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

[MacinDoc]

Nope.

The taxes were always there. With every refresh, price never got up.

IPhone 4 launched at roughly the same price the 4S did.

But instead of 1500, the MBA is now 1800, unlike the last refresh. Apple just raised the price for no reason. The MBP always launched at 1700, not 2000.

Checking exchange rates over the past year, I see that the Brazilian Reais has fallen by a third versus the USD in the past year. So, in USD, this year's MBPs are actually less expensive in Brazil than last year's were. You just have to pay more for each USD than you had to a year ago.

 

[Crissov]

Euro prices with VAT vs. US prices

US prices don't include sales tax (…) the pre-Tax price for the 2.6GHz Retina MBP is about $3000 (compared to $2800 in US)

A good rule of thumb in recent years was that the number’s about the same for USD prices without taxes and EUR prices with taxes. It’s very unlikely that the ratio drops below 1.20 and most VATs are around 20%, so dollar-price * 1.2 / 1.2 actually makes some sense. (Remember that they’re shipping from east Asia in both cases.) When the exchange ratio was above 1.40 $/€ we even saw much lower numbers in the EU, cf. the entry price point in the iTunes and App stores where 0.99 $ is matched by 0.79 €. Assuming that, the top model would be around 2250 € instead of 2900 € or more.

The MacBooks are 50 to 80 € cheaper in Germany than in Portugal, by the way, where VAT currently is 19%, and thus still considerably above US prices.

 

[rollzst]

No 13" retina display, total FAIL

 

[parish]

Looks like Apple have underestimated demand. When the site first went back up shipping here in the UK was 5-7 days, but within a few hours it was up to 2-3 weeks!!

 

[rickdollar]

That's a lot of pixels for 15 inches.
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=342795&stc=1&d=1339487406

 

[phoenix78]

The slimbook is fantastic.

I would get the base model with 8Gb ram but im not sure if i will ever need the 16Gb upgrade (non post upgradeable?). Im also unsure of the SSD. I dont know if i can live with only ~250Gb. The 500 costs too much for me. I would have to carry around a portable HD i think... maybe it could work that way.

I will also reserve judgement pending reports of how good the new cooling system is. If its good, then i will buy it.

 

[Konrad]

A good rule of thumb in recent years was that the number’s about the same for USD prices without taxes and EUR prices with taxes. It’s very unlikely that the ratio drops below 1.20 and most VATs are around 20%, so dollar-price * 1.2 / 1.2 actually makes some sense. (Remember that they’re shipping from east Asia in both cases.) When the exchange ratio was above 1.40 $/€ we even saw much lower numbers in the EU, cf. the entry price point in the iTunes and App stores where 0.99 $ is matched by 0.79 €. Assuming that, the top model would be around 2250 € instead of 2900 € or more.

The MacBooks are 50 to 80 € cheaper in Germany than in Portugal, by the way, where VAT currently is 19%, and thus still considerably above US prices.

Sure. It will always cost more in EU, but that's OK. It s a small price to pay for a much better quality of life Europe offers vrs the US. There is also a vast number of Europeans bringing these electronic gadgets from trips to the states.

 

[bazinga!!]

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!

Haha you fool, I study economics. Did you ever hear about the Law of Moore? Processors become cheaper and get more powerful every year! RAM also gets cheaper every year. Raising the MBP 15" price by 450 euros is just ridiculous! A retina display is made for 100 bucks.

 

[randomhkkid]

No 13" retina display, total FAIL

Define 'fail'. The retina display will only truly be appreciated by media professionals and photographers, I doubt the dual cores and integrated graphics of the ivy bridge cpu would be able to push all those pixels while remaining snappy enough to do productive work. A retina 13inch wouldn't make sense at this point in time. Just my 2 cents.

 

[osofast240sx]

No Blu-ray?

That's what the HDMI port is for.

 

[Abazigal]

Why are you so surprised though?

Everything that apple sells and everything related to parts for apple that arent really an industry standard have always been jacked up in price far beyond a reasonable amount for absolutely no legitimate reasons.

You should know this by now that Apple does rip off its customers on pretty much everything. Take a regular thunderbolt cable; Apple charges $50 for one. FIFTY DOLLARS for a cable. Every computer I've ever bought from Apple has always had its ram upgrades about 3X the price of the normal selling price compared to others for NO legitimate reasons. Its rather disgusting how Apple gets away with these inflated premium prices.

