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Apple Updates Retina MacBook Pros With New Processors and Faster PCIe Flash Storage

mdelvecchio said:
yes, at least they made it cheaper while also making it way, way faster.

my god the entitlement on this forum kills me. nuts.
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Do the processors have higher clock speeds? I was under the impression Haswell had a very tiny performance gain compared to Ivy Bridge.
 
QUOTE=ipodlover77;18191127]Anybody know if its the Iris 5100 or 5200?

Trying to find some benchmarks on it.[/QUOTE

Iris is 5100 iris pro is 5200
 
wanyuenmei said:
So who's getting the 13" and 15" and why? I'm seriously debating whether or not to wait for igzo and broadwell...
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I just ordered the 15" as I'm simply not as mobile as I used to be. My last Mac purchase was a 13" MacBook 5 years ago as I was a graduate student. These days my computer either sits on a desk or on my lap. I have a ThinkPad X230 work that gets banged around in a briefcase.

The only disappointment today is that the MacBook Pros won't come with TouchID. I have it on my 5S and it's fantastic.
 
Laai said:
Yes. Exactly. I wanted to upgrade to the new one, but somehow I am not willing to work with the integrated GPU. I need it for casual games (Diablo, CS:GO) and I really do not like not having a dedicated GPU...
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Yeah I'm disappointed in this as well. The new integrated graphics is supposed to be far superior to the old one (2.5x for Iris Pro), but it obviously wouldn't be sufficient for serious gaming. I make a decent living, but I can't justify dropping $2,600 on a laptop.

Anyway, it worked out for me that my job has changed and I no longer really need a laptop. So I'll keep my old one and buy a new iPad instead. Maybe the prices will come down in a year or two.

Edit: Here are a couple links for Iris 5200 benchmarks.
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/477...s-review-the-end-of-mid-range-gpus-conclusion
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html
 
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kenroberts83 said:
I've seen a lot of comments to this effect, and honestly, I don't understand the logic. What can you upgrade on a laptop? Not the processor, because that requires a new motherboard. Not the graphics card, because there's no room for it. Without those two, there goes about 95% of any potential performance upgrade.

So what you're left with is RAM and hard drive. Unless your RAM is less than 4 gb, you're unlikely to get any noticeable performance boost by upgrading. Your processor and graphics card will be the limiting factor instead. So, you're left with the hard drive. What are you guys putting on your hard drives that you need several hundred gigabytes worth? If you have thousands of movies or something ridiculous like that, then invest in an external HD. Otherwise, you can probably delete half of that crap that you aren't using. Or move it to an external HD, or even the cloud.

If you are one of those guys sitting there with 2Gb of RAM and a tiny hard drive, everything else in your laptop is probably also out of date. So you really need to just pony up and buy a new one. If any of you guys can't afford to buy a new laptop every 4 years, then you probably shouldn't be buying Apple products to begin with.

Anyway, that's my thinking on the topic. I understand the desire to tinker with things and want to make them better, but honestly guys, just buy a desktop for that. I agree with Apple on this, I don't want to buy a laptop that is 20% thicker/heavier just so a few guys can make upgrades that aren't going to do them any good anyway.
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The only external drive I want is for backups. Otherwise I want all my content on my Mac. I don't want to have to plug in a drive to get content I want to use. As for the "cloud" option. I'll never use that. My content is mine. I'm not putting my content on someones server for them to view at their leisure. The exception would be if I posted a video to YouTube for example. But then again I don't have an account for any Google services cause I don't care for it.

To be honest the high end 13" rMBP is appealing cause it comes with a 512GB SSD but it'd be nice if one could install a second SSD into it. A dedicated GPU would have been nice also in the 13" but I guess that's asking to much of Apple. Seems like one can only get a dGPU in the high end 15" which makes no sense. Well it does make sense in that Apple wants you to pay more to get it. The difference is $800 between the high end 13" and high end 15".
 
