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Retina MacBook Pro review as a Mac Pro owner

62 points by rkudeshi 14y ago

cromwellian 14y ago
or, you could buy an AlienWare Aurora mid-range, where $2200 gets you the following: 4.1 Ghz 4 cores. 16Gb 1600Mhz memory Dual 1.5 GB Nvidia 660's 1TB SATA. If you want to spend $75 more you can get a 1TB RAID0 SSD/HD hybrid. Of course, if you're willing to spend about $4000, you can build a Linux PC that will smoke any Mac product by a 2:1 margin in performance. This is coming from a Mac Pro user, Apple's neglect of this line has disappointed me. When I bought my 2005 Mac pro, it was the best quad-core system you could buy from a cost/performance. Now high-end rigs are ridiculously overpriced. The only thing you lose with a high end Linux PC is the Retina display and portability, but I do most of my coding at my desk, and I'll take a 30" non-Retina display any day of the week until someone can ship a 30" Retina display. I prize actual number of readable windows I can cram onto the screen over minor improvements in e-Book reading. Honestly, I'd buy two machines. The cheapest MacBook Air for moving about (or just use an iPad), but a Linux Desktop for real work.
- notJim 14y ago
  > The only thing you lose with a high end Linux PC is the Retina display and portability This is far, far from the truth, based on my current experiences trying Linux from an OS X/Windows world. Other things you lose: sane GUIs and desktop environment, quality font rendering (both Mac and Windows do it better), reasonable design sensibilities out of the box, stability, just general freedom from constant frustration. I'm working on a post about my experiences that will provide more details about my experiences (and for what it's worth, I have not given up on Linux yet), but if you're used to OS X or even Windows, switching to Linux is not an easy trade off. I'm trying to remove the angry from the post so that it can be more constructive, which is proving to be difficult :).
  - cromwellian 14y ago
    I've been developing on Unix for 20 years, I don't have many frustrations with it, about the same level as OSX, certainly not "constant frustration" There are two things I like to do with a powerful computer: 1) Play high end performance sensitive games like Battlefield 3. Apple gets crushed in gaming performance. 2) Write code. The slower my computer is, the less productive I am. I spend 99% of my time in the command line, IDE, and in the web browser. Look, you are talking to someone who is a big fan of OS/X (but HATED non-Unix Apple OS). OS/X was the Unix I always wanted. But Apple simply is not competitive at the bleeding edge of computing power, they are making devices for consumers, overpriced devices. I care about buying the most amount of computing power I can for a given $. I like getting under the hood of my hardware. With the generic PC, I can build my own systems to spec, I can tune it the way I want. I'm not saying that this is for everyone, but if you are someone who owned a Mac Pro, a Retina MacBook is not a replacement when other desktops with far more power for the $ are available, and the Retina screen is mostly irrelevant when people with Mac Pros typically had giant monitors attached. I'm not saying the Retina MacBook is not a good laptop, in fact, it is a great, if not the best laptop. But I don't believe in desktop replacements. Portability trades off power due to weight, size, battery, and heat constraints. People with highend desktops usually don't want to make those tradeoffs, in fact, they typically make the opposite ones: 1000W power supplies, liquid cooling, ultra heavy heatsinks, etc.
    - notJim 14y ago
      I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I have some extra requirements, and Linux doesn't come anywhere close to meeting them, at least not out of the box. I suspect that many OS X users have similar expectations to me. I do the same things as you with my computers, except with the addition that I am very picky about aesthetics and usability. The reason I wanted to use Linux was because I wanted to use my powerful gaming system as a development machine, and didn't want to go the hackintosh route, but my experience seems to indicated that it's going to take a lot of work to bring the Linux install to an acceptable standard.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - learc83 14y ago
    >quality font rendering That depends on your distro. You can also install the infinality patches (which are being merged into stock freetype2), and the result is better font rendering than OS X or Windows.
    - notJim 14y ago
      Yeah, I was very excited to see that merge (and of course the patch in the first place.) I haven't tried the patch myself yet, but I will do so when I get the time and motivation. As far as it being better, I was under the impression that Infinality was based on papers published by Microsoft stemming from their work on ClearType. Are there particular distros you could recommend that have better font rendering compared to Ubuntu?