What, why do you think they are giving you ios6 free of charge? Did they really buy a map-making company out of the goodness of their heart? Or bundling free icloud services? Or selling you the next OS at a barely break-even rate?

The reason why their software is bundled so cheaply on the app store is exactly to sell their hardware. Yes, you are often paying an inflated price for a mac computer, but don't forget you are getting a package deal - the Apple ecosystem.

Where else could I snag a copy of dungeon hunters (a cheap, but still fun copy of diablo 2) for just $1?

 

[mandis]

Ok so the new Retina Macbook Pro is AMAZING. The Design is BETTER THAN EVER, the cpu performance is great the gpu is decent and all in all it seems like an amazing bit of kit.

My only worry is the built in ssd...

Unfortunately these things tend to break. What happens if the ssd fails after 18 months?? How much would a replacement MOTHERBOARD cost? And how long would it take for the repair?

This design limitation makes me very skeptical about the feasibility of using this as a main computer...

Are we certain that the SSD is not somehow socketed on the motherboard??

 

[tdnate1]

MUST READ, menu for new Retina display

Anandtech has great info on the new DPI scaling menu on the retina mac.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling

 

[coolguy$$$]

Did you guys notice, Apple online store does not allow you to upgrade the previous model Macbook Pro memory to 16GB...

It only provides the option for Next-gen Macbook Pro (Retina)

 

[dandeco]

And look, Apple's coming out with a FireWire to Thunderbolt adapter to use with this new MacBook Pro! About time one of those hit the market (and I knew Apple would be the one to develop such a FireWire-to-other adapter.)

Aside from that, the new MacBook Pro actually looks pretty cool! And unlike when the first unibody MacBook Pros hit the market in fall 2008, Apple is already well prepared with various accessories, AND it also marks the first Mac with USB 3.0 ports (I think) and the second Mac with an HDMI port.

 

[Abazigal]

Did you guys notice, Apple online store does not allow you to upgrade the previous model Macbook Pro memory to 16GB...

It only provides the option for Next-gen Macbook Pro (Retina)

Who in their right mind even pays for the extra ram anyways. You are almost always better off buying ram cheap and installing it yourself, together with a ssd if you deem fit.

But for the new MacBook, this will be more crucial because you apparently cannot upgrade it yourself.

 

[bluesoverdrive]

2199$ is expensive ?? Feel free to buy it in UK for 1799£ ! For those who are not familiar with a current exchange rate- it is 3000$ !!!!!!
I don't understand why it has to be like that !!!
I am happy to pay 1400£ (2199$) for that new retina 15.4" macbook pro, but 1800£ is just pure theft !!!
Wish I could order it is US, but customs charges would be a killer !
On the top of that, there is no 13" retina available yet (and might not be...)
what forces me to buy 13" regular mac book pro (not very excited about that )

You should be happy"?" that it "only" cost USD$3000 in UK. That is cheap compared to USD$5000 in Brazil.

Again... Brazil Wins!

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The macrumors front page has a video of Engadget's Tim Stevens booting up the new 'retina' display macbook. The glare and reflections are just as bad on it as they have ever been.

That reason alone is enough to pass on the new macbook. I dont care how great that screen is, even with IPS, if its got that miserable gloss finish im not even going to bother doing any work on it. Yes, WORK, because I'm not a generic user.

Well, I'll wait to see one in person before I make a judgment. BTW happy to hear you are not generic, whatever that means.

Who in their right mind even pays for the extra ram anyways. You are almost always better off buying ram cheap and installing it yourself, together with a ssd if you deem fit.

But for the new MacBook, this will be more crucial because you apparently cannot upgrade it yourself.

Yup. That is old school now. Both sad and cloying. I loved buying the low end MBP and then doing the upgrades myself. It was part of the excitement of a new computer, but those days are over now. I'll still enjoy a new machine, but maybe just a little less.

 

[iMusings]

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

I think you are splitting hairs here.

Statement A:

diamond.g is a man.

Statement B:

diamond.g is male.

Statement A != Statement B

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MATTE SCREEN??

Jesus, so many people are omitting that awful MIRROR finish on the new 'retina' display macbook. Sure, I'll take an IPS screen with a high resolution... and they lets make it completely useless by turning it into a MIRROR with that idiotic super gloss finish.

