Do you think the base rMBP will last a good 4-5 years before becoming "outdated?"

[mac jones]

Yikes! 4-5 years? This thread would have made more sense with 1-3.

Most of us here think about upgrading months before something's even released.

For instance, before the last roll-out was shipping, there were plenty of threads about Retina 13", Retina, this and that, and threads like: "Should I buy now, or wait until they fix the POS", before it's even released!

Anyway, 4-5 years and you re-sale value is going to be pretty sad (However i'm astonished at the tenacity of this Apple stuff).

 

[Queen6]

4-5 years is realistic and possibly beyond depending on the usage.

 

[Queen6]

Anyway, 4-5 years and you re-sale value is going to be pretty sad (However i'm astonished at the tenacity of this Apple stuff).

Or the other way to look at is you will have more than had your money`s worth out of it

 

[MICHAELSD]

As long as you're not going to be gaming on it, it will easily last four years. Five could be a stretch. It's the cutting-edge already. Displays will get even better, and design should change somewhere during that period but all applications, professional or otherwise, should run just fine.

 

[Angus9541]

In 4-5 yars time you may find you still only browse the web, photoshop, email, word process and edit 1080 video. l reckon the components will be fine, OWC already have the SSD upgrade which by this time is going to be cheap, paired with a hopefully cheap thunderbolt drive storage aint gonna be a problem!

 

[Lara F]

Usable, sure. I've been on my old white 2007 pre-unibody MacBook all summer and it's honestly still fine (with some slow parts of course given the age) aside from not being updateable to ML. How many new Apple features will be missing by then is the real question.

But if it runs well now you should be good.

 

[725032]

They dont seem to work after a few weeks, let alone a few years!

 

[hvgotcodes]

There is a difference between "outdated" and "not-usable". IMHO the current rMBP will be "outdated" in 1-2 years, maybe when the next version is released, and certainly when the version after that is released. Its just the nature of technology.

That said, IMHO the rMBP will be usable for a while, depending on your needs. Some people legitimately benefit from having the newest hardware, some don't For most, the current generation should be comfortably usable for 3-4 years, maybe more...

 

[iLikeTurtles!]

Not really maybe once haswell comes out it might be the case

any computer u buy is already outdated because they are in the works for a newwer computer the next year LOL

 

[chaseychasem]

any computer u buy is already outdated because they are in the works for a newwer computer the next year LOL

Between incessant use of . . . [ellipsis] and LOL, I often have a hard time deciding which I hate more on the intarwebz.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

It's already outdated by virtue of the fact that the next-gen is already designed and in the labs. Get used to it and enjoy the machine.

 

[416049]

Depending on your usage it can and will last you anywhere from 3-5+ years.

I personally change mine every 3 years or so if i can but, i might keep my current laptop for longer, unless it decides to die by itself.

 

[Hephaestus]

I recently upgraded my 2.66GHz C2D 2009 MBP to 8GM RAM and it is still fast and smooth as butter. I have a 2010 i7 iMac and in general day to day tasks it's performance parallels my iMac. For most people they wouldn't notice much difference anyway, since the extra power barely comes into effect during web browsing and word processing anyway.

I imagine my MBP will still be great in another 2/3 years so yours will be fine for 5 or 6 more.

 

[DOUGHNUT]

with SSD and plenty of RAM, that should be all you need. processor wise, faster processors will come out, but unless you do processor intensive programs like video/photo editing, you'll not notice a huge difference in day-to-day usage.
the biggest issue would be things like hard drive storage. you can always expand it with USB 3 or Thunderbolt storage. Right now i have the 256gb and i've been transferring any kind of large video files and my music library to my external storage, so I have plenty of room to work with. my old 13" MBP had a larger HD, but i was using it differently.

The RMBP will last you 3-4 years easily and 5-6 years if you take good care of it. you'll be fine. this is by far the best Mac i've ever owned.

