years short of forever, you're going to want to use a wired ethernet connection.

Oh, I guess he could always buy a dongle. That's totally futuristic and convenient, right? Having to carry around an extra piece of hardware to compensate for the lack of a still current and widely used piece of tech.

Yeah. Floppy drives. Right.

But PC's still do not have app store like apple does . So there is lack of advertising and promoting to get apps at the app store and to educate the public that does not know what will happen when optical drives are gone.

Which is a situation that's very soon to be remedied. The app store in the Windows 8 release preview is currently open to early submissions. The store itself will go live with Win8's release later this year.

So no, it's not here yet. But it's not too far off.

 

[AppleInMyBlood]

Am I the only one who agrees with you? It's freaking way too expensive!!

Oh, brother. Reading more than one sentence at a time is going out of fashion, I guess.

 

[vastoholic]

This ^^^

There is no way old 15" MBPs went for $1500ish and now with Retina there is more than a $600 price jump ... retina is cool and all, but they need to quit raping the customers.

I could see the 2 MBP 15" models going for something like $1750 and 1950 but over 2 grand? ... thats tough to explain to customers.

I think it's very fair pricing for what you are getting. I purchased a 15" MBP in 2008 BTO for around $2,100 or $2,200 I think. And in comparison to the other 15" models right now, I'd say it's a superior machine and worthy of that price (with respect to apple's pricing as it always is).

They don't have to explain anything to the customer. If someone wants or needs this particular computer, they are going to get it.

 

[Konrad]

The 1990 Mac IIfx had no monitor, a 40MB (not GB) hard drive, ran at 40MH w/4MB (not GB) of RAM, and cost $9,900. You could get additional RAM and HD space for a total of $12,000. That was expensive. This new MacBook Pro Retina is relatively very inexpensive.

Irrelevant. Even in the 90s when a SGI would run tens of thousands with a software license, the return was fairly quick as the industry standard was a per hour per station charge to the client. You are confusing times.

 

[QCassidy352]

Yes, it's expensive. But the fact that apple introduced a new high cost product would only be a reason to complain if they had eliminated the lower cost options. They didn't. You want a 15" mbp for less than $2000? You can have it, and with better specs than you could've had a week ago. you want a $1000 laptop? You can have that too, also better than the one that was available last week.

The retina mbp is on the cutting edge and the flagship product from a premium brand. Since when are cutting edge premium products cheap?

 

[Frobozz]

I really, truly, completely do not understand moaning about the entry level price on the new MacBook Pro Retina. People really think $2,200 is too much for those specs? It's not cheap. But it's also not expensive. The fact that you can't cheap out is the point. Cheap out on an Air– it's got less oomph so they can deliver it at that price. And that's fine.

For people who go beyond casual use, or use their Mac for gaming, the Pro is required. You get a standard top of the line mobile GPU. Good luck finding that in anything but "gaming" laptops in the PC world. You get a standard 256GB SSD. Again, rare. 8GB Ram– way above "normal." And, um, oh-- the highest resolution laptop screen EVER.

It's a ton of value.

 

[AppleInMyBlood]

How can you even snarkily compare a floppy drive to an ethernet port? Wifi has yet to come even close to matching it for pure speed. If you want to move large files between machines and not take two years short of forever, you're going to want to use a wired ethernet connection.

Oh, I guess he could always buy a dongle. That's totally futuristic and convenient, right? Having to carry around an extra piece of hardware to compensate for the lack of a still current and widely used piece of tech.

Yeah. Floppy drives. Right.



Which is a situation that's very soon to be remedied. The app store in the Windows 8 release preview is currently open to early submissions. The store itself will go live with Win8's release later this year.

So no, it's not here yet. But it's not too far off.

Sorry for being snarky, but I'm old enough to remember the exact same outcry occurring when Apple removed floppies from their machines.

 

[FaustsHausUK]

Am I taking crazy pills?

Why on earth is everyone bitching about the price of this thing?

