So I've sold my 2010 Macbook Pro in favor of a new 2012 Macbook Pro with retina display. As I see there are many people hesitant on making the purchase, I'd like to share my experiences with it as I go along. Also, feel free to ask questions, I'll try to answer most of them.
--- 19/06/2012 ---
First thing I'd like to go on about is its form factor. When I took it out of the box, it seemed so little! (Definitely an improvement.) When I lifted it though, it wasn't as light as I've expected. Surely it is a tad lighter than my previous model, but by no means is it as light as the air. The new MagSafe isn't that bad. Surely it is different, and I liked the L sized previous model, but when someone trips over the cord the T will simply be better. The overall quality is superb as always with MacBooks, it doesn't feel fragile at all.
I booted it up and went straight ahead to the software updates. Surely, over a gigabyte of updates were available. After installing all that and rebooting, I configured everything according to my needs. The first thing I noticed was the absolute lovely screen! The text is so crisp, a definite improvement on my previous model. (I spend most my time reading, it'll surely come in handy.)
So I started Safari and was a little anxious. I read that many people complained about lag whilst scrolling, I have to say I haven't experienced anything like that. Scrolling is butter smooth like always. I did notice however that on some websites with low quality pictures, it looks worse than before! Well, more than likely it looks the same, but if all text on a website looks superb, "crappy" images suddenly look a lot worse.
As I was typing some e-mails, I noticed the different keyboard. It surely is a lot lighter to the touch than before. I don't quite like this but it might need some getting used to. I guess this comes down to personal preference.
Temperature-wise, as I'm browsing the web and downloading Diablo III (Guess what I'll be testing out next.) the CPU sits at 40°C and the GPU at 50°C. Quite a bit cooler than my previous model, and it seems that the heat is distributed in a different way. The whole body is warm to the touch but there is no single spot that is hotter than another. Whilst checking the temperature I noticed that the battery already went through 4 cycles. I guess Apple wanted to have it fully charged before it got to me.
Playing Diablo III was quite amusing. The quality of graphics is superb. Do note I haven't touched any resolution settings yet, not in my system settings nor in Diablo. The resolution I've been playing at was 1440x900 and my FPS jumped between 50 and 60 whilst in combat. (Quite good if you ask me.) I was playing on battery and it drained quite quickly, I guess the 650M isn't that power efficient? But there was no lag and the FPS was very decent. The temperature rose though, with the GPU hitting 70°C after about 10 minutes. I was surprised by the noise level of the fans though, I noticed that they kicked in, but they weren't as "in your face" as in my previous Macbook Pro. All by all I'm very satisfied that I'll be able to do some light gaming whilst on the go. I'm also downloading World of Warcraft, which to my knowledge isn't "retina optimized" so we'll see as that goes.
--- edit 1 ---
World of Warcraft seems to be heavier than Diablo, with the resolution still at 1440x900 and the graphics set to Ultra, I couldn't get more than 30FPS in Orgrimmar and when in the heavily populated areas, the frame rate dropped way below that. When I set the graphics to High the FPS got steady at 60, which is a vast improvement. I quickly jumped into the Random Raid Finder and whilst on Deathwing's back the FPS did not go below 50, which is great. The temperature didn't go above 65°C for the GPU and the fans were pretty quiet at 4000rpm. - I'll play around with the resolution of both the system settings, Diablo and World of Warcraft tomorrow to see how it impacts things.
I love electronic music, when I heard the speakers were better than before, I was quite excited. As a reference, I've used this track to test the speakers. Sadly, it still lacks some serious bass, but other than that, the sound is absolutely great. My mother likes Adele and Birdy, when playing this song, the speakers really amazed me. They can't match the built-in speakers on the iMac though. I dare to say the speakers are one of the best I've heard in many laptops. Never the less, thanks to the mini toslink plug and airplay, I'll still be enjoying my music.
