Analyzing the New MacBook Pro 914
MrSeb writes "Late yesterday, Apple released a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. It has a 2880×1800 220 PPI display. The normal 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have also been updated, but the 17-inch MBP has been retired, in effect replaced by the new Retina display MBP. Without a doubt, this new laptop is an engineering marvel in the same league as the original iPhone or MacBook Air. ... The Retina display MBP really looks nothing we've ever seen before. Here, ExtremeTech dives into the engineering behind the laptop, paying close attention to that new and rather shiny display — and the fact that this thing has no user-replaceable parts at all."
Fleshing things out a bit more, iFixit has a teardown of the internals. Their verdict: effectively unrepairable by the user.
has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's made by Apple?
shocking.
Next I suppose you're going to tell me the battery in my iPod can't be replaced like my other MP3 player could.
Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh give me a fucking break. The LEM was an engineering marvel. The Roman aqueducts were an engineering marvel. Apple has done nothing of the sort, what bologna.
"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Insightful)
Appliance buyers don't tear down their toaster very often either.
That said, it's cool from my perspective since it will result in "dead lappies for cheap" which will motivate people who like to tinker and build machines from organ donors.
I won't be buying one. The ability to quickly repair Thinkpads is a key reason I buy them instead.
More than 1080p (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I miss something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is something made with the current generation of components considered "an engineering marvel "?
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:2, Insightful)
And if your toaster was $3000, you'd have a point.
Re:Christ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, they did. It's called a "Mac Plus" -- the greatest Apple Macintosh ever built.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Without a doubt, this new laptop is an engineering marvel..."
Oh give me a fucking break. The LEM was an engineering marvel. The Roman aqueducts were an engineering marvel. Apple has done nothing of the sort, what bologna.
They engineered the battery to be right at the very edge of the unit, in a perfect spot to be easily replaced should they decide to put a thin layer of plastic around it and install a tiny seam on the outside (as many past owners found to be perfectly acceptable) but instead they decided that selling $150 replacement batteries wasn't enough, now they need to sell $150 replacement batteries AND $150 replacement battery services. That's a marvel.
You aren't supposed to repair your Apple computer (Score:1, Insightful)
Just throw it away and buy a shiny, shiny new one! Or are you opposed to planned obsolescence? We have a few decades of resources left to consume before they run out, so don't worry!
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I like Apple.
"Engineering Marvel" is a fucking joke. I agree with the parent 100%.
Its just a fucking laptop.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Christ... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing they've done lately is make new, chrome-y buttons whose highlights respond in time with the gyroscope in iOS 6. Wow, what progress.
This is the problem I have.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I'm going to pay a premium for a laptop, I'd like to be able to upgrade the RAM and HDD. Or even replace the battery. Many users simply can't afford to buy the new model every year.
If this was an engineering marvel, Apple would have allowed users to do upgrades.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:2, Insightful)
unless you're a digital hoarder who feels the need to keep more music and TV/movies than any reasonable person can watch in a lifetime hard drives are large enough. worst case i can buy an external drive to archive photos/videos of my kids.
most people don't have mental/OCD issues where they will have to see some photo from years ago right away
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:4, Insightful)
Most laptops require a screwdriver to replace the hard drive. This one is no different. Except that in this case, the "hard drive" is a chip, third party versions of which will undoubtedly be available soon, just like the were for the Air [macsales.com].
RAM soldered to the motherboard is disappointing, although looking at how things are crammed in, I'm not really surprised. iFixit's point that it's "the first MacBook Pro that will be unable to adapt to future advances in memory and storage technology" is incorrect - Intel laptop motherboards have almost always been limited to memory that existed when they were sold, and you CAN upgrade the storage.
Re:This is the problem I have.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But many can, and those are Apple customers.
thin? why does anyone care? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why should the only measure of a laptop be its thinness?
I want a laptop that's light, cool (thermally), powerful, reliable, cheap, good A/V and silent. Thinness is at least 8th on my priority list. Make it 4 inches thick as long as it maxes out the 7 higher priority goals first.
Why is there is fixation on thin laptops? What do you "get" out of a laptop being 1/2 inch thinner than another laptop?
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:2, Insightful)
What other laptop on the market has a 220 DPI panel? Please, tell me, I hate buying Apple but that is one hell of a screen.
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No dvd drive is too soon for me (Score:0, Insightful)
Besides the missing DVD drive and soldered RAM, the lack of ethernet proves the Retina book is nothing more than a Starbucks special.
Note the old fully-loaded MacBook Pro is still for sale. You know, for actual pros who need to pull big files off servers and shit.
Re:Christ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, the old "non-user replaceable battery" complaint. Didn't fly with the iPod 10 years ago. Still doesn't fly now.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:5, Insightful)
How many user replaceable parts has your TV got?
What's that you say? A little louder. None!
