Apple 15in MacBook Pro with Retina Display You’ve got to hand it to Apple. Having created the first Ultrabook about three years before Intel even got around to coining the brand, it has now taken another step forward with the new MacBook Pro With Retina Display. The 2880 x 1800 screen is certainly a looker, and you can understand why Apple has chosen to focus on that …
q30 is a netbook, or ultra-portable, with a 12.1" screen, 24mm height and a plastic body.
The macbook air you are comparing it to has a 13.3" screen, 4-19mm tapered height and an aluminium unibody construction.
The lower height, larger screen and unibody chassis is what makes it an ultrabook. I'm not saying it is better or worse, just that the macbook air defines the ultrabook category.
Sadly you are both wrong, the Vaio X505 was launched in 2004, beating Apple and Samsung by at least a year. I'd still takes its latest the devlopment, the Vaio Z Series, over with the MBA or indeed this new fangled MBP. OSX really isn't for me (far too un-intuitive after 20 years of Windows), and I think the Apple laptops are ugly things personally.
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I am real. My "POS" "Toy" has been helping me earn cash since 2006. I bought it so that I could write code anywhere without running out of space for my elbows (eg: train seats, airline seats), preferably without catching fire or burning my nuts in the process. There were very few machines that met those criteria back in 2006. I did actually try a Sony Vaio X505 (maybe you reckon that looked nicer) but I hated the keyboard which is a big deal when you earn your living using a keyboard.
Because as we all know, people mostly buy extremely slim and portable top-end laptops only to cart around their Blu-ray collection with them.
Is it seriously worth burdening this legacy-free machine with 'moving parts' just in case someone is too stupid to copy a film to their drive or use an external player..?
Have you tried flying to Australia with a 2-year old? You'd be surprised just how many DVDs you need.
It's sad that the valid criticisms of this device - the price, the paltry storage, the lack of built-in connectors - are being lost under the deluge of fanbois screaming that because they would never use it for X, that nobody should ever expect X on a device. There are valid complaints here, no matter how shrilly they're being made.
Take ethernet connectivity - let's say you're hotdesking in an office and the wifi signal is poor but there's an ethernet connector. You need your adapter (cost £30+).
Or there's storage - 256GB doesn't go very far, particularly if, as suggested above, you're forced to load films on to your machine because there isn't a dvd drive.
And it doesn't help that the 'portable' thunderbolt external hard drive (cost £400) isn't portable at all, because it requires an external power supply.
I'm sure it will sell well to the sort of people who downvote posts criticising its weaknesses, but it is, like most Apple devices, fantastic - if you're going to use it in exactly the way Apple expect you to.
If you are spending £1800+ on a top end laptop to be used as a DVD player for a two year old you have more money than sense, but hey - its your money.
I really don't get the problem people are having over this lack of DVD / Blu-ray drive issue. Do you still complain it doesn't have a floppy drive or RS232..? Apple are not forcing this machine on anyone - if you don't want one or it doesn't meet your two year old's requirements, then don't buy it.
The alternative is that nobody is allowed to own a machine without a DVD drive in it because somebody's kids might want to watch a DVD..? Where does that end?
It's not JUST going to be used as a DVD player; only someone determined to miss the point would make such a ludicrous comment. The claim was that nobody could POSSIBLY need to carry around 'that many' DVDs, and I gave a good example of a situation where one would have to. Would you prefer a screaming toddler on a 14-hour flight? I can think of plenty of other examples.
If a laptop had come out 10 years ago without a floppy drive, I would complain. DVDs and Blu-ray are current technologies. You might not, but out there in the real world everyone still uses them.
And as for "don't buy one", I don't intend to. I know that fanbois will lap it up, but people capable of looking beyond a shiny case and a badge, like me, won't. That doesn't make my valid complaints any less valid, and it doesn't make the hyperventilating about an overpriced laptop with overpriced accessories any more ridiculous.
Your 'complaints' seem based on personal bias rather than having any practical merit. You appear simply intent on simply finding something to criticise. If it had an optical drive, you would no doubt spend your time complaining about it not needing one and how much thinner it could be without.
@Fitz:
"Your 'complaints' seem based on personal bias rather than having any practical merit"
I think you're missing the point here. His complaints are about practical limitations that he sees with the machine that would affect his use of the machine.
You may see no limitations at all, but your view isn't the only valid view in the world - the matter of the usefulness and value of a device like this isn't a question like "is the sky blue" to which there is actually only one correct answer, it's more like "what shade of blue is the sky", some people may say Cyan (yes, I'm that old) and some may say Azure. Others will say other things.
FWIW, the lack of Ethernet is puzzling on a MBP. On an Air, I can understand it, but on a MPB I'd have expected the "pro" connectivity - WiFi is great for general use, but if you want "pro" (ie: the best speed and the best reliability), it's GigE, not 802.11n.