Patience, young padawan. The first gen Unibody Macbook Pro didn't come with the antiglare display option as well. It was only with the 2nd gen did that option show up.

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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.

Top of the line parts? Hello, the nVidia 650M is mid range at best.

 

[macandiPhone]

No optical drives

Quite a shortcoming!!! Anyways for a retina-display I can take it.

17'' inch MBP scrapped from the list.

 

[zephyrnoid]

Great stuff!
Count me in for the 17" Fully Loaded
Time for a laptop refresh over here.

 

[iMusings]

What brightness is that screen set at? you don't know do you... exactly.

Im typing this on my MBP now with glossy hi-res display. behind me are 5 LED spot lights in the kitchen. they don't affect me at all.

The reason you can't have a retina antiglare is because the screen thickness of the new MBP wouldn't allow it. Watch the video and you will see the issues. the glass of the screen is now part of the lid rather than separate.

And what exactly does setting your brightness to STUN levels do your battery life? Right, you know the answer.

Please don't treat us and our opinions like we are not entitled to them m'kay? You like your kiddie computers, we understand that. Some of us don't have our nubile juvenile eyes anymore so we like our anti reflective screen options.

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Stop spewing this crap before you know the facts. The SSD is upgradeable just as it is in the MacBook Air.

Isn't that a bit like saying "Grandma Nancy can run faster than Jeremy Lin as long as we can get biotic leg replacements."

Or perhaps "Hitler is a very kind soul apart from the fact that he killed millions."

The mSATA sticks Apple uses aren't even standard mSATA sticks. We can only get some of them from OWC... now... and provided they don't get replaced by a 2.0 of the format the same way the Magsafe connector got deprecated in the near future.

 

[jweinraub]

Looks like from the picture the SSD is replaceable (mSATA connection). RAM definitely isn't though!

New Retina MBP looks great, just wanted a 13in version

I noticed the small screw too, well my manager pointed it out to me, but if that is the case, do you think its both models? Because when ordering the 256, there is no higher version on the drop down, but if you get the 512 the 768 model is then available. So, does that mean 256 isn't mSATA? I will have to wait for the ifixit teardown before I decide which retian model to buy

 

[iMusings]

Completely false.

Graphic designers and photographers will need all the space they can get. I would know, I do both. Throw in a personal music library and that hard drive will fill up rather quickly. My music library alone is 315gb large. The rest of my documents are another 300gb and thats taking into consideration that a lot of it has been moved to optical media for storage as well as all my movies living on another hard drive connected to a router acting as a server. So the 300gb of documents are my working files which are ESSENTIALS (stock photos, fonts, vector stocks, projects, portfolio, client files, etc. I have a client that I consistently do work for which their folder on my hard drive takes up 27gb).

I'm gonna flat out say it that these kind of assumptions and generalizations from the macrumors forum are OFFENSIVE to me as they contribute nothing but a personal outlook on what someONE may think what a collective MILLIONS should have. I'm sick of these comments on the forum speaking for the rest of the community without considering the uses or the workflow of other people.

I hate to spell it out for you wikus, but if you are looking to actually do real work, your only realistic options are:
1) to get the top end 768GB SSD drive option
2) get the older refreshed Macbook Pro
3) switch to a Thinkpad or something

The new Macbook Pros with the Retina display are absolutely smashing for those of us (actually, not *me*) who have nothing better to do all day sitting in Starbucks sipping latte while surfing the "Internets" on their Retina displays (replete with piddly 128gb drives and slow yesteryear 802.11n wifi!)

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Most people don't have servers or 315GB music libraries. This is MacRumors. I've used tons of space on my iMac, and I manage a Mac Mini server. Most Mac users just have 13" MacBook Pros that they use for school or work and keep about 200GB at most on it. Most people don't even use Macs.

Exactly, and most of Macrumors doesn't need to do any real work! Except sit in Starbucks!

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Go buy the OLD MBP and put a 1TB HDD in. The future is here and sadly its not for you.

Save it for yourself. Thank God it is not for me. Stop acting like it is such a brilliant and irresistible improvement. It is a horrendous compromise at best.

 

[Vip]

remote

Where is the apple remote for retina MBP? How are we to do presentations?