      - learc83 14y ago
        >As far as it being better, I was under the impression that Infinality was based on papers published by Microsoft stemming from their work on ClearType. It was, but the author has made several tweaks. There are numerous tweaks you can make, but 3 of the settings are OS X, Windows, and Infinality. The Infinality settings are fairly different and in my opinion (and a lot of other linux users opinion's) it looks significantly better than either Windows or OS X. As far as distros there are several that tweak the font rendering Ubuntu being the most obvious, but if you're a typography guy I'd just go with Infinality it's defiantly worth it.
- cromwellian 14y ago
  Wow, I'm amazed people are downvoting the fact that a) Apple has been neglecting updating the Mac Pro line (I've been waiting) b) Because of a) you can now buy a much much better Linux or Windows box I merely object to the idea that laptops can replace workstations, they can only do that for some people, and although the Retina MacBook is probably the best laptop ever made, it does not suit someone who wants a liquid cooled factory overclocked 4.2Ghz i7 with a GeForce 690 GTX and a RAID.
tomlu 14y ago
One thing to keep in mind for prospective buyers that already have a MBP is that the keyboard is really quite different. The travel is a lot shallower. I loved the MBP's keyboard, so for me the redesign was a bit gratuitous. You do get used to it, but it may be best to try before you buy.
Void_ 14y ago
Maybe you should get another MacBook Pro Retina and use it as an external monitor.
jrockway 14y ago
For another unbiased review, we go live to John Gruber!
- mitjak 14y ago
  Indeed! "Scrolling sucks but here's a quote from another review on why that's OK". I'm not saying competitors' offerings are better, nor am I failing to realize that's just his opinion but come on, this is clearly from someone who's only bought Macs for years. Just saying, lets stick to the larger grains of salt, and upvote actual professional reviews instad.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    Where did someone say it was OK? As far as I can tell they just explained the reasons it occurred.
    - mitjak 14y ago
      That's really not the point.
lubos 14y ago
$2,200 for a laptop? Post-purchase rationalization anyone?
- whichdan 14y ago
  I paid more than that for a late 2010 model and it was worth every penny.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  Three things have changed my career (as a programmer/CS student): MIT/Harvard/Stanford OpenCourseWare[1], HackerNews (the past 15 months) and my MacBook Pro. That MacBook Pro is the best things I've ever purchased. I owe a lot to that machine (and HN). [1]: I don't mean the new www.coursera.org thing. I mean http://ocw.mit.edu http://ocw.mit.edu, cs50.tv/cs75.tv and http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx which were all available years before Coursera and I watched "all" of them and learnt "a lot".
  - serge2k 14y ago
    I know what you mean, my Lenovo x201t was really the best purchase I ever made. It came when I was mostly done with the CS part of my degree and was focusing on my math major. The difference in my ability to take notes and actually organize and use them was absolutely massive.
  - crowell 14y ago
    I'm glad you love your macbook, but would a similar-enough computer _really_ not do it for you? When I upgraded from a netbook as my main machine to my Toshiba Z830, it was amazing, but then again, that is comparing a $200 machine to a $700 machine. I can't really see that same $500 difference in price making something like the $1200 MBP so much better than what I've got, with marginal utility and all that going. I don't by any means think that getting a high end machine is a bad idea, but I do think that once you get something that is a high quality item, you definitely reach the "good enough for me" stage.
- dmishe 14y ago
forrestthewoods 14y ago
"The long-standing performance gap between the Mac Pro and the MacBook Pro is now effectively moot" That's what happens when the Mac Pro product line is allowed to stagnate and run 2-3 year old parts. The difference is infact moot, and that's a damn shame. =[
- cageface 14y ago
  A good friend of mine that really wanted a modern OS X workstation went the Hackintosh route. He built a machine that's not only much more powerful than the current line of Mac Pros but also considerably cheaper. I can understand why Apple is neglecting this segment for financial reasons but I do think they're slowly losing their exclusive cachet with the creative set. Edit: misspelling.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    Check out this guide, it's got a full walkthrough for purchasing the parts for and assembling Hackintoshes of various calibers: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2012/08/building-customac-buyers-guide-2012.html http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2012/08/building-customac-buy...