Man... I am happy as heck with my 2013 Ivy 15R w dGPU.

considered selling it for the new one but no chance. My computer lives on!
 
kenroberts83 said:
Anyway, that's my thinking on the topic. I understand the desire to tinker with things and want to make them better, but honestly guys, just buy a desktop for that. I agree with Apple on this, I don't want to buy a laptop that is 20% thicker/heavier just so a few guys can make upgrades that aren't going to do them any good anyway.
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Well let me tell you my story, I bought a 2011 MBP classic, two months later I upgraded the RAM to 8 GB and 1 TB HD, and just three months ago I feel the memory is not enough so I googled it and it turns out my MBP can use up to 16 GB RAM and I bought 2 x 8 GB sticks and new 256 GB SSD.

now my 2011 MBP feels as fast as the new MBP.

there are benefits for DIY users when purchasing computers and not to dump huge amount of cash for the initial purchase.
 
mgridgaway said:
The girlfriend was looking to upgrade from her 2006 iMac, but since she has ~60GB worth of photos and music (and this would be her main machine), I can't really recommend the base retina display over last years non-retina, and I don't think she can justify spending $1500 on the next model.
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I have the same problem. I use one MacBook for all my stuff and have an aftermarket 750 GB drive in there. There's simply no way the PCI-SSD versions even go that high, and not for extreme monie$. I was hoping they'd add the Fusion drive option to the 13" regular MacBook. That way we could buy it with 128GB for the OS and bring our own spinning disk. I'd even be willing to sac the optical drive. I would guess that moving "Retina Everywhere" is more important than a niche for a few users.

My complaint is that Aple gives you no official options for storing all this digital stuff. Add up a few iPhones, iPads, and Macs in a family, and its really hard to stor all that stuff without buying a separate Mac mini plus storage module.
 
Decision time.

I get 15% off, and I get a $500 computer rebate from work (but only once every 2 years, and off ONE item)

Will I buy :
1) Mac Pro $2999 => $2050
2) Mac Book Pro 15" i7 512gb $2599 => $1700
3) Mac Book Pro but with 1TB $3099 => $2135
4) iPadAir 32gb $599 => $10

Damn, decisions, decisions. I really wanted a Mac Mini but since they weren't upgraded and I HAVE to spend the $500 soon, it's not going to happen.
 
mherz said:
I need some help here:
The new top of the line rMBP 13 can be upgraded to a 2.8GHz i7 with Turbo Boost up to 3.3 GHz.
The previous top of the line rMBP 13 topped out at 3.0 GHz i7 with TB to 3.6 GHz.
Why does the new one have lower GHz? Is it still faster than the old one?
(I guess so, otherwise they wouldnt release it, but the numbers dont make sense.)
Please explain...
Thanks!
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Because processors are complex, clock speed is not necessarily correlated with how fast your device will run. Check out this benchmark chart, for example: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

A processor can have a higher clock speed AND more cores and still be slower. Mind blowing, I know. There are a lot of other factors at play, which I don't really understand (caches, architecture, and so forth).
 
Konrad9 said:
Do the processors have higher clock speeds? I was under the impression Haswell had a very tiny performance gain compared to Ivy Bridge.
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I believe you are correct... Haswell is not MUCH faster, but improved battery life and that's Apple's bag. And Intel just delayed their new chip from winter (ie now) to next year. I had the impression Apple was going to skip Haswell for the Retina Macs and intel just cock blocked them.
 
Tankmaze said:
Well let me tell you my story, I bought a 2011 MBP classic, two months later I upgraded the RAM to 8 GB and 1 TB HD, and just three months ago I feel the memory is not enough so I googled it and it turns out my MBP can use up to 16 GB RAM and I bought 2 x 8 GB sticks and new 256 GB SSD.

now my 2011 MBP feels as fast as the new MBP.

there are benefits for DIY users when purchasing computers and not to dump huge amount of cash for the initial purchase.
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Me too. I have a 2007 Santa Rosa MacBook Pro which is positively ancient by today's standards but thanks to upgraded RAM and a new 750 GB hard drive it remains my daily-use machine. For regular basic tasks it runs just fine. I'll probably set up Mavericks this evening! The battery is shot and only holds maybe a 45 minute charge, but hey -- I can just replace it :D

I am torn. I really like the specs on this new 13" rMBP but my history tells me that I would probably enjoy the ability to upgrade the RAM and storage. Maybe the thing to do is buy the last gen 13" MBP as an Apple refurb.
 
mbh said:
It's still upgradable to the 2.9GHz i7.
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Oh yeah.. huh. Oh well, it won't be around much longer anyway. We got ours with 750GB hard drives, which aren't available anymore, but the 1TB option is only $15 more than what we paid for the machines with the 750GB. :(

I guess it doesn't matter, because before we'd need more than 750GB of space, we'll have upgraded them to SSDs anyway.
 
I am glad I postponed my new job's offer to buy me a computer.

I suppose if I can get by fine with my 2 Ghz 2011 15" MBP with an AMD dGPU then getting the 2.0 Ghz 15" base retina with the Iris pro iGPU should serve me just fine. It's all for the screen baby.
 
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