There it goes! Battery ran out. My gosh! Did those 7 hours pass already? No, not really. But I have to admit I've been playing some Diablo and World of Warcraft as well as having both the screen and key illumination brightness set at 100%. Recharging now, will do some serious testing on the battery tomorrow. It seems as it takes about a hour and a half for the battery to fully recharge.
Whilst recharging the battery I decreased my screen brightness. Welcome glare! Whilst the glare is barely noticeable at 50% brightness, when going below that the glare becomes apparent. For me this is only a slight annoyance ever since I had the same glare well above 50% brightness on my old MBP. Less layers of glass on the screen really help it appears.
The battery is fully charged, it took little over a hour and a half for it to get charged. I'm off to bed now. I wonder how much of the battery will be left when I wake up tomorrow morning. - Please put any questions below, I'll try to answer them ASAP!
--- 20/06/2012 ---
When I woke up this morning I immediately checked my Macbook. (Bad habit, I know.) I quite miss the sleep and battery indicator lights. I had to open the Macbook in order to see the battery levels. I was pleasantly surprised. With the brightness set to the second lowest level, and the machine at idle, it sat at 99% (After 12 hours of sleep.) The remaining battery life? 11 hours (Yes, eleven.) and a couple minutes. I know that I shouldn't trust these statistics, but still! The Apple site indicates that under low load and brightness set to 50%, the machine will run 7 hours, alas, the 11 hours seem plausible.
The screen was dusty already, so that hasn't changed. The keys are also still easily smudged. (Or I'm just too OCD with new products.) The brightness, when set at maximum is not as bright as the previous model. However, it'll still hurt my eyes when looking at it for a long period of time. (Alas the brightness is good, lol.)
--- edit 1 ---
As I said, I was too excited for the battery. When browsing with a couple tabs open and the brightness upped to the third lowest, the battery jumped to 98% and displays 7 hours 45 minutes remaining. Not as good as the 11 hours I saw before, but, this would be accurate with what Apple said.
I did promise to play around with the resolution settings today, and that is exactly what I did. First, in the system settings I was greeted by this slider. Different scaling options, I guess for different needs. The lowest mode, 1024x640, looks plain ugly. (Just like it did on any other monitor by the way.) Everything is way too big! No way I could work like this, so I kicked it up a notch, 1280x800 is usable, but it would be a waste. The default, 1440x900 looks superb. I do not need any more screen real-estate, by thus this resolution suits my well.
My previous Macbook however, ran at 1680x1050 and the Retina Macbook Pro can do the same. So indeed everything gets a little tinier and there's more screen real-estate. There was no lag at all and I didn't notice an increase of processing power, heat or fan speed. Pretty decent for the people in need of a higher resolution I guess. The highest option, 1920x1200 looked way too tiny for me. (I have bad eyesight though.) I also noticed that there was a slight increase of processing power and the bottom of the device got a little warmer. Scrolling through Safari was still smooth, but not as butter smooth as I've experienced before. I dare to say 1920x1200 isn't really optimal to use.
Moving on I started Diablo 3. With the default resolution at 1440x900, it ran at a solid 50FPS whilst going into the 60's at times. So I - again - upped the resolution to 1680x1050 and the FPS dropped to anything between 30 and 40. Still playable, but not as good as before. Playing at 1920x1200 had the same results, but it didn't look as good anymore. It's hard to describe. When I upped the resolution to the maximum (2880x1800) the game looked amazing. Never before have I seen anything like it! But the frames dropped even deeper jumping between 10 and 20FPS and that, for me at least, is not playable anymore. Without a doubt the default resolution at 1440x900 is the best and by no means does it look bad. 2880x1800 looks incredible, but unless you like to play at about 10FPS, it simply won't work. Do keep in mind that all of the above is using the Mac clients, which don't always run as good as the Windows clients. I've seen Battlefield 3 via Bootcamp and it looks superb and very playable.