So does that make you a fool too?
The fool is the person that didn't realise that computers will go the same way as every other technology. More advanced, more integrated, more miniaturised, less user serviceable.
Re:Christ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Replacing battery would change serial and OS license numbers.
Why? I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but why on earth would it? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's just a damned battery.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:5, Insightful)
unless you're a digital hoarder who feels the need to keep more music and TV/movies than any reasonable person can watch in a lifetime hard drives are large enough.
Never say that kind of stuff around a video editor like my wife. You take maybe 25 to 100 hours of uncompressed high def documentary video, per project, times a couple simultaneous projects, oh whoops that's why I have a full size tower full of hard drives in the basement along with what sounds like a jet fighter auxiliary turbine power unit to cool it. Just one of her projects is about the size of my complete lifetime mp3 collection, or about the same as a full set of low-def star trek ... and she still has more projects. My digital hoard is pretty big by /.er standards, at least a TB, but compared to her half dozen half finished projects I'm just a rounding error.
Someday, someone will make a laptop that can hold everything a semi-pro video editor needs, but that day isn't here yet, isn't even on the horizon. Maybe by 2020 or 2030?
Apple is popular with the artsy craftsy AV crowd. There are people that do that kind of stuff on PCs, but they're kind of far and few between.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:3, Insightful)
Time moves on. It's the iPad of laptops. You decide on capacity at the time you buy it. People aren't complaining about the non-upgradability of iPads.
In much the same way, you don't buy a car with a small engine and then upgrade it to a large engine. You trade it in if you need that bigger engine.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:4, Insightful)
"disposable mentality of the Apple product line"
How many normal people do you think ever upgrade any piece of electronics they own, by themselves? Cell phone batteries were about the only thing user replaceable until companies realized that people were just chucking their phones after two years anyway.
I consider the slight hassle (have to find screwdriver!) of changing the "non-replaceable" battery in an iPhone once every couple of years, for example, much better than having an externally accessible battery fall out periodically.
It IS too bad they're soldering the RAM, but again, I'd much rather have a lighter, more durable notebook and buy my RAM now, than save maybe $100 by buying it next year. If you disagree, there are lots of plastic monsters to choose from other manufacturers.
Re:No, really more like 1440x900 (Score:2, Insightful)
Looking at the Anandtech article you linked, it looks like they restrict OSX from choosing 2880x1800 because system elements aren't designed to be seen at that resolution. Games run at 2880x1800 just fine, you just have to squint to see the text (in the portal 2 screenshot) because they didn't design the text to scale in a DPI-aware manner. Letters that are 10 pixels tall are still 10 pixels tall even when those 10 pixels are half of the height as on a normal ~100dpi screen.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:5, Insightful)
By that argument nothing is an engineering marvel.
And yet "current generation components" have to appear for the first time in something. And here it is.
The technology in this laptop is a fair jump from what was available yesterday. I'd say it qualifies.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd just like to read this article written without the mumbling sound caused by Apple's dick being firmly lodged in their mouths. The entire article read like they were trying, really hard, to write an objective article but then phrases like "engineering marvel" and "the hardware spec itself is flawless (and peerless)" come out and credibility is lost especially when those exaggerated comments are in the neighborhood of descriptions telling about what isn't any better (and in many cases worse) than the competition.
I think an objective article would have more of the following tone:
"Apple's new Mac Book is the first laptop to integrate a retinal display and standard USB 3.0. They also include a massive battery to keep the battery life high, 7 hours, in the face of the higher power drain of the screen. The balance of the components are on par with competing laptops or in some cases slower presumably continuing in their aim to keep battery life high. Apple also continues their black-box philosophy having no user-serviceable parts within the shiny package."
Fluff that out to make an article long enough for an editor and I'd be screaming less fanboi at this PR-grade article.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How long did you use them? Because the battery will die, eventually. Apple claims you've got, at best, three to four years before the battery is basically useless. If you only kept the 20 MacBooks running for like two years each, then congrats, you got managed to get lucky and dodging the "battery starts to bulge" problem that's been plaguing Apple.
And if the selling point to a MacBook is that it'll last longer than a cheaper Windows laptop, the battery being unreplaceable is definitely an issue. (If the selling point is instead "shiny high-DPI display," on the other hand...)
Re:More than 1080p (Score:2, Insightful)
YAY !! Over Full HD on a 15incher ! I've never heard of anything more useless and overkill...
Yes some people use higher resolutions, I use a 2500x1600 monitor everyday for instance, only it is 30 inches which MAKES SENSE.
2880*1400 or whatever Retina display is, on a 15 inches screen is just stupid. Plain and simple stupid. There isn't any sort of application where it makes sense.
And please please Puuuhhhleeaase don't talk about medical imagery, Visualization of big 3D Datasets, or photo editing and whatnot. If you doing this on a 15 inches MBP screen : "you're doing it wrong" ©. Resolution isn't even the most important aspect in these kind of work, it's collor gammut and contrast.