    - cageface 14y ago
      I assumed that building and maintaining a hackintosh machine would be a pretty major pain in the ass but my friend says it was no more difficult than building a bespoke Windows machine as long as you did a tiny bit of up-front research on parts.
      - w1ntermute 14y ago
        It's no different from building any other PC, except for the restrictions on parts, like you said. Nowadays you don't even have to worry much about that - there are high quality, in-depth guides that will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, if you need them: http://lifehacker.com/5841604/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh http://lifehacker.com/5841604/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to...
uptown 14y ago
How's the Retina MBP heat-wise compared to prior generations of the 15" MBP? That's my only complaint with my 2011 MBP - the thing is an oven on my lap - even with a laptop cooler attached, it's warm.
- tomlu 14y ago
  It is quite an improvement over the late 2011 MBP, but still gets fairly hot. The fans don't seem to engage nearly as often either.
- hboon 14y ago
  It's better, but still hot.
- nacs 14y ago
  I multitask pretty heavily (Eclipse, lots of browser tabs, XCode and such) and haven't noticed it getting hot at all. I've only noticed it getting warm when the NVIDIA card kicks in when a game is running (not an uncomfortable level however).
srgseg 14y ago
Intel's roadmap for how long it'll take for everything to go retina: (png) http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/F/333879/original/Intel-Roadmap-to-4K.png http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/F/333879/original/Intel-Roadm...
swah 14y ago
I'd go for a lower resolution one now that I read about the slow scrolling thing, that would really bother me...
jonah 14y ago
This. "I used it at the scaled “1680 × 1050” resolution the entire time, since the native “1440 × 900” resolution isn’t enough space..." Now, granted, I've only used it for 15 minutes at the store and not a week straight, but the poor IMHO software scaling required to get more "usable" space is a huge bummer for me. (I went for the high-res 1680 × 1050 display when I bought my latest MBP last year to get the greater screen real estate.)
- ropiku 14y ago
  This is my main issue too, but I played around at the Apple Store with scaled resolution and decided to go for it.
  - jonah 14y ago
    And how is it in day to day use? What display settings are you using?
gordian 14y ago
The soldered RAM and lack of optical drive are huge turnoffs. Not that I used CDs or DVDs any more but because SSD is still too unreliable not to have a platter backup. And I want to have the option to upgrade my RAM. I'm still rockin my 2010 MBP but may grab a late 2011 MBP from the refurb store...
celerity 14y ago
Oof, here's a list of things I can buy with $2200: A $600 1080p tablet, a $1200 slightly-heavier-but-beefier laptop that runs Linux, a small telescope with the rest. Give me a break.
Yhippa 14y ago
Before I clicked the link to read the review I worked out in my head what his review would be like. I figured it would be gushingly positive with minimal criticism. What a joy it was to read the first sentence of that second paragraph. Vindication.
akurilin 14y ago
I just recently got hold of an older MacBook pro after years of Windows/Linux laptops and I got to say that I've been really impressed by the both the hardware and the user experience that's created through the amazing touchpad. I feel that the OS itself might be a bit too heavy/slow for what I'm used to, and so I'd love to have the option to install Ubuntu on a MBP Retina and still have that awesome user experience. It's my understanding that getting any distro to work perfectly with Apple's laptops has been a neverending uphill battle. I read that Gnome and Unity don't quite scale properly for the new resolution and I also don't think you get quite the same awesome gesture-based navigation you expect from every app running on OS X. One can dream though. It would be unfortunate to let such wonderful hardware go to waste. I've always been that guy, carrying a wireless mouse around with me because all of the laptop trackpads were absolutely atrocious, always in the way, always accidentally clicking for me when my palms would be over them. After trying a MBP, I finally figured out why I would never see Apple customers carry around mice.
cheald 14y ago