edit 2
I came home and decided to install iWork and some drivers for my printer so I have everything I need installed. DOH! I don't have a disc drive. No worries, I'll just boot up this old Windows machine and enable disc sharing. Even on my Dell U2711 monitor I suddenly noticed the pixels! What a struggle to get the disc to work. (Though I'm sure that the issues were caused by the Windows machine.) Once iWork was installed I moved on to the printer drivers. An even bigger PITA. Seems like the Retina Macbook Pro are running on a modified version of OS X Lion and by thus, it was not supported. Luckily, after some tinkering, I got it all to work. After some mild usage throughout the day I still have 6 hours of battery left. I went ahead and did the final step of personalization, adding some wallpapers. The retina wallpapers I found are gorgeous, but damn they are big! (5MB+ per wallpaper.) I guess quality has it's size.
Another thing I've noticed is that the Macbook doesn't get as hot when placed on my bed. (Bad habit.) This is due to the vents being off to the side now rather than on the bottom(ish). Now I don't have to be scared of frying this thing when I'm feeling lazy.
When I read about the device being able to run 3 additional screens I just had to test it out. I have both a 24 inch and 27 inch monitor connected through mini-displayport to display port adapters and my 42 inch television connected via HDMI. I was able to play back video on ALL monitors without any lag and it seems like the device had no issues with it at all. (Not that I'd EVER need all of this, it was nice to test out.)
Happy to say that my battery lasted little over 8 hours whilst browsing the web with numerous tabs open. Great! So I plugged it in and started playing some Diablo 3. When I got done, I noticed my battery almost did not charge! Odd. When I checked my battery health, it's only at 99% (Only 6 cycles!) I hope it does not go to 98% in such a quick manner. The biggest bummer however was that there's already a very tiny - nearly invisible, but certainly tangible.) piece off the lower screen. I know that it was not there on arrival but still! Ever since it's not really visible to the eye, I hope it'll stay like that. Currently just watching some vids and browsing the web whilst the battery charges and that'll be the end of the day for me.
--- end ---
The text above will be updated as I go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll try to answer / test as much as possible. There are numerous people also sharing their experiences down below, so be sure to scroll through!
--- 19/06/2012 ---
First thing I'd like to go on about is its form factor. When I took it out of the box, it seemed so little! (Definitely an improvement.) When I lifted it though, it wasn't as light as I've expected. Surely it is a tad lighter than my previous model, but by no means is it as light as the air. The new MagSafe isn't that bad. Surely it is different, and I liked the L sized previous model, but when someone trips over the cord the T will simply be better. The overall quality is superb as always with MacBooks, it doesn't feel fragile at all.
I booted it up and went straight ahead to the software updates. Surely, over a gigabyte of updates were available. After installing all that and rebooting, I configured everything according to my needs. The first thing I noticed was the absolute lovely screen! The text is so crisp, a definite improvement on my previous model. (I spend most my time reading, it'll surely come in handy.)
So I started Safari and was a little anxious. I read that many people complained about lag whilst scrolling, I have to say I haven't experienced anything like that. Scrolling is butter smooth like always. I did notice however that on some websites with low quality pictures, it looks worse than before! Well, more than likely it looks the same, but if all text on a website looks superb, "crappy" images suddenly look a lot worse.
As I was typing some e-mails, I noticed the different keyboard. It surely is a lot lighter to the touch than before. I don't quite like this but it might need some getting used to. I guess this comes down to personal preference.
Temperature-wise, as I'm browsing the web and downloading Diablo III (Guess what I'll be testing out next.) the CPU sits at 40°C and the GPU at 50°C. Quite a bit cooler than my previous model, and it seems that the heat is distributed in a different way. The whole body is warm to the touch but there is no single spot that is hotter than another. Whilst checking the temperature I noticed that the battery already went through 4 cycles. I guess Apple wanted to have it fully charged before it got to me.
