Apple Introduces “Next Generation MacBook Pro” with 15.4″ Retina Display, Starts at $2199

[iMaconApple]

I'm do for a new lappy my black MacBook still running good..I wanted a 13 version c'mon apple..I like me a retina lappy too..15" bit to big for me to carry around and the price

 

[diamond.g]

Blue Ray: What Blu Ray? It's already obsolete.

Optical Disk Drive: Gone, it's a good thing that Apple was willing to take this step so that people can enjoy a slimmer form factor, better battery life, and more efficient internal design and thermal solutions. Who knows how long the ODD would have stuck around if there wasn't a company willing to make that move first.

Retina display: apparently not impossible after all.

iMac: A little disappointed that the iMac wasn't updated but there is probably a reason for that, best not to spoil future opportunities to steal the spotlight and announce great new products.

The lack of accurate predictions from technology 'analysts' really makes you wonder what they're being paid so much to do, since they seem to reliably miss seeing any changes to tech being made before they've been made.

The battery life is the same across all the 15" MBP's

That seems to be correct. However, $200 for 16GB is a good deal.

Not really, it appears you can get 16GB 1600Mhz ram for ~150 on newegg.

This is incorrect. SSD = Solid State Drive = A storage medium made up of flash memory.

The technology is exactly the same.

Why does Apple make the distinction if they are the same?

This isn't even DDR3L

Low voltage (which I presume helps battery life).

 

[steve-p]

I really don't get why Apple won't embrace blu-ray video & AUDIO!!! If you have heard DTS-HD or TrueHD audio you WOULD understand. Apple gives us an ultra high res screen but no support for ultra high fi audio!

Sure you can download 1080P videos from iTunes but you won't get HD audio!

Both the integrated and discrete GPU's support HD Audio passthru.

@ Apple.com no mention under specs of HDMI specs & headphone jack specs???

Apple, at least give us Blu-Ray playback support if we choose to utilize an ext. Blu-Ray drive! Dang...

They don't want you ripping your own CDs, playing DVDs or BlueRay. They want to sell you lesser quality versions on iTunes instead.

 

[geoffrevB]

No one seems to have mentioned that the 15" retina weighs a pound less than it`s older sibling, which is a 26% reduction.

 

[zeromeus]

The wait is over....

I was hoping to snatch up a new thinner MBP but at that price point, I'll save my money...

So... What I ended up getting is a MBA at 13" base model with upgraded RAM. After education discount plus TAX, I paid about $1333 and got a free $100 gift card. I'll use that to get some accessories for it...

Should be getting it next week. I'm excited!

 

[santanamac]

no lock!

i dont care. but im sure some people spending $2k+ do.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro

 

[motulist]

Have you seen one in person b/c in the keynote they said it's something like 73% less reflective than the screen on the non-Retina MBP.

look at the video I posted in my comment above. The new retina display is still a super glossy glare mirror hunk of crap.

edit: here's the link again. Play the top video on the page and jump to 1:30

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/11/apple-next-generation-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-hands-on/

 

[pandamonia]

Unfortunately it turns out that I am exactly right. Look at the screen in this video and you'll see that the new retina screen looks basically as glossy as a standard glossy screen.

click the first video on the page and jump to 1:30

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/11/apple-next-generation-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-hands-on/

Yeh good idea to get a super detailed retina display and put some crap antiglare filter on it to make it look less sharp.

Like putting tractor tyres on a ferrari.

 

[plinden]

Now that the stores are open, I faced a very disconcerting situation here in Portugal.

Euro is worth approximately 1.25USD.

However here is the price list for the Macbook PRO:
- MacBook PRO 13" standard 2.5GHz - 1299EUR (1'623USD equiv.)
- MacBook PRO 13" standard 2.9GHz - 1599EUR (1'998US equiv.)

- MacBook PRO 15" standard 2.3GHz - 1949EUR (2'436USD equiv.)
- MacBook PRO 15" standard 2.6GHz - 2349EUR (2'936USD equiv.)