 

[InfinitiG]

IMO the rMBP will last 8 years before being outdated...with 16gb ram

 

[beamer8912]

The Retina display itself is the one that's limiting the rMBP's performance right now. They're still trying to optimize the OS X to be more responsive in higher resolutions, Safari's scrolling/lagging issues and so on.

It demands so much resources from GPU/CPU that even 20-30% improvement in GPU will make a huge difference in the GUI responsiveness and that can happen next year or two years from now.

If rMBP didn't have the retina display, then yes, it'll last a good 5-6 years.

Since it does have it, it'll be outdated by next year or two depending on how fast they improve the GPUs and OS X.




GPU is the current killer in rMBP, it's already being pushed to the limits because of the double-sampling > downscaling it has to do and the current GPUs are not designed to push that amount of pixels at high speed.

Anandtech talked a lot about this in depth if you want to understand this more.

Ohh.. it wasn't meant to be nitpicky. I thought you meant that the slight to moderate upgrades of the $2200 version migrated into the $1800 version and the rMBP took over the $2200. I think it's a given that something similar will happen in the 13" space eventually. If they're going with integrated graphics, it could be a couple cycles, but it may be very feasible by Broadwell without lag. Intel has taken a much different approach to integrated graphics compared to a few years ago.

This.

Consider this, there is still lag reported when the dGPU is used. Considering Intel's integrated GPU is still years behind a good dedicated nVidia card, Haswell isn't going to fix ****. If you read through Anandtech's review, you'll see that what Haswell and Broadwell will do is actually allow Apple to drop the dedicated card completely. They will not make the Ivy Bridge rMBP look like stone-age technology, but they will allow perhaps a bit more space on the logic board and some battery improvement since the integrated chips suck a lot less power than the dedicated chips.

But again, these are inline with my predictions. Minor spec bumps, storage increase, price decrease etc etc. This is not the OMFGWTFBBQ the first gen is TEH SUCK!!! update that people equate to the MBA. The first MBA couldn't do a whole lot because it was significantly underpowered. The rMBP is a beast. The revision will help, the "lag" might be better, it'll have higher benchmarks etc etc. But it will be more inline with what the cMBP upgrade got this year than what the MBA saw after it's first year.

 

[Adidas Addict]

The rMBP will still be more than usable in 4-5 years. It's bleeding edge now and nothing else can touch it.

 

[children]

Of course, my friend has a core duo MacBook pro and it still runs like a champ, it looks great compared to a lot of today's windows machines too. His only complaint is the diminishing battery life. It's a given his 5 year old machine can't do as much as current comps, but its still enough for most people- browsing, office etc.

My only concern is the 256gb limitation, but I bought it knowingly and hoping 512gb aftermarket rmbp ssd's get cheaper someday..

 

[DVD9]

IMO the rMBP will last 8 years before being outdated...with 16gb ram

Ten years from now almost no one will need even 8GB of RAM. I can't max out six GB on a desktop.

 

[thekev]

Ten years from now almost no one will need even 8GB of RAM. I can't max out six GB on a desktop.

And I ran out of memory with 8 all the time. Many applications that are just moderately demanding are starting to recommend 8 with 4 set as their minimum requirement. Sticking to an older OS and application version will extend this, yet it's not always possible or easy if a drive goes and you must re-activate many old applications that the developer doesn't really want to support. If you're buying something new, it should have specs appropriate to anything that is coming out today. It shouldn't be at minimum specs for the latest software.

 

[mackid1993]

The issue with the rMPB really comes down to having the power to sustain those high resolutions, while also being able to run ever more intensive software that will appear down the line. I wouldn't expect this first generation model to perform optimally with the latest CPU and GPU intensive software, at maximum resolution for more than 3 or so years.

I'm basing this off of Moore's Law x2... with that in mind, the power of top of the line hardware should theoretically quadruple in three years.

