Apple MacBook Pro 13in Retina display review When I reviewed the latest version of the 13in MacBook Pro just a few months ago, it seemed to me that Apple was getting a bit complacent. The mid-2012 update did gain a new Ivy Bridge processor, but the modest speedbump that this produced no longer justified the MacBook’s starting price of £999 – especially with classy new …
"But at almost £1500 it’s very expensive indeed, and I’d have thought that the professional users who can afford that price would be more likely to opt for the 15in model anyway. It’d be a tempting upgrade at around £1300, but at this price I reckon Apple is pushing its luck"
Well firstly Black Friday is coming so there may be 10% off which - yes I realise it's a one off.
Secondly £200 extra on a laptop you are likely to use for (at least) 3-4 years is about £1 a week more. For something I use 5-7 days a week it's not a big deal and if you want that screen, memory and SSD it's not all that bad. To put it another way spec up the standard 13" model with a 128Gb SSD and 8Gb memory and it's £1239 - so you are actually paying £210 extra for the retina screen.
I'm waiting for Black Friday too but if I buy it'll be a base model 15" MBPr with 16GB RAM. I did want the 13" but it's way too expensive and too close to the 15 if you up the spec. It's not worth the money to me. I'll take the hit on the size and weight for the better screen and performance.
Unfortunately, BF is only likely to give 5% or so but it's better than nothing.
Personally (and your mileage may vary - apparently not everyone's requirements are the same) the 'Apple Tax' is worth it.
I have 4 Macs at home, in daily use by my wife and 7 & 8 year old children plus my own maschine and as I'm away from home during the week, I don't want to spend my weekends rebuilding Windows systems (Vista/7/8 may be different from XP, but once, sorry - twelve times - bitten, twice shy). On the rare (very - maybe 5 times in perhaps 30-40 machine years and spanning 8 machines) occasions that an OS X re-install has been required, it's been a 1/2 hour job.
One of the machines is 6 1/2 years old and just suffered a HDD failure. New drive, Time Capsule restore - job done. There's also 2 Core Solo Mac Minis and an early Core 2 Duo Macbook and my 2 1/2 year old i7 MacBook Pro.
So would I pay £1500 for machine that in 6 years time is still as fast, looks almost as good as the day it was bought and has cost me probably less than 4 or 5 hours of maintenace time? Definitly.
But then again, when I see a Ferrari I don't think "Stupid idiot - he's only doing the same speed as the wife's Prius whilst getting less mpg/passengers/luggage" etc.
RE your windows machines, let me guess
You bought the cheapest nastiest piece of crap you could find probably <£250, allowed everyone administrator access, probably not in an optimal environment which causes cheap crap to fail even faster and all the problems you had are Windows fault
Compared with the Apple kit where you get very little choice in what you are buying but you pay a much higher price and get better quality kit and you didn't allow everybody to be installing every codec and toolbar they feel like, yet you still end up reinstalling at times so hardly trouble free.
If you had bought a better quality computer to begin with and followed sensible rules about user rights and patching you wouldn't have had half as many problems. My XP machine is still going strong after 7 years - never had to reinstall, no virus infections, no data loss. My Win 7 box is heading the same way, 3 years so far without a problem. The only problem with Windows is it doesn't protect clueless users from themselves.
I try to be tolerant but you're spouting bullshit about something you know nothing about. I used to build my own high-quality PC desktops; my last mahcine was an expensive HP 17" laptop with Intel P4 3.0Ghz desktop-class processor. All oft hese were used my me alone. The Macs on the other hand are used by everyone; each machine has multiple user accounts onthem.
I also get asked to build/repair/upgrade friends' and family's (Windows) PCs. My support time for MAcs is measure in hours; for Windows it's days. As I said, your experience may be different.
Mind you, I am total awe of your psyhic abilities and mind-reading skills. Shame you don't have the courage to put your name to your beliefs.
Might I suggest that if your experience is predominantly Mac machines then you're probably not in the best position to comment on the difference in repair time between Macs and Windows boxes.