- MacBook PRO retina 2.3GHz - 2349EUR (2'936USD equiv.)
- MacBook PRO retina 2.6GHz - 2979EUR (3'723USD equiv.)

Am I missing something here??? Or is just that Apple hates Portugal?

Thanks a lot, but with such prices, I won't be upgrading my machine anytime soon.

best to all,
Paulo Neves

US prices don't include sales tax (roughly, but not exactly, equivalent to VAT) - from what I can tell, VAT in Portugal is 23%, so the pre-Tax price for the 2.6GHz Retina MBP is about $3000 (compared to $2800 in US)

What I find curious (it may have been mentioned, but 19 pages is too much to read) is that the non-Retina 2.6GHz MBP configured with a 512GB SSD is $300 more than the 2.6GHz Retina MBP with 512GB SSD

 

[quickmac]

 

[flyguyjake]

I'm not blaming them for not making peripherals, im giving Apple flack for how they handled the launch of thunderbolt and how ridiculously they hyped it out. Its been over a year and a half and I can count the number of thunderbolt devices with my fingers. I dont even need to do that to count how many ive even seen in stores; ZERO.

Thunderbolt is a complete disaster. Great on paper, miserable execution.

I wouldn't say that... Every new top of the line motherboard just introduced @ Computex has at least 1 Thunderbolt port and most have 2! Just because Apple was an early adopter doesn't mean the technology deployment isn't forth coming. You can daisy chain up to 10 external HDD and a monitor! Do that with USB! Thunderbolt is the way of the future!

 

[pandamonia]

They don't want you ripping your own CDs, playing DVDs or BlueRay. They want to sell you lesser quality versions on iTunes instead.

So i guess you have never heard of thepiratebay.org

Who watches Blu rays on a notebook anyway? seriously.

 

[hazmatzak]

I don't see how 1920x1200 or 1680x1050 scale cleanly to 2880x1800, but 1440x900 does. It's just a clean factor of 4 (X2 horizontal, X2 vertical). Using any flat panel display in those rare occassions I have turned the resolution down from it's native resolution (for curiosity more than anything) it does NOT look sharp. Based on that, I was thinking that offering a 1440x900 options would make sense because it should look as sharp as any native 1440x900 display does since it's a clean factor of 4 pixel doubling.

I would guess that non-integral scaling is primarily when connecting to other devices (like projectors) and you're mirroring. 1440x900 is not a common resolution. Obviously it should be easy to add it to the list, but maybe they don't want the clutter, or people accidentally choosing it and getting pixel-perfect but non-Retina display? Or the tech specs page has a typo and we're speculating about nothing?

On a side note, scaling many tiny pixels into many more even tinier pixels gets less horrible.

 

[motulist]

Yeh good idea to get a super detailed retina display and put some crap antiglare filter on it to make it look less sharp.

Like putting tractor tyres on a ferrari.

Dude, you've got it exactly backwards. With a glossy screen you're taking a super detailed retina display and then making it so you can't even see anything on the screen properly because it's constantly plastered over with a very visible layer of other images sitting (and moving) on top of the displayed image.

 

[dhart.mac]

seriously...

I hate it that they raised prices. It's like their profit margin isn't big enough yet

So, you view any rise in price to apple being greedy. did you ever think that it costs more money to produce this new computer???? you really should study economics or better yet try running your own business. all this "corporations are evil" crap is really getting on my nerves. wake-up!

 

[cubbie5150]

Just need a FW800 adapter (for my external drives). New machine looks very nice, and even though I didn't want to have to go the adapter route for FW800 & ethernet, I'll likely purchase later in the year. I will, however, miss the ability to add more RAM later as prices come down.