For these kind of application you need a dedicated monitor and a desktop. This new MBP is just yet another (even more) expensive Facebook machine.
Ok that's a bit harsh I hear you can play diablo 3 on it, although at Retina resolution is runs very poorly (how ironic..)
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, in the near 3 years I've owned my N900 the battery has not fallen out once. Perhaps your problem lies not with the existence of a readily replaceable battery but with poor manufacturing processes.
Re:Christ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats a marvel is that people try to defend a $2800 laptop with no user-replaceable parts, and that finally, as predicted for ages, even the RAM is nonupgradeable.
But nah, theyre not trying to stick it to the customer by forcing you to pay $200 for that extra 8GB of ram (market value $80), no sir.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slightly off-topic, but if you've ever tried to get a writing job for a tech blog/article site, they are running a business and will tell you straight up that what they want are articles that drive eyeballs to the site so that they can sell advertising and get paid. Your take is far too objective to be attention-grabbing.:)
(I briefly looked into writing for some of these types of sites and decided that this type -- more copywriting than analysis -- is not for me. Some people don't mind using screaming hyperbole and writing endless "List of N things..." articles, but it makes my skin crawl as a reader, so I can't bring myself to write it.)
Re:Dont buy apple for the hardware... (Score:5, Insightful)
All right, I'll bite.
M14x has a 14" display, not 15".
Its battery lasts around 4 hours in standardised tests, not 7 hours.
Yes it's cheaper, but you're not comparing like with like. Also, at the risk of facing derision from the tough (blinkered?) Slashdot crowd, just look at the thing http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=61197 [notebookreview.com]. When I'm choosing where to spend my disposable income, two of the factors are how the thing looks and feels, as you suggest. Not the most important factors, but definitely on the list.
I've ordered a 2.6GHz Retina machine, with 16GB RAM, plus the Ethernet dongle and the MagSafe2 adapter. Other than one very old Compaq laptop at a previous employer, I have never felt the urge to upgrade RAM or storage in one of my machines so I couldn't care less about the lack of upgradeability. The battery can be replaced by Apple if that's an issue (I've taken advantage of that with one previous machine). It will be used, like all of my machines for: coding (Vim/Netbeans), system management (Solaris, Linux, MacOS, Windows servers, Cisco and HP network equipment), photography and film (LightRoom, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X). It replaces a MacBook Air which has served me well, travelling around the world with me, tucked into a Tenba Roadie II Universal case. The MacBook Air shuffles over to my wife, to replace her 1st gen MBP15 which I'll donate to whichever friend or family member needs it most at the moment.
Yep, I'm in a happy Apple bubble. I like the simplicity, style, look, feel and quality of Macs. I love the functionality of OSX. And I certainly don't fit into the moronic image that other replies have alluded to (Starbucks, hipster etc.). I'm a systems and networks guy for a hedge fund, working from home, and the Mac hardware has been the right hardware for me and my job for many years now. I may not get 730fps on Diablo III, but I do have reliable, sturdy, smart and well-designed computers that do the job for me.
Your mileage obviously varies, your criteria for computer selection differs from mine and I can respect that. But I do buy a Mac because of the hardware - that Retina screen is a hell of piece of kit and for photos/film it was enough to get me to order on day one. Similarly, the MacBook Air had exactly the right mix of performance and portability.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. But people who are not geeks should have a better option than just throwing away a perfectly good device just because the culture says that this is acceptable. That offends me. I get some small solace in the fact that every device I repair is one less new device purchased.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:4, Insightful)
Same argument for laptops. Anything bought today will have a long useful life. Thunderbolt will provide an array of various input & output expansion ports.
Yes, there will be new machines next month/year. But that doesn't make the current ones useless. Any more than the 60" 120Hz plasma displays made my old SD tv in the basement obsolete. The kids still play Wii on it just fine.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I've owned several Palm Pilots, Trios, dumb phones and android phones over the years, all with battery doors and externally accessible batteries, and can't think of a single instance of a battery falling out. My current DroidX has a battery so firmly in place that a little ejector tab exists to get it out.
Re:More than 1080p (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that most stuff is running at a lowly 1440x900 though. From FTA:
By default, because of a lack of apps that have been designed with 220 PPI in mind, it looks like the MBP with Retina display will initially boot up with a 1440Ã--900 desktop workspace, but upscaled to 2880Ã--1800. The picture will still be perfectly sharp (1 square pixel is scaled up to become a square of 4 square pixels), but you wonâ(TM)t see beautiful, high-resolution typography or UI unless youâ(TM)re in a âoeRetina-awareâ application.