If someone asked me to repair their unbootable Mac it might take me a day or two to get it booting again. If I had to repair an unbootable Windows 7 PC, it would probably take me less than an hour to get it booting.
That doesn't mean that Windows PCs are better than Macs because they're easier to repair, that just means that I know more about Windows than I do about OS X.
I think you may have misread Steve I's post - he has had plenty of experience with PCs, but now chooses to use Macs as they suit his uses, and he personally finds they require less maintenance. I'm a PC user with the aptitude (born of getting the darned things to play games in the nineties, and more productive things since) and the time to maintain them. If you buy a cheaper PC, you might have driver issues that can take some time to hunt down... it depends on what your time is worth. You can spend extra money on 'certified' machines from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc which have undergone greater testing of their hardware and driver combinations, and come with better support- but they will still cost you a premium.
If your only troubleshooting experience has been with Win PCs, I think that you could get a non-booting Mac happy again quicker than you think. It's the same old process of determining whether its a software issue, a buggered HDD or some other hardware failure- much the same as a PC, really, but without the option of whipping out the SSD if it proves to be the failed component.
"I used to build my own high-quality PC desktops;"
I'd seriously question the quality if your own built PC's if you had to constantly re-install windows.
"I also get asked to build/repair/upgrade friends' and family's (Windows) PCs. My support time for MAcs is measure in hours; for Windows it's days"
1 - if you can't build a windows machine that can run reliably why are you messing with other peoples PCs?
2 - DAYS? Back in the day when I used to build my own PC's I could build a PC from scratch and install windows in 2 hours, 3 tops - what on EARTH are you doing that would take days to fix?????
Seriously, stick with OSX, you seem happy with it, and it seems to suit your level of technical knowledge.
But please stop blaming windows for issues that it seems you have, rather than the operating system...
Certainly for XP it is well known that the OS needs re-installing every 18 months or so to keep the machine running well. In fact this advice was given to me by a couple of the guys that built the SOEs at a former employer and they were former MS OS tech guys. XP just had this magical way of slowing over time even when you had the necessary separate account for software installations from the normal use account. No doubt all those patches and updates were responsible in part. Not sure how Windows 7 goes as I decided not to bother with it.
@Chet: I bet you couldn't reinstall windows and the apps and the user accounts and settings quicker than you could do with OSX and either a boot clone (CCC) or timemachine. That's one thing I do prefer about the OS. Given how bad Windows was in the past you'd have thought they'd have made the re-install and reload experience more streamlined but I suspect it is the registry that causes the problems with that.
Steve, it's clear from the posts on here that you know nothing about your own life. How dare you come on here with your "opinions", it's clear that you can't have worked on pcs properly if you've chosen to use macs, there is no way the experience on Windows could ever drive anyone to prefer another OS.
I trust you will now stop this charade of "having an opinion" and "expressing it reasonably", at least until you get the correct opinions and start being a bit more mouthy.
"I don't want to spend my weekends rebuilding Windows systems (Vista/7/8 may be different from XP, but once, sorry - twelve times - bitten, twice shy)."
What on EARTH were you doing to XP for you to reinstall 12 times? Its borderline comical...
I have a 6-7yo laptop that I used heavily for 4 years, now its a fileserver. I had to re-install XP on that once, and that was due to me downloading a copy of a program from somewhere dodgy when the regular site was down.
Definitely sounds like the Apple tax is worth it for you if you're making that much of a mess of windows...
Some people may think £1500 is a lot for a laptop (and I'm not saying it's not) but I use it pretty much every day for many hours - so the cost per hour would be tiny and the extra cost of getting a macbook that is better made, better screen etc. is not a big deal over it's lifetime. When you factor in the support / warranty you can get a full 3 years manufacturer technical support and warranty for about £200 extra - that is actually pretty cheap for what it covers.
