you don't think apple wants to compete with e.g. XPS 15 which has "15.6-inch UltraSharp™ 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) touch display" http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-15-9530/pd
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Skip the updated 15" MBP and wait for Skylake
- Thread starter Kulfon
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I take it you don't actually _have_ a rMBP.
I've been running mine in 1920x1200 since I got it in 2012, it looks totally fine: It's crisp and sharp and perfect.
The reason that this weird, intermediary scaling looks good is that at 2880x1800 physical pixel size, the pixels are too small to see. One somewhat surprising effect of that is that intermediary scales looks good, even if it's not a direct 1:2 match. I don't see any flickering or flashing.
I can see the theoretical case with a 1 pixel wide line. But right now on my screen there's lots of those and they all look fine. Maybe they'd look even better with a 4k display? I don't know. All I can say is it's not a big deal.
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Unless something changed since I last checked a few months ago, Windows doesn't properly scale the UX. Also I am hoping that Apple never, ever does a touch display for its laptops. That's just dumb.
Edit: Now that I've read the specs I am envious of the Gorilla Glass Dell is using. Apple has some sort of weird silica which scratches easily and/or comes off. Gorilla Glass would be _awesome_. My previous laptop, a 17" MBP had a glass screen and it looked just as good at 4 years of age as it did on the first day. Would love to have that on the rMBP again.
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I have been using 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions with my 2012 rMBP and I have never observed any flashing. Nor does this make any sense to me. The scaler does not 'try to scale pixel to fit', it does linear interpolation, where parts of logical pixels are blended together to form a physical pixel.
The only case where I can see some quality degradation in scaling modes is with very small text. But it still looks much better than a panel of that native resolution.
What's wrong with discrete CPUs is that most people most of the time don't need it, and there are a lot of compromises made in order to fit the dGPU in the laptop. TDP is higher, energy use is higher even with automated switching.
I used to use gfxCardStatus to disable the discrete GPU but that still leaves me with unneeded hardware that takes up space and costs money.
I'd love a new 15" MacBook Pro with retina screen, USB-C as the only port, and thinner and smaller. A quad core i7 and fast SSD, and longer battery life. That's my dream rMBP.
Let's ask another way, why would you need a dGPU? What are you doing with your laptop that really benefits from that? I'm curious because if you really need it a lot, your battery life will also severely suffer and you will have to find a power outlet and the thing gets really hot and loud.
Well, if you don't need power, buy a MacBook or a MacBook Air, because, you know, some of us actually do need power.
Some of us need ports too. ONE USB-C port is not a solution for a Pro user.
It's choice man, Apple makes a rMBP 15 just for you without a dGPU. However your want to have rMBP with only 1 port is appalling. You basically want a 15 inch iPad on steroids. It's the same argument that rMB owner's make when people complain of the lack of ports: You have MBA/MBP to go to if you want ports! So if Apple takes away all the ports in their 'Pro' line, where are we supposed to go to?
I have a rMB in my household and I tried to use it. Yes, it does run my 'pro software', but it's 5 watt CPU and the lack of I/O kills it. How am I supposed to edit 4K video files on-the-go while simultaneously backing up my work onto a regular HDD? When editing video on my rMBP, I have the camcorder's SD card in the SD card slot, a 512GB Samsung SSD connected to the Thunderbolt port, and a 2TB HDD on USB3. Now tell me how am I supposed to do that with 1 USB-C port? Wifi?! Right....
A rMBP 15 with only 1 port USB-C would cause many people who actually work their laptops to abandon apple.
Me, I use my dGPU everyday in CS6,FCPX, and gaming. Don't tell me to go to a windows laptop as I'm not a big fan of Vegas Pro or Premier....
I think Apple competes in other ways, quite successfully. I'm confident that the 15" MBP outsells the Dell XPS 15 and, more important, that Apple makes vastly more profit doing so.
A MBP with only USB-C ports?! 
I'd be running to the refurbished store as quickly as possible if that were to happen.
USB-C is probably a great idea, but there's no way to know how quickly it'll be adopted and whether anything else will come along in the meantime. It's probably got the best chance of being one connector to rule them all, but it'd be suicidal for Apple to abandon everything in favour of it on their pro machines. We've been promised universal connectors for decades.
Apple have already cut FireWire, ethernet, Kensington locks and separate audio in/out ports from their laptops - I really hope Thunderbolt and SD card slots stick around for a bit.