I recently picked up a retina MBP for work-related purposes, and it's a good machine, but I wouldn't review it nearly as breathlessly as this particular review does. It's attractive, it's got a great build quality, and it's decently fast. I can't really tell the difference (in terms of "omg, teh pixels are invisible") between the Retina display and my HP Envy's 1920x1080 screen, but that might be because I don't sit with my face six inches from the screen. Text looks better on the MBP, but I credit most of that to the fact that OS X's font engine just blows Linux's (I run Fedora 17 on the Envy) out of the water. Despite that, my daily driver is still my Windows desktop, running an i5 at 4.3GHz, with an SSD for my OS and programs, 2TB of magnetic storage, and 16 GB of RAM. That particular setup ran me well under $1k. My actual dev happens on a Fedora whitebox on my LAN, again with an i5 and 16GB of RAM, which I built for about $400. The retina MBP is a nice piece of tech, but it's not the orgasm-inducing Jesus-box that some people seem to think it is. I probably couldn't justify the cost of one versus the competitors if I were buying it for personal use.
- colmvp 14y ago
  Well yes, of COURSE you could build a desktop for less money than a laptop. Unlike some people I've seen at Starbucks though, I don't feel comfortable lugging desktops from place to place. Not to mention it'd take up a bunch of space while I'm trying to get work done on the flight in economy class.
  - cheald 14y ago
    There are plenty of comparable laptops for far less money, too. It's not like the only options in the laptop market are $2200+ MBP or nothing. I like the MBP. It's a great piece of hardware. I don't think the retina display is the quantum leap in laptop technology that it's made out to be. I don't feel any particular need to justify my purchase by citing the need to have top-end specs, because if I need maxed out specs, I can get them in my desktop for an order of magnitude less money. I enjoy working from the comfort of my desk with my big monitors and my mechanical keyboard and my nice speakers (and frankly, dislike working elsewhere without them), so laptop vs desktop is a moot point for me.
apress 14y ago
And of course he leaves out the far more damning day to day problem with the rMBP right now -- many popular non-Apple programs including Word and Photoshop look worse than they do on a non-retina display. Anandtech has the story http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/6 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-w...
- WaltFrench 14y ago
  “We’re obviously in the middle of two awkward transitions: toward all-Retina screens…” Maybe you didn't read the same review I saw. In what I read, he chose the right resolution for different uses, his unique choice out of many potentials. Yes, I'd rather that apps for Macs be written to be apps for ALL Macs. But life has a way of sorting that out.
  - apress 14y ago
    Maybe you didn't read the same link? Arment did not mention that text in some apps looks worse on the rMBP than on a non-retina screen, which is true regardless of the chosen resolution on the rMBP and is a pretty big issue right now if you use one of those apps frequently -- stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw it at the Apple store. He was using the lower resolutions to avoid the lagginess problem. Eventually this will be sorted out -- although Microsoft's early signals and Mac track record indicate it might be a long wait. But it's relevant information that many potential buyers would want to know.
adamtaylor 14y ago
I'm always intrigued by these claims that you can get something basically the same as a Mac for much cheaper. When I've investigated in the past (but in the OS X era---it seems generally accepted that Macs were sold at a hefty premium in the 80s and 90s), I've generally found the price difference to by in the ~10% neighborhood. I just priced out a grossly-similar laptop to the Macbook Pro Retina at Dell's website, and came up with a Latitude E6520 with a price of $1931. Less than a Macbook Pro Retina by about 15%. The Latitude has a slightly faster processor, a graphics chip with half as much video memory, no retina display, weighs ~1.5 lbs more, and (I suspect) lacks Apple's all-around build quality. However, a System 76 laptop with similar specs as the MBPR costs $1153. But that's with only the Intel HD 4000 graphics (no NVIDIA chip), and, again, no retina display. So, I don't know. Can anyone offer some insight into why the System 76 system is so inexpensive compared to the base-model MBPR and the Latitude above? I know that Dell sells, for instance, Inspirons, which are much cheaper than Latitudes, but my understanding is that these machines are essentially composed of whatever components can be bought most cheaply this week, and so they pose maintenance headaches, because it may be difficult to obtain a component that dies a year after purchase. Also, my personal experience with Inspirons is that they have very poor build quality.