Playing Diablo III was quite amusing. The quality of graphics is superb. Do note I haven't touched any resolution settings yet, not in my system settings nor in Diablo. The resolution I've been playing at was 1440x900 and my FPS jumped between 50 and 60 whilst in combat. (Quite good if you ask me.) I was playing on battery and it drained quite quickly, I guess the 650M isn't that power efficient? But there was no lag and the FPS was very decent. The temperature rose though, with the GPU hitting 70°C after about 10 minutes. I was surprised by the noise level of the fans though, I noticed that they kicked in, but they weren't as "in your face" as in my previous Macbook Pro. All by all I'm very satisfied that I'll be able to do some light gaming whilst on the go. I'm also downloading World of Warcraft, which to my knowledge isn't "retina optimized" so we'll see as that goes.
--- edit 1 ---
World of Warcraft seems to be heavier than Diablo, with the resolution still at 1440x900 and the graphics set to Ultra, I couldn't get more than 30FPS in Orgrimmar and when in the heavily populated areas, the frame rate dropped way below that. When I set the graphics to High the FPS got steady at 60, which is a vast improvement. I quickly jumped into the Random Raid Finder and whilst on Deathwing's back the FPS did not go below 50, which is great. The temperature didn't go above 65°C for the GPU and the fans were pretty quiet at 4000rpm. - I'll play around with the resolution of both the system settings, Diablo and World of Warcraft tomorrow to see how it impacts things.
I love electronic music, when I heard the speakers were better than before, I was quite excited. As a reference, I've used this track to test the speakers. Sadly, it still lacks some serious bass, but other than that, the sound is absolutely great. My mother likes Adele and Birdy, when playing this song, the speakers really amazed me. They can't match the built-in speakers on the iMac though. I dare to say the speakers are one of the best I've heard in many laptops. Never the less, thanks to the mini toslink plug and airplay, I'll still be enjoying my music.
There it goes! Battery ran out. My gosh! Did those 7 hours pass already? No, not really. But I have to admit I've been playing some Diablo and World of Warcraft as well as having both the screen and key illumination brightness set at 100%. Recharging now, will do some serious testing on the battery tomorrow. It seems as it takes about a hour and a half for the battery to fully recharge.
Whilst recharging the battery I decreased my screen brightness. Welcome glare! Whilst the glare is barely noticeable at 50% brightness, when going below that the glare becomes apparent. For me this is only a slight annoyance ever since I had the same glare well above 50% brightness on my old MBP. Less layers of glass on the screen really help it appears.
The battery is fully charged, it took little over a hour and a half for it to get charged. I'm off to bed now. I wonder how much of the battery will be left when I wake up tomorrow morning. - Please put any questions below, I'll try to answer them ASAP!
--- 20/06/2012 ---
When I woke up this morning I immediately checked my Macbook. (Bad habit, I know.) I quite miss the sleep and battery indicator lights. I had to open the Macbook in order to see the battery levels. I was pleasantly surprised. With the brightness set to the second lowest level, and the machine at idle, it sat at 99% (After 12 hours of sleep.) The remaining battery life? 11 hours (Yes, eleven.) and a couple minutes. I know that I shouldn't trust these statistics, but still! The Apple site indicates that under low load and brightness set to 50%, the machine will run 7 hours, alas, the 11 hours seem plausible.
The screen was dusty already, so that hasn't changed. The keys are also still easily smudged. (Or I'm just too OCD with new products.) The brightness, when set at maximum is not as bright as the previous model. However, it'll still hurt my eyes when looking at it for a long period of time. (Alas the brightness is good, lol.)
--- edit 1 ---
As I said, I was too excited for the battery. When browsing with a couple tabs open and the brightness upped to the third lowest, the battery jumped to 98% and displays 7 hours 45 minutes remaining. Not as good as the 11 hours I saw before, but, this would be accurate with what Apple said.