Is there any way for a new MacBook to connect to a Thunderbolt Display? TB seemed to be this amazing new thing back in 2011, looks to have been neglected a bit by Apple.
I'd be running to the refurbished store as quickly as possible if that were to happen.
USB-C is probably a great idea, but there's no way to know how quickly it'll be adopted and whether anything else will come along in the meantime. It's probably got the best chance of being one connector to rule them all, but it'd be suicidal for Apple to abandon everything in favour of it on their pro machines. We've been promised universal connectors for decades.
Apple have already cut FireWire, ethernet, Kensington locks and separate audio in/out ports from their laptops - I really hope Thunderbolt and SD card slots stick around for a bit.
Is there any way for a new MacBook to connect to a Thunderbolt Display? TB seemed to be this amazing new thing back in 2011, looks to have been neglected a bit by Apple.
I don't understand how you can be so happy Apple makes vastly more profit. That just means the price/value ratio is not in the customers favour. I think it is a bad thing if they make too much profit on the product. I am a consumer not a share holder.
I also think the main competitor is not the XPS 15 but the Asus UX501 which has a pretty good powerful cooling system on top of everything else like price and 960M and ...
"It´s just a die shrink" - the "die shrink" means much less energy lost by heat!
This is VERY important! See for the consequences:
a gain of roundabout 50% less power-consumption for the main performance!
that means:
- could be: more hours working with the same battery
(But salt they will prefer to shrink down battery capacity to serve their ridiculous fetish of "Thinness" instead)
- less heat loss ---> no more fans needed---> more profit for apple
- less heat loss ---> less burned knees
- less heat loss ---> PERHAPS less problems with overheated GPU/CPUs...
It doesn't mean that at all. Apple are highly profitable because they create tremendous value for consumers. The profitability of a company is a good (not perfect) metric of how well they create value. The owners of a company deserve to profit from the value they create.
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A MBP with only USB-C ports?!
That is not going to happen. USB-C cannot replace Thunderbolt because there is not enough bandwidth -- not even close. The future "one connector to rule them all" will be optical, not copper.
And you would be wrong. I owned a rMBP 15" 2013 model from October 2013 to January 2014.
They look fine, when stationary. Once they start moving is when they start flicking. It's very apparent with thin text, 1 pixel lines etc. Even 2 pixel lines, when they start moving they switch from being thick 2 pixel lines to thin 1 pixel lines. It's very distracting.
Try opening an application that hasn't been optimised for retina yet that uses small text and welcome to flash city once you grab the window and move it around the screen. The scaler pixel doubles the width and height of single pixels. So 1 pixel becomes represented by 4 pixels. Then it attempts to downscale that final image (4K) to a 2.8K display. Those 4 pixels then have to fit in the space of 2-3 pixels. This is where the flicking occurs when you move the text around the screen. If the text isn't moving, it's fine. But if you're using a web browser for example and scroll up and down or use another app that isn't yet Retina ready it becomes insanely apparent.
But guys, I don't wanna like debate this with you. I can see it, I have eyeballs, I owned the machine. If you don't see it, great. Not a problem for you. We can't just sit here arguing about what one sees and the other doesn't. It's all in our personal perception.
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This is random, but I was at Best Buy looking at new laptops, and Windows 8 looks like complete **** on all HD displays (2-4K and up). What gives with the low resolution icons and such?
I hate the scaling issues with OS X, but at least the OS doesn't look terrible on a high resolution display. Are the displays just doing Windows wrong?
I hate the scaling issues with OS X, but at least the OS doesn't look terrible on a high resolution display. Are the displays just doing Windows wrong?
Depends on what you have. If you have a modern laptop that you can hold off on i'd definitely hold off. I'll bet anything that there's a redesign later in the year as well with skylake. If your laptop is on it's last legs and it's an absolute pain to use you will be more than thrilled with the retina display, flash storage, and overall speed of the machine.
AMD is junk cause they've got old tech!
They just keep rebranding and slapping on new names to old stuff.
AMD is junk cause they've got old tech!
They just keep rebranding and slapping on new names to old stuff.
You think no one at Apple was capable of evaluating the performance of a discrete GPU before selecting it for the mid-2015 MBP? You think the selection was made based only on a comparison of AMD and Nvidia marketing claims?