Here is the Apple spec sheet on the 2010 MacBook Pro: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP582 - I got that model with the optional 1680 by 1050 pixel resolution upgrade for around $2,200.

The base spec Retina display MacBook Pro costs that and it is massively improved...

- Vastly better display, not limited to the higher 2880x1800px resolution. Viewing angle, colour reproduction - the works.
- 2.3GHz quad-core Core i7 processor with 6MB shared L3 cache.
- 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L memory.
- 256GB SSD (lower capacity than the 2010's 500GB HDD, but it also has 500MBps write speeds - insane).
- Over 1Lb lighter, 0.2" thinner and with slightly better battery life.

I don't think it's expensive at all. A co-worker and I were following along with the keynote and we were arguing over how much more than $3,000 it was going to cost. Folks like MG Siegler and John Gruber were also ballparking higher entry level prices.

 

[AppleInMyBlood]

Yes, it's expensive. But the fact that apple introduced a new high cost product would only be a reason to complain if they had eliminated the lower cost options. They didn't. You want a 15" mbp for less than $2000? You can have it, and with better specs than you could've had a week ago. you want a $1000 laptop? You can have that too, also better than the one that was available last week.

The retina mbp is on the cutting edge and the flagship product from a premium brand. Since when are cutting edge premium products cheap?

This is a superb observation. If Apple had bumped the prices of all their laptops, I would understand the complaints. But this is an additional, premium option. Nobody has to buy one.

 

[luqtotheman]

The whole "expensive" argument is strange to me. The Retina MBP is actually pretty aggressively priced for what you get. Try pricing any other high end Ivy Bridge laptop (Mac or PC) with similar GPU, RAM and flash storage and you'll see that the MBP is actually a decent deal.

Of course you can argue that a platter HD laptop would cost less. But that's not a direct comparison.

I totally agree, look at the specs, design, and apple customer service I think it is priced pretty well. Granted apple products are usually a higher price but it is worth the price.

 

[Renzatic]

Sorry for being snarky, but I'm old enough to remember the exact same outcry occurring when Apple removed floppies from their machines.

I remember it as well. Floppy drives were already old tech by the time Apple nixed them. Floppies were still in regular rotation, but the tech itself had long since been supplanted by the far quicker, far better optical drives.

But ethernet? Well, if ethernets only purpose was getting you connected to the internet, I could understand wanting to nix the port. But it's not. Specially not for a Pro machine, where someone will want to network their computers together for a render farm, or, once again, transfer tons of very large files. You can do this over wifi, true, but it's not nearly as fast.

 

[QCassidy352]

This is a superb observation. If Apple had bumped the prices of all their laptops, I would understand the complaints. But this is an additional, premium option. Nobody has to buy one.

It would be like bitching about the price of the new Mustang GT from Ford when the price of all of their fusions and focuses and ahat have you are still the same AND those models just got significant upgrades. I really don't get it.

 

[kyjaotkb]

What's interesting is that an equivalently-specced (CPU, RAM, storage) regular MacBook Pro is more expensive than a Retina MacBook Pro. Once you throw an SSD into the non-Retina version, the price skyrockets.

Well, that is, if you buy the SSD from Apple... buy it from anywhere else (think Samsung 830 and the likes) and your run-off-the-mill 2,5" SSD will cost you way less.
It is planned obsolescence from Apple to offer the SSD at such a sky-high price in the regular MBP. That insane price is just there to justify pricing on the RMBP - not the other way around !!!

 

[blue22]

tomato, tomatoe...

For rich kids.

Actually, the cost evens out between the high-end stock non-Retina MBP that you install your own 512GB SSD into (via 3rd party DYI) and the high-end retina stock MBP, so it's just a mater of whether the current high-end MBP lineup fits your budget, but isn't just for "rich kids" , especially if you have a half decent job .

 

[JohnDoe98]

Oh, I guess he could always buy a dongle. That's totally futuristic and convenient, right? Having to carry around an extra piece of hardware to compensate for the lack of a still current and widely used piece of tech.

You have to carry your cable don't you? Leave the dongle on the cable...