62 points by rkudeshi 14y ago

or, you could buy an AlienWare Aurora mid-range, where $2200 gets you the following: 4.1 Ghz 4 cores. 16Gb 1600Mhz memory Dual 1.5 GB Nvidia 660's 1TB SATA. If you want to spend $75 more you can get a 1TB RAID0 SSD/HD hybrid. Of course, if you're willing to spend about $4000, you can build a Linux PC that will smoke any Mac product by a 2:1 margin in performance. This is coming from a Mac Pro user, Apple's neglect of this line has disappointed me. When I bought my 2005 Mac pro, it was the best quad-core system you could buy from a cost/performance. Now high-end rigs are ridiculously overpriced. The only thing you lose with a high end Linux PC is the Retina display and portability, but I do most of my coding at my desk, and I'll take a 30" non-Retina display any day of the week until someone can ship a 30" Retina display. I prize actual number of readable windows I can cram onto the screen over minor improvements in e-Book reading. Honestly, I'd buy two machines. The cheapest MacBook Air for moving about (or just use an iPad), but a Linux Desktop for real work.

notJim 14y ago
> The only thing you lose with a high end Linux PC is the Retina display and portability This is far, far from the truth, based on my current experiences trying Linux from an OS X/Windows world. Other things you lose: sane GUIs and desktop environment, quality font rendering (both Mac and Windows do it better), reasonable design sensibilities out of the box, stability, just general freedom from constant frustration. I'm working on a post about my experiences that will provide more details about my experiences (and for what it's worth, I have not given up on Linux yet), but if you're used to OS X or even Windows, switching to Linux is not an easy trade off. I'm trying to remove the angry from the post so that it can be more constructive, which is proving to be difficult :).
- cromwellian 14y ago
  I've been developing on Unix for 20 years, I don't have many frustrations with it, about the same level as OSX, certainly not "constant frustration" There are two things I like to do with a powerful computer: 1) Play high end performance sensitive games like Battlefield 3. Apple gets crushed in gaming performance. 2) Write code. The slower my computer is, the less productive I am. I spend 99% of my time in the command line, IDE, and in the web browser. Look, you are talking to someone who is a big fan of OS/X (but HATED non-Unix Apple OS). OS/X was the Unix I always wanted. But Apple simply is not competitive at the bleeding edge of computing power, they are making devices for consumers, overpriced devices. I care about buying the most amount of computing power I can for a given $. I like getting under the hood of my hardware. With the generic PC, I can build my own systems to spec, I can tune it the way I want. I'm not saying that this is for everyone, but if you are someone who owned a Mac Pro, a Retina MacBook is not a replacement when other desktops with far more power for the $ are available, and the Retina screen is mostly irrelevant when people with Mac Pros typically had giant monitors attached. I'm not saying the Retina MacBook is not a good laptop, in fact, it is a great, if not the best laptop. But I don't believe in desktop replacements. Portability trades off power due to weight, size, battery, and heat constraints. People with highend desktops usually don't want to make those tradeoffs, in fact, they typically make the opposite ones: 1000W power supplies, liquid cooling, ultra heavy heatsinks, etc.
  - notJim 14y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I have some extra requirements, and Linux doesn't come anywhere close to meeting them, at least not out of the box. I suspect that many OS X users have similar expectations to me. I do the same things as you with my computers, except with the addition that I am very picky about aesthetics and usability. The reason I wanted to use Linux was because I wanted to use my powerful gaming system as a development machine, and didn't want to go the hackintosh route, but my experience seems to indicated that it's going to take a lot of work to bring the Linux install to an acceptable standard.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- learc83 14y ago
  >quality font rendering That depends on your distro. You can also install the infinality patches (which are being merged into stock freetype2), and the result is better font rendering than OS X or Windows.
  - notJim 14y ago
    Yeah, I was very excited to see that merge (and of course the patch in the first place.) I haven't tried the patch myself yet, but I will do so when I get the time and motivation. As far as it being better, I was under the impression that Infinality was based on papers published by Microsoft stemming from their work on ClearType. Are there particular distros you could recommend that have better font rendering compared to Ubuntu?
    - learc83 14y ago
      >As far as it being better, I was under the impression that Infinality was based on papers published by Microsoft stemming from their work on ClearType. It was, but the author has made several tweaks. There are numerous tweaks you can make, but 3 of the settings are OS X, Windows, and Infinality. The Infinality settings are fairly different and in my opinion (and a lot of other linux users opinion's) it looks significantly better than either Windows or OS X. As far as distros there are several that tweak the font rendering Ubuntu being the most obvious, but if you're a typography guy I'd just go with Infinality it's defiantly worth it.
cromwellian 14y ago
Wow, I'm amazed people are downvoting the fact that a) Apple has been neglecting updating the Mac Pro line (I've been waiting) b) Because of a) you can now buy a much much better Linux or Windows box I merely object to the idea that laptops can replace workstations, they can only do that for some people, and although the Retina MacBook is probably the best laptop ever made, it does not suit someone who wants a liquid cooled factory overclocked 4.2Ghz i7 with a GeForce 690 GTX and a RAID.

