Not having discrete graphics could be a letdown.
And it wasn't on the five iterations of 13" MacBook Pro that have existed before it? It's the way the 13" MacBook Pro has always been.
Hmmm, very interested in seeing what that "unprecedented" battery design is. Will this be the breakthrough in batteries we've all been waiting for?
Glued to the top-case making it non-servicable, just like on the 15".
Indeed, especially since the rMBP is known to lag with its discreet card.
Yeah I can't help but feel this may be a better product in a year or two. Discrete really seems like a must.
Well since the 15" rMBPs integrated graphics is having trouble driving it's screens resolution then this will probably have the same problem, so you definitely don't need to be a Pixar animator to need that.
The integrated graphics in the current rMBP definitely struggles to drive all those pixels at times. I know I'm not the only one to notice it. Several podcasters on 5by5.tv have said the same. So if integrated is your only option with this, good luck.
Yep, I already consider this a letdown.
Honestly, the single biggest problem with the 15" retina MBPro is that the video card isn't powerful enough to push around that many pixels without performance bottlenecks. It's good enough for your basic use cases, obviously, but not that impressive for a system costing so much. (Your 3D gamers sure won't be impressed by the frame rates.)
It's a forgivable problem only because there really weren't any mobile GPUs available capable of doing the job .... but it's all the more reason not to further gimp a 13" retina MBPro by leaving the discrete video out completely!
I know Apple probably thinks, "Who needs it if the 13" display has fewer pixels?", but we're starting out from a situation where graphics performance is one of the weakest parts of the system as a whole.
HD 4000 just won't be enough.
I'll wait for the haswell revision coming in q1 of next year, at which point will allow me to get a year out of it as there won't be any foreseeable upgrades after that. Just like the yearly iPhone release.
They did it before, so no is certainly not out of the question.
HD 4000 is just not enough to drive the retina display from what I've experienced in my 15 inch. Open up a video and do other tasks at once and the system will become fairly choppy. That is not the experience worth 2k.
And no, nobody in their right mind would game on a laptop, especially one running OSX. I have a custom built watercooled rig for that. Also nobody in their right mind would blow 1.6k just to get the most basic necessties. "it only cost 1600 so do you really expect more than a Facebook machine".
Okay, guys, for the zillionth time, 2880x1800 < 1280x800 + 2 x (2560x1440); the Intel HD 4000 is plenty capable on its lonesome to drive the 15" rMBP's display let alone the 13" rMBP. The fact that it struggles in practice has NOTHING to do with hardware and EVERYTHING to do with software. Be it the OS or the drivers, I couldn't tell you. But it's definitely a software issue as that IGP is capable of smoothly outputting the number of pixels just fine. GPUs don't care about how densely packed your pixels are. That being said, software sure as **** does!
All of you really ought to do some research before you say such incorrect things!
Exactly! these moroooons who keep saying 'buy a console for gaming' need to realize some of use like to game on whatever device we have. It wouldn't be all that hard for Apple to make a version of the 13'' MBP with a dedicated GPU, thereby giving those of us who would like to game on it the option of paying al little more for that luxary.
It would require maintaining the current thickness. Apple would rather a thin 13" MacBook Pro than a 13" MacBook Pro with discrete graphics. Only a small percentage of users even buying a 13" MacBook Pro know what discrete graphics are anyway.
So are a lot of the retina MBP's problems down to GPU or CPU?
Neither! Software!
There's a third option: lose the optical drive and give us quad-core and discrete graphics.
Won't happen! Apple will want to make the machine thinner before it cares about giving you those features. And as things currently stand with Ivy Bridge, you can't provide those features while increasing thinness.
So it's a software issue? Because those aforementioned devices never got smoothened out, even after software updates.
Mountain Lion brought a marginal improvement, but I suspect the problem may be with drivers more than with OS design. It's not like Intel and NVIDIA are currently having to allow for HiDPI on any other shipping product.
I would say Broadwell actually. Haswell seems very incremental to me. Broadwell is supposedly all new architecture.
Haswell is the new architechture. Broadwell is the die-shrink. Just as Sandy Bridge was the new architecture and Ivy Bridge was the die-shrink.
How much of an impact with the HD4000 have on me?
I will not use the machine for gaming.
I will use it occasionally for photoshop/illustrator/xcode for app programming.
I will use it regularly for analyzing large data sets in Stata, R, and Excel.
I will use it all the time for web surfing and microsoft office.
I usually have 9 desktops with R, Stata, Excel, Word, Preview, Acrobat, Chrome, and Safari with 20-30 tabs running simultaneously.
Any other questions/thoughts about 13" rMBP specs I should go for? I am definitely buying this thing barring a big issue.
For your needs, the Intel HD 4000 will be plenty sufficient. The only people for whom it will be less than favorable will be those wanting to play a game newer than three years old (barring StarCraft II and probably Diablo III), and those doing serious 3-D/video work.
You are completely wrong here. Apple makes a miniDP to HDMI adapter, and you can also buy cables that have miniDP on one end and HDMI on the other for a few dollars.
http://www.amazon.com/Mini-DisplayPort-HDMI-Adapter-Cable/dp/B003OC6LWM
Apple doesn't make such a cable. They differ you to buy one made by Moshi. What you have linked there is neither made by Moshi nor Apple. Good day, sir!