 

[Bubba Satori]

In before "this is cool, but despite what the reviews say , revision a products always have bugs so I think i'll wait for the one that comes out in two revisions which is the one I buy so it doesn't have any bugs and extra features for a lower price. Besides my late 2011 macbook pro still does everything I need it to so this machine is crap anyway".

Well, there have been an awful lot of updates for it already.
Accept or cancel?

 

[Gregintosh]

That's a pretty arrogant response, IMO. A computer may be important to someone, but giving his or her children an education may be important too, or getting medical treatment, or buying healthy food, etc. etc. To say that "even lower to middle class people can find room in their budgets for" a Retina MacBook Pro is very condescending.

I love Apple products, but they are expensive and far more accessible to the wealthy than less fortunate people. They're worth the money, but in a perfect world they would be cheaper so more people could enjoy them.

If you spend 8 hours a day in front of the computer (1/3 of your life) you can afford to pay the money over a large period of time.

Like I pointed out, you'd need to raise an extra $100 a month to get it. That is a trivial amount for anyone who is able-bodied and of sound mind living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world (I grant an exception to this to anyone who is living in a 3rd world or otherwise poor country where there isn't much opportunity and average incomes are much lower).

Like I said, You can convince 4-5 neighbors on your block to pay you $20 to mow their lawns and you're there. Then when winter comes, shovel some snow. Its a few hours of extra work on the weekends but it makes your dream of having a great device come true. You can decide if its worth it.

It really depends on your priorities. The same people who say they cannot come up with $100 a month for something they will use 8 hours a day for the next few years (or more) will also not blink twice about paying $100 a month for Cable TV they never watch.

The same people who say they cannot come up with any money will also ignore the piles of crap they have in their garages or attics that they can sell (including their existing computers) which can also offset the upfront cost of buying a new computer.

I am not suggesting that someone with deep struggles can easily buy this, but upper-lower to middle class folks can do so. If you are single and make an income of $15 an hour or more (the US average is $23/hour according to the labor department), or if you got two people working in a household, you can buy it without having to win the lottery.

And if you are stuck in a crappy job, than rather than hoping to win the lottery go improve your skills a little bit and get more money or a better job. The economy won't be down forever, but even with this economy theres plenty of opportunities to make a few extra bucks if you're willing to work and you have decent skills.

People just have to take initiative. Its been shown time and time again that if you take initiative, good things happen. If you sit around moping about your situation feeling like the only way you can earn $2,000 is by winning the lottery, you're of a losing mindset.

 

[Zmmyt]

Up to now, the standard MacBook Pro is more practical.

A leather man is more practical than just a knife. But if a knife is all you need why log around a whole bunch of unneccessary weight?

 

[nec207]

Things which I don't like about the new MacBook Pro Retina

1- Most applications are still not Retina supported..

2- I've noticed some of the drivers are missing, like

A- Optical Disk drive
B- The lock protection is missing
C- The IR drive is missing.. I can no longer use my remote
D- The Ethernet port is missing... it's very important
E- The battery level indicator is missing

Up to now, the standard MacBook Pro is more practical.

I don't think they had lock protection ,IR drive ,battery level indicator for some years now.

 

[QCassidy352]

That insane price is just there to justify pricing on the RMBP - not the other way around !!!

no, the pricing on SSDs was the same for the 2011s, when there was no need to "justify" anything.

 

[K42]

You can run it with as much desktop space as the previous high-res option, or the 17" format as well, IIRC--not as sharp, but still much better than the non-Retina models.

But that is not 1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen. Like I said: I find that the characters are small enough already on a 17". And if they are smaller _and_ fuzzier then retina is not going to be the solution for me.

I have 1920 x 1200 on my 24" iMac too, and actually it feels like more screen real estate than 1920 x 1200 on my 17" MBP.

My iMac by the way is an old matte white one. It is so old, because it is the last matte I could get.

I like Apple products A LOT in general, but it keeps getting harder to find ones that one can actually justify buying for doing real work (programming in my case).