 

[DVD9]

And I ran out of memory with 8 all the time. Many applications that are just moderately demanding are starting to recommend 8 with 4 set as their minimum requirement. Sticking to an older OS and application version will extend this, yet it's not always possible or easy if a drive goes and you must re-activate many old applications that the developer doesn't really want to support. If you're buying something new, it should have specs appropriate to anything that is coming out today. It shouldn't be at minimum specs for the latest software.

Could you post screens from Activity Monitor?

I would like to see what could be using all that RAM.

 

[thekev]

Could you post screens from Activity Monitor?

I would like to see what could be using all that RAM.

I'll have to do so when I'm actually using something. I use this example pretty commonly. because so many people use it on here.

4GB of RAM (8GB recommended)

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/tech-specs.html

Some of these things haven't changed a lot. Many of them just used to output a lot of data to disk where it can now be handled in ram. You should also note that the use of 64 bit applications inherently requires more ram. You're addressing things in larger chunks even if it's just using 0s to fill space.

This.

Consider this, there is still lag reported when the dGPU is used. Considering Intel's integrated GPU is still years behind a good dedicated nVidia card, Haswell isn't going to fix ****. If you read through Anandtech's review, you'll see that what Haswell and Broadwell will do is actually allow Apple to drop the dedicated card completely. They will not make the Ivy Bridge rMBP look like stone-age technology, but they will allow perhaps a bit more space on the logic board and some battery improvement since the integrated chips suck a lot less power than the dedicated chips.

It doesn't have to be an issue of dropping discrete graphics as soon as possible. My point was more that such things would become feasible when powered by integrated graphics. In the mobile and mainstream desktop cpus, Intel allocates a portion of its die space to gpu improvements compared to the era where it was an after thought. This doesn't mean we all need to rid the world of discrete graphics as soon as possible. Their complete absence in Xeons thus far means they will exist somewhere. It's just that having enough power means that higher pixel densities may be feasible in the lighter models within OSX without stuttering. Apple has always debuted such features on the higher end prior to migrating them downward. It allows them to build costs into an inherently high margin unit at the beginning then move to extend growth once that one is nearly tapped out.

 

[iLikeTurtles!]

Between incessant use of . . . [ellipsis] and LOL, I often have a hard time deciding which I hate more on the intarwebz.

what does that have to do with computers being outdated

 

[CFoss]

If there's one thing I've learned being in this industry, it's that you can never predict where technology will be in the future. Right now, tablets are becoming very popular, especially now that Windows, Apple, and Google are all focusing on the mobile market. In fact, the very definition of "Personal Computer" is changing.

With the popularity of taking your computer everywhere (and tablet devices), computers will become smaller and lighter over time. If you exclude professionals and certain clients, there is less and less of a need for expandable, big machines. It's a shame to lose that customizability, and I'm sure there will be manufacturers to cater to that market - But I do believe the majority of them will produce smaller and closed systems.

With the merge of the mobile and desktop OS, touch screen controls will probably become a much bigger part of the experience (just as the trackpad implemented multiple touch with the lastest MacBooks).

4G (or whatever standard of mobile network is implemented by then) will most likely be a part of the MacBook by then. Also, Wireless AC will most likely be a standard then (current MacBook Pros only have Wireless N cards installed).

Screen resolutions are becoming much larger, so the Retina has that covered. The nVidia GT 650M might struggle in a few years time though, even if it is incredibly powerful for the size of machine it's in. It struggles with certain tasks today, so it's going to be interesting to see how it handles tasks in a few years time. The camera will very likely look dated by then too.

Of course, technology is always changing, as I said before. Something radical might come to the computer market by then that requires lots of power.

So what's the verdict? Let's look at the machine today: The MacBook Pro Retina is a beautiful, light, and very fast machine by today's standards. I cannot state how much I love this machine. It's true, it might be outdated in a few years time. That doesn't mean it won't stop being good at what it does today. Plus, by the time the new computers of tomorrow are released, something new will be coming out and rendering them outdated. Purchase what you need today, for you are here today.