I buy Macs with Applecare to have it 'easier' - I have done 15+ years with poor support, poor quality and warranties etc. (before Apple) to know the difference. I just want to do my work - I want something that is reliable, durable, yes looks decent - after all I use it the best part of 7-8 hours a day. Yes the up front cost may be a bit higher but Mountain Lion is great - Time Machine and full disk encryption are dead easy - so you can make sure your data is safe. At the end of the day my data and time is worth far more than the computer you use.
I know plenty of people who have lost days of work to hardware failures with Windows (i.e. by the time they are back up and running) and more worrying lost valuable data - yes it's their fault but the Mac makes it easier to backup your data so the average user has more chance of actually doing it.
It's a bit like criticising a joiner / carpenter for wanting to buy a good set of tools. Years ago people would spend £2000-3000+ on top end laptops (which in todays money is a LOT, LOT more) - so perhaps £2000 for something I use for up to 2000 hours a year and will probably last 3-5 years and still hold a lot of it's value - I don't see that as bad value.
Buy a second laptop...
Ok, now the real gripe. This isn't the MBA, ultra-portable isn't the only reason to buy a laptop. Give me back a replaceable spinning disk so I can use the extra life the aluminium shell gives me and put ethernet back in so I can watch those hd mpeg2 tv files and I might think about it. Oh yes, unless you can persuade blockbusters to distribute DVD iso images on SD cards or USB, I want my *integrated* DVD drive back.
This isn't a pro machine. Its a slightly upscale MBA.
Meh, I just bought a second-hand hp elitebook with a 15" hi-res screen. Yes it runs way too hot, but it has firewire, usb, gig ethernet, dvd, *and* a real serial port and cost $100.
... the apple TV can stream 1080p content across wifi just fine, so there is no absolute requirement for ethernet.
That says a lot: if Apple see this new machine (as you seem to) as nothing more than a shiny TV-streaming toy then then it's easy to understand why they don't understand the need for gigabit (or faster) wired ethernet.
Try looking at it as a work tool, and the view is somewhat different.
Errr, no, I think you read that wrong.
I used Apple TV as an example of a device being able to stream HD over wifi, which was the authors original concern and thus his reliance on ethernet.
Why did I chose Apple TV? Because I own one, and know this scenario works, and because it has both wired and wireless media, is easy to analyse/prove streaming quality.
What you *should* have correct me on, was the signal degradation wireless vs wireless being a factor in the design; trying to stream HD wirelessly to 3 rooms away through solid concrete walls will fail, whereas ethernet signal degredation will be minimal.
The fact you picked up on the Apple TV rather than the actual point, say more about you than it does about me.
WiFi is shite compared to ethernet when it comes to transferring data, it reminds me of using USB vs Firewire.You may get a good rate if you're in the same room using 5GHz band but use the 2.4 and it becomes a lottery with potential interference from microwave ovens, dect phones and anything else using that free-for-all band. You only need to look at the reviews on smallnetbuilder and other such sites to see how speed varies with distance, position of router and device (i.e. high, low, near a corner), kit compatibility, the list goes on.
Errr, no, I think you read that wrong.
I don't think so ...
Your point was that WiFi is fast enough to stream 1080p video (and you mentioned your experience with the Apple TV to back that up).
My point was that if streaming 1080p is all that you want to do with your networking then WiFi is indeed fast enough ... but to buy a MBP and to use it for nothing more than video streaming (effectively using it as a fancy telly) seems to me to be a bit of a waste.
If that really is all you want to use it for then WiFi really is fast enough ... but the MBP can also be used for serious things (aka work) and for some of those WiFi will not be fast enough.
Facepalm guy because I do think one of us has missed the other's point.
Tiny storage - well 128gb is fine unless you really do need more. I have OSX with a full copy of Office, few other software packages, loads of data files, Windows 7 under parallels with some more Windows only software and the whole lot is about 70Gb. So all depends what you need. I have actually replaced large hard drives in Windows laptops with smaller SSDs for people as they needed the speed not the capacity.