 

[Redfanix]

I compared the audio ports of the new retina and the upgrade 15" macbook pro.

non retina:
Audio line in (digital/analog)
Audio line out (digital/analog)

Retina:
Stereo speakers
Dual microphones
Headphone port
Support for Apple iPhone headset with remote and microphone
Support for audio line out

What does that mean? I wanna still use optical cable to get dts/dolby to a receiver without HDMI (hdmi connects to the beamer).

Same question here.. new retina MBP has no digital audio out???

 

[73CortinaV8]

Questions I have... (that I don't expect anyone here to answer, but maybe )

Is the keyboard like the keyboard on the current macbook pro, or the lesser keyboard on the Air?


Is the SSD in the same form factor as the Air's SSD?

 

[sfxx]

The same can be said about the 13" MBP. The 13" MBA beats it in nearly every category. I foresee that in 2013, the 13" and 15" MBPs go the way of the dodo. Apple has already set up the 15" Retina MBP to succeed the 15" MBP, and with the Air now sporting 2.0GHz i7 Ivy Bridges, Intel 4000 graphics, and healthy amounts of RAM and storage, why the heck would anyone even consider a 13" MBP? Although both start at the same base price ($1199), I don't think you can justify paying for an 'old' 13" MBP just for some extra ports, a bulky disk drive, a bump in CPU performance most people using a 13" notebook won't ever notice, and some extra storage.

Especially (still!) with that God awful resolution...

I'm trying to decide between 13" MBP and MBA.. I don't see why it is such an obvious decision. Entry level for both, MBA has 128GB memory while Pro has 500GB.. it is 1.8GHz vs 2.5GHz for Pro. How is it such an obvious choice?

 

[Ryth]

Why does Apple make the distinction if they are the same?

Because it's about how the FLASH memory is stored. If it's in an SSD, that means it's in a drive case. Otherwise it's on the motherboard. Also if you have a SSD, then it's going to have a controller.

 

[pandamonia]

Dude, you've got it exactly backwards. With a glossy screen you're taking a super detailed retina display and then making it so you can't even see anything on the screen properly because it's constantly plastered over with a very visible layer of other images sitting (and moving) on top of the displayed image.

i have had 2 glossy MBP's and tbh they are so bright i can drown out any ambient light reflection.

My Panasonic Vierra is Glossy also on the wall in my front room.

Seriously Anti-glare is so 2002. If you really want it you can always get the old style mbp

 

[73CortinaV8]

Get the Standard MBP and upgrade the RAM and SSD yourself. its easy.

Is the SSD like normal sata SSDs or the special macbook air mSata form factor that costs a ton even from 3rd parties?

 

[posttempest]

It's sad to see how ignorant some people can be. How can anyone look at this and say, "Oh they just made it thinner, nothing new, it's crap,"? What do you want them to do? If you have some attainable, revolutionary design prints, try applying for a job. To pack all that they did into this, they had to reinvent the entire inside of a computer, and then they put a state of the art display and top of the line internal parts into it. All of this was previously impossible, and it will take the industry two, if not three years to hit this mark, by which point Apple will already be on to the next thing. If you're disappointed in this, then you cannot be pleased by technology in any way whatsoever.

 

[cubbie5150]

Maybe they want more storage and a faster processor. And the optical drive.

and the ability to update RAM instead of paying Apple's prices

 

[Ryth]

It's sad to see how ignorant some people can be. How can anyone look at this and say, "Oh they just made it thinner, nothing new, it's crap,"? What do you want them to do? If you have some attainable, revolutionary design prints, try applying for a job. To pack all that they did into this, they had to reinvent the entire inside of a computer, and then they put a state of the art display and top of the line internal parts into it. All of this was previously impossible, and it will take the industry two, if not three years to hit this mark, by which point Apple will already be on to the next thing. If you're disappointed in this, then you cannot be pleased by technology in any way whatsoever.

People are morons...this thing is amazing in terms of design. What they've managed to pack into this form factor is staggering. Especially when they went and designed their own boards, fans, screen, case, etc.