1440x900 is actually a bit low, and it seems that most of the current "retina-aware" apps just 2x scale their UIs anyway so it isn't like you even get more space on screen. When you browse a web page everything is zoomed to 200%, so fonts are sharper but obviously images are exactly the same DPI as before. I presume you can browse at 100% zoom if you want to, but then everything will be microscopic.
Rather than simply doubling the resolution so that everything scales nicely and text looks a bit sharper they should have gone for something like 1920x1280. High enough to look excellent but not so high that you can't really make use of it because everything has to be zoomed just so you can see it.
Re:2880×1800? More like 1440x900. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where the fact that Apple chose to use unhinted fonts is a big win. Windows can't easily do high DPI because many programs are not designed for it, font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
I guess you have never tried it. High DPI works flawlessly in Windows 7. Newer apps scale properly, older ones just get zoomed in the same as Apple have done. Fonts look excellent and scale as expected, no kerning issues or anything like that.
Apple has to make its fonts thicker because they don't snap to the pixel grid and thus you can't expect a 1 pixel wide line to look good. That isn't a good thing, it means thin fonts look terrible.
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Otherwise many other companies would be doing what they're doing right now, but it looks like Apple is consistently the one at the forefront of consumer electronic hardware right now.
Re:No dvd drive is too soon for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Ethernet sockets are too high. HDMI is low. It's not about horizontal space for the ports, it's about making the laptop thinner.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you taken a look at the form factor of the MBPR and taken the time to consider which off-the-shelf SSD would fit in there?
Apple couldn't care less about the Slashdot crowd and our tiny but vocal group of whiners. "We" are not market leaders or trend-setters - that ship sailed many years ago, sometime around 1995 I would think, and I think the technology world's a better place as a result.
Your "deal-breaker" is a feature for many "normal" users. Simple, good-looking stuff that works. And the knowledge that if it fails, the nice people will fix it for them. Normal people don't want to ever get their hands dirty with the insides of a computer, or a car, or with the plumbing of their house. A tiny number of us are interested in that sort of thing - but I scratch that itch with things like a Raspberry Pi (pre-ordered today, yay!) and other trinkets, rather than my main work machines. Others restore classic cars, or do up their houses. But again, the numbers involved are tiny, and it doesn't make Volkswagen produce cars with easily-changeable engines, or persuade builders to externalise all the wiring to make it easy for people to swap it in the future.
We tech-savvy people shouldn't be "pissed off" at Microsoft, Apple, HP or whoever - we just choose a different product as you're proposing to here (have fun with your Linux laptop, I've been there and done that, but as far as I'm concerned Linux is for my servers and maybe a VM on my Mac for testing).
But we shouldn't think for one minute that manufacturers are aiming this sort of product (MBPs, desktop PCs, iPods, etc.) at us - we're a tiny fraction of a percent of the buyers. They don't need to be careful. I just happen to think that Apple are making the right decisions at the moment and I'm happy with the price/performance/design balance. I've made use of their warranty and post-warranty facilities and I've been happy with that too.
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, I don't see many people lamenting anymore that TVs no longer have user-serviceable parts.
People's expectations for technology changes over time. As it becomes more commonplace, the features change. Apple has made overall device size a driving factor for their product line. This means they compromise upgradeability... even with complaints like yours, that's been a winning decision for them. The other route they could have gone would be to sacrifice features to meet the space.... but then they would have ended up with the same under-powered netbook that was a fad in the market.
You are not the target audience for this new product. That's fine. The other MacBook Pro models sound like a better fit for your wants. Or, since you're considering Linux, a different brand might be better.
As for me however, I've gotten really tired of dealing with hardware over the years. Diagnosing, swapping, rebuilding, testing components has gotten tiresome for my own equipment, let alone the support I've been giving friends and family. I'm fine buying a maxed-out machine, forgetting about the hardware, and focusing on simply using it for the kind of work I enjoy.
Today, most people do not make hardware upgrades to existing machines, as the costs compared to a new machine don't make sense. This is especially true for laptops which have far fewer user-serviceable components. It's much like rebuilding the transmission and steering on a 10 year old car. Sure, you can, but when that costs more than the car is worth, does it make sense?
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Insightful)
My old iPod was more expensive to repair than a brand new iPod with 4x the storage capacity. I wasn't offended and just bought a new one instead. In fact, I was quite stoked.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Insightful)
My old iPod was more expensive to repair than a brand new iPod with 4x the storage capacity. I wasn't offended and just bought a new one instead. In fact, I was quite stoked.
(nod) That is by design. It's part of the Apple business model, even the "stoked" part.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you taken a look at the form factor of the MBPR and taken the time to consider which off-the-shelf SSD would fit in there?
There's actually a standard for small SSDs called mSATA that's roughly the same size as the one in the MBPR. Apple didn't use it. They even went to the trouble of using a different, incompatible connector for the SSD to the similarly-sized one used in the Macbook Air.