tomlu 14y ago

One thing to keep in mind for prospective buyers that already have a MBP is that the keyboard is really quite different. The travel is a lot shallower. I loved the MBP's keyboard, so for me the redesign was a bit gratuitous. You do get used to it, but it may be best to try before you buy.

Void_ 14y ago

Maybe you should get another MacBook Pro Retina and use it as an external monitor.

jrockway 14y ago

For another unbiased review, we go live to John Gruber!

mitjak 14y ago
Indeed! "Scrolling sucks but here's a quote from another review on why that's OK". I'm not saying competitors' offerings are better, nor am I failing to realize that's just his opinion but come on, this is clearly from someone who's only bought Macs for years. Just saying, lets stick to the larger grains of salt, and upvote actual professional reviews instad.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  Where did someone say it was OK? As far as I can tell they just explained the reasons it occurred.
  - mitjak 14y ago
    That's really not the point.

lubos 14y ago

$2,200 for a laptop? Post-purchase rationalization anyone?

whichdan 14y ago
I paid more than that for a late 2010 model and it was worth every penny.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
Three things have changed my career (as a programmer/CS student): MIT/Harvard/Stanford OpenCourseWare[1], HackerNews (the past 15 months) and my MacBook Pro. That MacBook Pro is the best things I've ever purchased. I owe a lot to that machine (and HN). [1]: I don't mean the new www.coursera.org thing. I mean http://ocw.mit.edu http://ocw.mit.edu, cs50.tv/cs75.tv and http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx which were all available years before Coursera and I watched "all" of them and learnt "a lot".
- serge2k 14y ago
  I know what you mean, my Lenovo x201t was really the best purchase I ever made. It came when I was mostly done with the CS part of my degree and was focusing on my math major. The difference in my ability to take notes and actually organize and use them was absolutely massive.
- crowell 14y ago
  I'm glad you love your macbook, but would a similar-enough computer _really_ not do it for you? When I upgraded from a netbook as my main machine to my Toshiba Z830, it was amazing, but then again, that is comparing a $200 machine to a $700 machine. I can't really see that same $500 difference in price making something like the $1200 MBP so much better than what I've got, with marginal utility and all that going. I don't by any means think that getting a high end machine is a bad idea, but I do think that once you get something that is a high quality item, you definitely reach the "good enough for me" stage.
dmishe 14y ago

forrestthewoods 14y ago

"The long-standing performance gap between the Mac Pro and the MacBook Pro is now effectively moot" That's what happens when the Mac Pro product line is allowed to stagnate and run 2-3 year old parts. The difference is infact moot, and that's a damn shame. =[

