The chances of a February refresh are low (albeit non-existent)...but even if it does happen, you're going to be talking about a very minor tweak. And, if the review really is coming, I can't imagine it will come later than mid-January anyway.
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Waiting for Anand's Haswell rMBP Review Megathread
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The chances of a February refresh are low (albeit non-existent)...but even if it does happen, you're going to be talking about a very minor tweak. And, if the review really is coming, I can't imagine it will come later than mid-January anyway.
And in October when the new bookpros came out we'd have been saying we can't imagine it will only come out in late December...
Are you working for Anand like Mr Hellhammer? How do you know his travel schedule and comment on the expected date of the review?
So far, Mr Hellhammer had commented that the review is expected "before holidays" which he had subsequently clarified it as "before X-mas". He later commented that his previous comment reflects his view and Mr Anand may push his review to mid-January due to CES. This has already caused frustatation, and now you are telling "end of January". Would you mind telling what your comment is based on?
While true, it's also the case that if something comes out too late, it's not even worth doing and potentially is a negative with respect to credibility. They're pretty close to that inflection point.
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Anand has commented on his travel and work schedule on his own Twitter feed. I'm sure the poster applied some reasonable common sense to that public information to arrive at his (reasonable) conjecture.
My comment is based on Anand responding to me via twitter telling me that its almost done and he simply hasn't had the time to finish it due to work/traveling etc. If you look at his December 4th tweet to myself, that should help you a bit. I would expect is after the holidays man, its only a review. I'm pretty sure your not deciding on buying a rMBP solely based off of his review, otherwise your probably looking at the wrong computer to buy in the first place.
Thanks for the reply. It really pisses me off people are replying to questions not directed to them and based on their own assumptions.
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anandshimpi @anandshimpi 21 Dec
Haswell rMBP review is still in the works, running in tandem with Mac Pro
anandshimpi @anandshimpi 21 Dec
@nzaghen running some additional rMBP15 data points in tandem with Boot Camp/Mac Pro testing right now
follow his twitter @anandshimpi
In tandem with Mac Pro? It does not make sense for me as they are totally different class of computers serving to different market segments. But there is nothing we can do, after all it is his review. At the very least he could have told that he would review them together in the first place because the release date of the Mac Pro was known by everybody.
Expect another tweet soon saying "I would like to comment on the future directions of the rMBP/Mac Pro and therefore I need to wait for the CES in January".
So lemme get this straight. You're saying that it makes no sense for one of the most authoritative, capable, and qualified hardware/software tech review sites on the internet to prepare reviews - for cross-market hardware - in parallel?
Cool story, bro.
Personally I don't think they are serving two different market segments. They both have Pro in their name for a reason. The high end 15" rMBP even has a whole section dedicated to Final Cut Pro editing on its product pages.
Frankly if you're a video editor who uses a Mac Pro but also has to work in the field then the Retina MacBook Pro is going to be the product you're buying to take with you. Apple knows this, Anandtech knows this. That is why the comparison is a good one.
Also don't forget they both have the same SSD options, the same SSD performance (perfect for 4K editing) and the low-end Mac Pro has a Quad Core CPU just like the 15" rMBP. And in-fact the rMBP's Quad Core may actually be faster, another good reason to test both systems.
I think I should modify my statement: it of course makes sense to compare rMBP to Mac Pro to and also MBA and include all the benchmarks. But delaying the rMBP just for Mac Pro (if that is the case) which was released 2 months after the rMBP does not make sense. He could publish the rMBP review and include the benchmarks of rMBP and MBA so that anyone considering purchasing either of them would benefit. When the Mac Pro review is published, anyone considering purchasing rMBP or Mac Pro would benefit as they can compare the benchmarks of both computers. Regardless, considering the December release date of Mac Pro was known to the public since June, it would have been much better to state that rMBP would be reviewed in tandem with Mac Pro in the first place.
I don't think it was his intention to delay the rMBP review until the Mac Pro came out. He just had a lot of stuff going on and now the rMBP review isn't out and he has the Mac Pro to review so he has decided to do a comparison.
it has been 64 days since MacBook was released. at 164 days I am giving up, I feel like I am waiting for the PowerBook g5, at some point it's just old news.
And yet, true. Check it out for yourself.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/289311
That is a Mac Pro 4 Core, 3.7GHz. The brand new 2013 Mac Pro.
Score:
Single: 3249
Multicore: 12939
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/214094
And this is my own 15" Retina MacBook Pro:
Single: 3360
Multicore: 12935
It beats it on Single, and meets it on Multi-core.
Why is this? Well Haswell is a newer architecture, the XEON is using Ivy Bridge-E which is quite an old architecture (even though the processor itself is new).
Both tests are 32-bit ones as the 32-bit version of geekbench is free. Here is a 64-bit score of my system:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/292100
Single: 3713
Multicore: 14714
This is so far the only Mac Pro tested on the website using the Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2. It is only a 32-bit result (the 64-bit copy of Geekbench costs money) so you'll need to wait a few more days I expect to get a 64-bit result to compare to although I don't think it'll tell a different story, both very similar in performance within a few points on multi with the Haswell pulling ahead on Single thread.
The funniest part about this (or sad depending on your perspective) is the stock Mac Pro with the Quad Core costs £2,499 - You can get a MacBook Pro with a 2.6GHz CPU / 512GB SSD / 16GB RAM for £2,399 which gets you 256GB more storage and 4GB more RAM over the Mac Pro. For less money. And as I've just shown, the same CPU performance. So you're getting twice the storage and more RAM while retaining the same CPU performance.
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Will we have a Christmas miracle?
i don't know. mr. hammer had mentioned before the holidays. he has not posted on here in about a week.
Perhaps Anand has "one of the most authoritative, capable, and qualified hardware/software tech review sites on the internet". However, over two months after product release, this pending review has less and less utility with everyday that passes. Indeed, this far after launch and the holidays, the review has little value to a large number of people.
Sure enough, a number of people posting in this thread, including me, had expectations that were too high for this "authoritative, capable, and qualified" review site.
I don't think the issue is expectations being "too high" as much as they are out of kilter. This isn't a significant product release or update. In fact, it's extremely incremental. The review will likely dive into a few topics that are of interest to techies but really shouldn't influence the "do I buy or do I not buy" decision.
In that light, the review being late actually doesn't make much difference. It also means that the argument about there being "less utility" actually doesn't hold, either. We're talking about building up a repository of long-term knowledge, so whether it came after the launch, now, or even next month is mostly inconsequential.
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