When the unibody design first came out, it was very easy to look at the older design and feel like it was rightfully outdated. It was a rightfully better design, one that was as practical as it was elegant. It was far easier to repair, and it allowed for Apple to make some serious improvements to things well beyond aesthetics.
Actually, the shift from cMBP to uMBP was purely aesthetic. Functionality was the same (aside DVI and FW400 port) and the internals were barely updated (bump to 1066mhz ram, bump to 9600m from 8600m, c2d cpu bump), the computer while looked completely different wasn't significantly lighter, more quiet, more portable, it even took them 1gen to update the display to a bigger resolution! It is more durable and robust though.
As far as practical goes, the first revision already took away everything that was so practical about it (hinge replaceable battery and drive)...
I should know, I waited for the update, it was my first laptop.
Today, I can't look at the retina and feel like that older unibody design is all that dated. Beyond that, I can't look at the retina and feel like it's a BETTER design, because it simply isn't. Yes, it's thinner, and it's definitely still a looker. But that beauty is only skin deep, and to me (and I think for a lot of people) the beauty of what's inside is just as important if not moreso. Glued battery is conceptually ugly. Soldered RAM (while acceptable on the MacBook Air) is conceptually ugly on a notebook designed for creative professionals. A proprietary SSD type and screws that are designed to keep me out of my own computer (where the previous design almost invited me to take a screw driver to it) is conceptually ugly. Otherwise, compared to the older style, the newer style really isn't that much prettier. Also, for those buying Ivy Bridge-powered models, the two machines are just as old as each other.
Newer design and the clamor over it is entirely superficial. In the case of the 2008/9 redesign, it was much more than a superficial change; the computer was way better engineered. In the case of the retina redesign, we have a nicer screen, a needlessly thinner body, and a whole lot of compromise as a result. I see nothing to clamor about.
As I said, retina is a completely re-engineered laptop that
looks completely the same on the outside.
Its more quiet, it has a brad new screen, it has impressive battery life (given the screen it has to power), it has thermals so good they could overclock the GPU, while running tons more silent then its predecessor.
You're very likely to hit other walls before you hit the 16GB soldered ram as a bottleneck.
Needlessly thinner body? This is arguable. It is a laptop, and portability is something a lot of people care about. I personally wanted a 13" unibody but it lacked FW port.
While I do miss 2nd drive bay - which is much more annoying to me than soldered ram - I'll get by. one battery cell less and an mSATA port would make this machine perfect.
I won't argue with you on your point about FireWire 800, but I will about Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet is superior to WiFi when it comes to nearly every use. With computer to computer file transfers, it's way faster and way more reliable than WiFi, and when it comes to Internet connection, it's much more reliable which tends to result in something that feels like faster internet when it's really just a substantially less amount of packets being dropped.
Also, if you are unfortunate enough to have a router with slowly worsening wireless problems but with consistent ethernet performance, having Ethernet is useful as all hell. Really, it's no biggie, I have the complete collection of Apple Thunderbolt cables (save for the 0.5m one that they just released), so them giving me an extra Thunderbolt port in lieu of the Ethernet port isn't a big deal to me, but to say it's not a useful port is something I disagree with.
Never said it isn't useful, I said it isn't hindered at all by being accessible via universal adapter (TB).
As I said, people still use a LOT of VGA because projectors isn't something people just replace. They replace it when they die and a lot of them are still accepting VGA.
Heck, I was using a 8k lux projector at 1080p via VGA just a week ago...
Having just gotten a top of the line non-retina 15" MacBook Pro, I feel like by the time it is naturally time to replace this machine with a newer one, I will be substantially more comfortable with the changes that the retina MacBook Pro models are bringing with them today than I am today. I have roughly five years to enjoy the software that I have that will never be updated with retina support, and I have roughly five years to ease into the idea that my optical drive will eventually be external and used less and less frequently. I will have roughly five years to enjoy relative upgradeability, and hopefully in that time, SSD prices go down and capacities (especially those of the mSATA variety that Apple will likely use the hell out of) will go up. Hopefully, in five years, a majority of Apple apps that will run on whatever OS Apple is shipping on those MacBook Pros will be retina-optimized. In the meantime, I am fully convinced that what I have is the perfect machine given where we are in this retina transition.
I haven't used ODD for a year when I bought mine, thats when I replaced it with a 2nd drive caddy.
I don't miss it at all.
Mind you if there weren't some of us *******s who did buy retina, transition would never happen - for better or worse.