cageface 14y ago
A good friend of mine that really wanted a modern OS X workstation went the Hackintosh route. He built a machine that's not only much more powerful than the current line of Mac Pros but also considerably cheaper. I can understand why Apple is neglecting this segment for financial reasons but I do think they're slowly losing their exclusive cachet with the creative set. Edit: misspelling.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Check out this guide, it's got a full walkthrough for purchasing the parts for and assembling Hackintoshes of various calibers: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2012/08/building-customac-buyers-guide-2012.html http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2012/08/building-customac-buy...
  - cageface 14y ago
    I assumed that building and maintaining a hackintosh machine would be a pretty major pain in the ass but my friend says it was no more difficult than building a bespoke Windows machine as long as you did a tiny bit of up-front research on parts.
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
      It's no different from building any other PC, except for the restrictions on parts, like you said. Nowadays you don't even have to worry much about that - there are high quality, in-depth guides that will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, if you need them: http://lifehacker.com/5841604/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh http://lifehacker.com/5841604/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to...

uptown 14y ago

How's the Retina MBP heat-wise compared to prior generations of the 15" MBP? That's my only complaint with my 2011 MBP - the thing is an oven on my lap - even with a laptop cooler attached, it's warm.

tomlu 14y ago
It is quite an improvement over the late 2011 MBP, but still gets fairly hot. The fans don't seem to engage nearly as often either.
hboon 14y ago
It's better, but still hot.
nacs 14y ago
I multitask pretty heavily (Eclipse, lots of browser tabs, XCode and such) and haven't noticed it getting hot at all. I've only noticed it getting warm when the NVIDIA card kicks in when a game is running (not an uncomfortable level however).

srgseg 14y ago

Intel's roadmap for how long it'll take for everything to go retina: (png) http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/F/333879/original/Intel-Roadmap-to-4K.png http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/F/333879/original/Intel-Roadm...

swah 14y ago

I'd go for a lower resolution one now that I read about the slow scrolling thing, that would really bother me...

jonah 14y ago

This. "I used it at the scaled “1680 × 1050” resolution the entire time, since the native “1440 × 900” resolution isn’t enough space..." Now, granted, I've only used it for 15 minutes at the store and not a week straight, but the poor IMHO software scaling required to get more "usable" space is a huge bummer for me. (I went for the high-res 1680 × 1050 display when I bought my latest MBP last year to get the greater screen real estate.)

ropiku 14y ago
This is my main issue too, but I played around at the Apple Store with scaled resolution and decided to go for it.
- jonah 14y ago
  And how is it in day to day use? What display settings are you using?

gordian 14y ago

The soldered RAM and lack of optical drive are huge turnoffs. Not that I used CDs or DVDs any more but because SSD is still too unreliable not to have a platter backup. And I want to have the option to upgrade my RAM. I'm still rockin my 2010 MBP but may grab a late 2011 MBP from the refurb store...

celerity 14y ago

Oof, here's a list of things I can buy with $2200: A $600 1080p tablet, a $1200 slightly-heavier-but-beefier laptop that runs Linux, a small telescope with the rest. Give me a break.

Yhippa 14y ago

Before I clicked the link to read the review I worked out in my head what his review would be like. I figured it would be gushingly positive with minimal criticism. What a joy it was to read the first sentence of that second paragraph. Vindication.

akurilin 14y ago

I just recently got hold of an older MacBook pro after years of Windows/Linux laptops and I got to say that I've been really impressed by the both the hardware and the user experience that's created through the amazing touchpad. I feel that the OS itself might be a bit too heavy/slow for what I'm used to, and so I'd love to have the option to install Ubuntu on a MBP Retina and still have that awesome user experience. It's my understanding that getting any distro to work perfectly with Apple's laptops has been a neverending uphill battle. I read that Gnome and Unity don't quite scale properly for the new resolution and I also don't think you get quite the same awesome gesture-based navigation you expect from every app running on OS X. One can dream though. It would be unfortunate to let such wonderful hardware go to waste. I've always been that guy, carrying a wireless mouse around with me because all of the laptop trackpads were absolutely atrocious, always in the way, always accidentally clicking for me when my palms would be over them. After trying a MBP, I finally figured out why I would never see Apple customers carry around mice.

