Hey, i own a 15.4 inch MacBook Pro late 2011 with Core i7 / 2.6Ghz / 750HDD / 8GB RAM! I was thinking of ditching it and buy the entry level MBP 13 with retina display as its the affordable model for me. What do you think? Is it worth it? Or stay as i am with my beast?
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Is the MBP Retina 13 worth it?
- Thread starter Shmoham
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Id say no, your laptop at the moment is pretty much the same as the entry retina 13" (probably better) and it's only 2 years old
If:
1) You don't need more processing power (losing 2 CPU cores and higher turbo frequencies)
2) You don't need the ability to upgrade RAM
3) You don't need the ability to upgrade storage
4) You don't mind losing physical screen real estate
5) You don't mind losing the optical disk drive
6) You don't mind losing the physical battery indicator
7) You don't mind losing the kensington lock slot
8) You don't mind losing storage capacity
9) You don't mind losing the higher quality speakers (with grilles)
10) You don't mind losing the ability to use optical output
11) You don't mind losing the super-hard-to-accidentally-press power button to the top right
12) You don't mind losing the Ethernet and Firewire ports
13) You don't mind losing discrete graphics
14) You don't mind having lower battery life
15) You can accept the fact that you'd have to fork out some extra moneh...
Then I'd say... go for it!
1) You don't need more processing power (losing 2 CPU cores and higher turbo frequencies)
2) You don't need the ability to upgrade RAM
3) You don't need the ability to upgrade storage
4) You don't mind losing physical screen real estate
5) You don't mind losing the optical disk drive
6) You don't mind losing the physical battery indicator
7) You don't mind losing the kensington lock slot
8) You don't mind losing storage capacity
9) You don't mind losing the higher quality speakers (with grilles)
10) You don't mind losing the ability to use optical output
11) You don't mind losing the super-hard-to-accidentally-press power button to the top right
12) You don't mind losing the Ethernet and Firewire ports
13) You don't mind losing discrete graphics
14) You don't mind having lower battery life
15) You can accept the fact that you'd have to fork out some extra moneh...
Then I'd say... go for it!
Why would you trade your current computer for one that won't perform as well? Get an SSD for your current MBP instead.
Lack of discrete graphics, yeah, may be a problem
In order to play a certain kind of games, i.e. classic games ported to OS X using the popular SDL library, I depended on the dedicated GPU to render the game resolution correctly on my 15" Retina display. If accidentally (and that happens quite often) the integrated GPU was used for the game graphics because of failed automatic switching (something failing in SDL's hacky logic, I presume), the image would appear stretched and misplaced on the display. So while this issue is easily fixable on 15" MacBooks since you can use their discrete GPU, I don't know how 13" ones can cope with it, unless SDL team issues something about it
Small Retina MacBook Pro seemed like a non-starter for me, partly because of that, and also because of the insufficient 128GB disk space.
Small Retina MacBook Pro seemed like a non-starter for me, partly because of that, and also because of the insufficient 128GB disk space.
I wont get it after all what you said honestly! Thanks a lot for the reply
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I thought having a more compact design would be better since i'm tired of carrying it around! It's a bit heavy and i was amazed by the retina display on notebooks at first!