No optical drive - no problem. I use one perhaps a few times per year - if it's an issue for you - buy a Dell or something. You will never find the perfect laptop as it will always include something you don't need / want or exclude it. How many Dells have Thunderbolt ports - I need that. How many Dells run OSX - I need that for some of the software I run.
@AC: not to mention that with USB 3.0 you can just carry a portable drive - a 1TB one is barely larger than a modern smartphone. Chances are if you're storing lots of data on a laptop you don't need it available at over 200MB/s. It'll also be a more convenient device in the event of drive failure.
Ok so from now on when you review laptops and such can you give the weight/ dimensions in two ways please.
Weight and size of the laptop on its own.
Weight and size of laptop plus bag you need to carry any peripherals in just in case you need to use outdated ethernet to move large files, have poor wifi etc or fancy a optical drive for some foolish reason such as having discs.
Seriously these are nice and lovely looking pieces of kit and lightweight, it makes me think that would be great for travelling, but then I have to factor in space being taken up for all the things it lacks and suddenly its seems that I am paying for something that ends up as bulky and unwieldy as some cheapo laptop.
My dell E4300 13" P9400 C2duo will cold boot in 7seconds after the bios screen, include the Bios and its 12 seconds... this is a 3 yearold laptop with a Vertex3!
I don't deny the MBP is pretty, but I feel its time for a little design change, it looks all very, well, been there, done that...
Why is Retina such a big deal, apart from when I close my eyes do I have a problem reading the screen and this is on a 1024x768 monitor work monitor.
Also I have worked in several Big Blue Chip companies in the last year and none of them allowed WiFi access. Most non IT companies dont have WiFi as standard.
But what I would love to know, the people in the Apple shop cannot answer maybe a few fanboys might. Ignoring the Retina Display. What can a Mac at £1500 do that a PC with the exact same Processor, Graphics and so on not do excpet cost less.
Guess you have never used Mountain Lion then - oh that does not run on normal PCs.
Of course you can get a cheaper pee-cee but it's like trying to compare an Audi to a Ford - yes they both have 4 wheels, they may both go 0-60 in the same time, they might both have the same sized boot but they are not built the same, worth the same at resale etc. etc.
"Ignoring the retina display"
That is the main reason you would be looking at that PC and it's therefore clear - i.e. it's got a massive resolution - if you don't need it buy the standard 13 incher at £450 less. You still get a very well made laptop. People buy Macs for the OS, the support and the fact that the hardware is pretty well made / rugged, some clever design etc. and are prepared to pay a bit of a premium for it.
I can't help but notice there are no pics of the base of this laptop, or mention that the battery is not removable or serviceable.
My girlfriend has a macbook pro 15" and we replaced the battery a year ago. is that going to be an option with this machine? I think not. Not for any reasonable price anyway.
"I can't help but notice there are no pics of the base of this laptop, or mention that the battery is not removable or serviceable."
I wouldn't hold your breath. Recall, if you will, the slightly terrifying way it was glued into the 15 inch retina model:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2012+Teardown/9462/3
They're getting a lot less maintainable and upgradeable. I don't think I shall replace my old 15 inch MBP with another Apple when it gets too old.
Firstly I would not want to install a cheap, 3rd party battery in a laptop I was using - these things have a lot of energy and if they don't bother to install the correct protection circuits or do install poor quality cells it's not a gamble I would take.
Apple seem quite happy to replace the battery packs for you - so assume that will happen on the newer models as well.
"Firstly I would not want to install a cheap, 3rd party battery in a laptop I was using - these things have a lot of energy and if they don't bother to install the correct protection circuits or do install poor quality cells it's not a gamble I would take."
No-one mentioned that, you're frottaging with a straw man there. Apple sells (hell, Apple stores sell) batteries for Macbooks. I replaced the one in my MBP a month or two back. There was only the delay to get one of the would-be hipster dickheads to pay attention long enough to take my money- no time-consuming booking in of the whole machine. When I got home, I just dropped the new battery in.
Of course, that makes the machine a museum piece, with its removable battery, upgradeable RAM, etc. etc..
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