I did promise to play around with the resolution settings today, and that is exactly what I did. First, in the system settings I was greeted by this slider. Different scaling options, I guess for different needs. The lowest mode, 1024x640, looks plain ugly. (Just like it did on any other monitor by the way.) Everything is way too big! No way I could work like this, so I kicked it up a notch, 1280x800 is usable, but it would be a waste. The default, 1440x900 looks superb. I do not need any more screen real-estate, by thus this resolution suits my well.
My previous Macbook however, ran at 1680x1050 and the Retina Macbook Pro can do the same. So indeed everything gets a little tinier and there's more screen real-estate. There was no lag at all and I didn't notice an increase of processing power, heat or fan speed. Pretty decent for the people in need of a higher resolution I guess. The highest option, 1920x1200 looked way too tiny for me. (I have bad eyesight though.) I also noticed that there was a slight increase of processing power and the bottom of the device got a little warmer. Scrolling through Safari was still smooth, but not as butter smooth as I've experienced before. I dare to say 1920x1200 isn't really optimal to use.
Moving on I started Diablo 3. With the default resolution at 1440x900, it ran at a solid 50FPS whilst going into the 60's at times. So I - again - upped the resolution to 1680x1050 and the FPS dropped to anything between 30 and 40. Still playable, but not as good as before. Playing at 1920x1200 had the same results, but it didn't look as good anymore. It's hard to describe. When I upped the resolution to the maximum (2880x1800) the game looked amazing. Never before have I seen anything like it! But the frames dropped even deeper jumping between 10 and 20FPS and that, for me at least, is not playable anymore. Without a doubt the default resolution at 1440x900 is the best and by no means does it look bad. 2880x1800 looks incredible, but unless you like to play at about 10FPS, it simply won't work. Do keep in mind that all of the above is using the Mac clients, which don't always run as good as the Windows clients. I've seen Battlefield 3 via Bootcamp and it looks superb and very playable.
edit 2
I came home and decided to install iWork and some drivers for my printer so I have everything I need installed. DOH! I don't have a disc drive. No worries, I'll just boot up this old Windows machine and enable disc sharing. Even on my Dell U2711 monitor I suddenly noticed the pixels! What a struggle to get the disc to work. (Though I'm sure that the issues were caused by the Windows machine.) Once iWork was installed I moved on to the printer drivers. An even bigger PITA. Seems like the Retina Macbook Pro are running on a modified version of OS X Lion and by thus, it was not supported. Luckily, after some tinkering, I got it all to work. After some mild usage throughout the day I still have 6 hours of battery left. I went ahead and did the final step of personalization, adding some wallpapers. The retina wallpapers I found are gorgeous, but damn they are big! (5MB+ per wallpaper.) I guess quality has it's size.
Another thing I've noticed is that the Macbook doesn't get as hot when placed on my bed. (Bad habit.) This is due to the vents being off to the side now rather than on the bottom(ish). Now I don't have to be scared of frying this thing when I'm feeling lazy.
When I read about the device being able to run 3 additional screens I just had to test it out. I have both a 24 inch and 27 inch monitor connected through mini-displayport to display port adapters and my 42 inch television connected via HDMI. I was able to play back video on ALL monitors without any lag and it seems like the device had no issues with it at all. (Not that I'd EVER need all of this, it was nice to test out.)
Happy to say that my battery lasted little over 8 hours whilst browsing the web with numerous tabs open. Great! So I plugged it in and started playing some Diablo 3. When I got done, I noticed my battery almost did not charge! Odd. When I checked my battery health, it's only at 99% (Only 6 cycles!) I hope it does not go to 98% in such a quick manner. The biggest bummer however was that there's already a very tiny - nearly invisible, but certainly tangible.) piece off the lower screen. I know that it was not there on arrival but still! Ever since it's not really visible to the eye, I hope it'll stay like that. Currently just watching some vids and browsing the web whilst the battery charges and that'll be the end of the day for me.
--- end ---
The text above will be updated as I go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll try to answer / test as much as possible. There are numerous people also sharing their experiences down below, so be sure to scroll through!
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