cheald 14y ago

I recently picked up a retina MBP for work-related purposes, and it's a good machine, but I wouldn't review it nearly as breathlessly as this particular review does. It's attractive, it's got a great build quality, and it's decently fast. I can't really tell the difference (in terms of "omg, teh pixels are invisible") between the Retina display and my HP Envy's 1920x1080 screen, but that might be because I don't sit with my face six inches from the screen. Text looks better on the MBP, but I credit most of that to the fact that OS X's font engine just blows Linux's (I run Fedora 17 on the Envy) out of the water. Despite that, my daily driver is still my Windows desktop, running an i5 at 4.3GHz, with an SSD for my OS and programs, 2TB of magnetic storage, and 16 GB of RAM. That particular setup ran me well under $1k. My actual dev happens on a Fedora whitebox on my LAN, again with an i5 and 16GB of RAM, which I built for about $400. The retina MBP is a nice piece of tech, but it's not the orgasm-inducing Jesus-box that some people seem to think it is. I probably couldn't justify the cost of one versus the competitors if I were buying it for personal use.

colmvp 14y ago
Well yes, of COURSE you could build a desktop for less money than a laptop. Unlike some people I've seen at Starbucks though, I don't feel comfortable lugging desktops from place to place. Not to mention it'd take up a bunch of space while I'm trying to get work done on the flight in economy class.
- cheald 14y ago
  There are plenty of comparable laptops for far less money, too. It's not like the only options in the laptop market are $2200+ MBP or nothing. I like the MBP. It's a great piece of hardware. I don't think the retina display is the quantum leap in laptop technology that it's made out to be. I don't feel any particular need to justify my purchase by citing the need to have top-end specs, because if I need maxed out specs, I can get them in my desktop for an order of magnitude less money. I enjoy working from the comfort of my desk with my big monitors and my mechanical keyboard and my nice speakers (and frankly, dislike working elsewhere without them), so laptop vs desktop is a moot point for me.

apress 14y ago

And of course he leaves out the far more damning day to day problem with the rMBP right now -- many popular non-Apple programs including Word and Photoshop look worse than they do on a non-retina display. Anandtech has the story http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/6 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-w...

WaltFrench 14y ago
“We’re obviously in the middle of two awkward transitions: toward all-Retina screens…” Maybe you didn't read the same review I saw. In what I read, he chose the right resolution for different uses, his unique choice out of many potentials. Yes, I'd rather that apps for Macs be written to be apps for ALL Macs. But life has a way of sorting that out.
- apress 14y ago
  Maybe you didn't read the same link? Arment did not mention that text in some apps looks worse on the rMBP than on a non-retina screen, which is true regardless of the chosen resolution on the rMBP and is a pretty big issue right now if you use one of those apps frequently -- stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw it at the Apple store. He was using the lower resolutions to avoid the lagginess problem. Eventually this will be sorted out -- although Microsoft's early signals and Mac track record indicate it might be a long wait. But it's relevant information that many potential buyers would want to know.

adamtaylor 14y ago

I'm always intrigued by these claims that you can get something basically the same as a Mac for much cheaper. When I've investigated in the past (but in the OS X era---it seems generally accepted that Macs were sold at a hefty premium in the 80s and 90s), I've generally found the price difference to by in the ~10% neighborhood. I just priced out a grossly-similar laptop to the Macbook Pro Retina at Dell's website, and came up with a Latitude E6520 with a price of $1931. Less than a Macbook Pro Retina by about 15%. The Latitude has a slightly faster processor, a graphics chip with half as much video memory, no retina display, weighs ~1.5 lbs more, and (I suspect) lacks Apple's all-around build quality. However, a System 76 laptop with similar specs as the MBPR costs $1153. But that's with only the Intel HD 4000 graphics (no NVIDIA chip), and, again, no retina display. So, I don't know. Can anyone offer some insight into why the System 76 system is so inexpensive compared to the base-model MBPR and the Latitude above? I know that Dell sells, for instance, Inspirons, which are much cheaper than Latitudes, but my understanding is that these machines are essentially composed of whatever components can be bought most cheaply this week, and so they pose maintenance headaches, because it may be difficult to obtain a component that dies a year after purchase. Also, my personal experience with Inspirons is that they have very poor build quality.