I too would prefer if it had a BluRay drive on it, or at least a DVD drive, but it's not a deal-breaker.
I would like the RAM to be upgradeable (I've never owned a laptop that didn't eventually need this with OS upgrades and so on). But, so long as 8GB remains enough for the lifespan of the device (though I'd probably buy the 16GB version, which is I am sure what Apple would prefer too) then that's not a deal-breaker either.
The main deal-breaker for me is that I already have a late-2011 MBP, and although I could wangle one if I really wanted to, the enhanced screen isn't enough for me to do that. But one with a retina screen will be on my list in 3-5 years when my MBP gets donated like the late-2008 one did. [note: both have had memory upgrades; upgrading my new MBP when new with third party memory saved a fortune]
"If you use compressed streaming why spend £1800 on an Ultra high def screen?"
If you only want to watch Blu-ray movies, why are you spending £1800 on a laptop..?
This may come as a surprise to you, but some people actually use computers for things other than watching movies, games and porn.
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Sounds like a load of sour grapes. Replace the battery "every so often"? I've never replaced any laptop battery more than once or before at least 5 years. Plus they're always expensive, think I paid nearly £100 for my Dell one. $200 isn't really that expensive considering this one is much larger.
Recycling an issue? You can just give it back to Apple who probably have the right tools to do it (since they refurbish them)
Let's be honest, iFixit is just pissed off that they won't be selling as many of their overpriced repair kits for this one.
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Yeah, "sour grapes", that must be what it is.
Even if you *do* give it back to Apple, any actual raw material recycling is going to struggle if the point is that aluminium fused to glass can't be usefully processed with current processes. With Apple (and other tech firms) apparently steering their entire product line towards "magic box status" (ie nothing inside it that a user is able or allowed to tinker with), this is a non-trivial issue.
Shocking. I've been waiting about 9 months for the new MPB Pro to arrive - now I'm going to seriously reconsider. I have one of the first 2000 original Intel MPB, it has 2gb hard wired - and that it *is* annoying. Still, I run my business from it and am continually impressed that it doesn't look or feel like a 6 yr old laptop.
It is, however, on it's 2nd Magsafe adapter - the first one broke at the mag plug, needing a whole new adapter when it simply needed a plug/cable replacement. I got a 3rd party copy for less than half the Apple price.
It is also on it's 2nd battery - which is more worrying. The main reason I use Mac for my business is that I can be sure that in 5 years time I'll still be running the same installation of the OS with the same profile. That's no blinking use to me if in 2 years time I have to secure-wipe it before handing it over to the less than competent repair facility we have here in Belgium. My co-director went over 8 weeks without her 2009 MBP because it had the infamous graphics card fault.
It's a 6 year old laptop and still works - most windows laptops I have seen are essentially junk after 3 years.
They have improved the magsafe connector on newer power supplies I believe - a few of the old ones did fail after a lot of use but Apple are pretty good at just replacing them - you should have asked them.
I would be VERY wary of buying 3rd party power supplies / batteries - they may be cheaper but plugged in 24x7 - perhaps less efficient - perhaps not exactly the same voltage - could have issues for the battery / laptop or even a fire hazard.
Yeah, I was thinking that - sure even Orlowski wrote an article about this same machine the other day pointing out that Apple are charging around 3x the market price for some of the SSD uplift options.
No surprises there, it's long been something you have to accept - they'll give you nicely-integrated leading-edge tech but you'll most definitely pay more for it from Apple than from anywhere else. It'd be nice to see it honestly acknowledged though, rather than hidden behind some FUD based on SSD pricing trends from about 3 years ago...
From the new reg article just posted:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/15/something_for_the_weekend_apple_retina_display_angst/page2.html
The retina screen is lovely, it really is, and I also believe that eventually retina-class screens will become standard on all computers. But this retina is blinding you (ho, ho) to what Apple has removed from the MacBook Pro: no optical drive, no Ethernet, half the storage space.
Apple's promo videos show a smart guy on a plane editing video using his ultra-quiet, retina-screened MBP while his fellow passengers - clearly non-productive dipshit Windows users - try to get some sleep.
What it doesn't show is the same man deciding to sit back and watch a DVD only to find that he can't because Apple took out the DVD drive. He really ought to have torrented some films before catching his flight, he supposes, but this can take days to complete despite his fast internet connection.
Even so, he's not sure he can spare enough space for 20 gigs of movies on his half-pint SSD. Later, he arrives at the New York branch but finds that he can't plug into the company network because Apple took out the Ethernet port, so he spends the whole jetlagged morning logging calls in a vain attempt to get a Wi-Fi login, only to have it keep dropping out because he's been given a desk on the "wrong side of the pillar".
After a few years, all of this will seem trivial. However, unlike Apple PR, I have to live and work in the real world today as well as - one hopes - in a few years from now.
Until then, feel free to keep reading about stuff that doesn't matter.
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