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.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
It can be replaced it is just a huge pain to do so. I have done some ipod battery replacements and no the average non-slashdotter can't do it. The average slashdotter should be able to though, or should not be on slashdot.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Interesting)
So have I, but we're not normal users. I'm actually not a user at all, except for a third generation ipod in my truck -- I got the special tools and a line on several parts suppliers because the disposable mentality of the Apple product line just annoys the hell out of me. I offer repair/refurbish services to family, friends, friends-of-friends because I get satisfaction out of spoiling Apple's throw-away stand-in-line-for-new-model paradigm. And that it's more environmentally moral to keep the older devices in play.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still using my Creative Zen Vision M from 2005. I've never replaced anything in it, not even the battery. It's been in my car for the last 3 years in direct sunlight and freezing temperatures.
If it's built well, you shouldn't need to replace things. If you do need to replace things, you should be able to do so fairly easily. I don't know which category Apple really falls into. I don't own anything they sell.
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: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: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:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you both have good sticky fingers and never drop your phone? I've seen the battery pop out of a Druid X just 2 days ago.
My Droid X has been dropped lots of times. Last June it went down with me on east i84, at speed, motorcycle accident, ripped out of the holster, case scarred up from the impact and skittering across the asphalt, recovered by the EMT who got it back to me after I regained consciousness in ICU. The phone still worked and the battery had not popped out. So no, I don't know what you're talking about. "The battery popping out" sounds like a made-up thing from Apple fanbois.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Interesting)
> How many normal people do you think ever upgrade any piece of electronics they own, by themselves?
Just about everyone I know have at some point replaced their battery or upgraded their SD card (or have multiple cards), even my mother-in-law, and she's in her seventies and has never been a geek. Except for the people I know who own Apple products, where it is not part of the culture to do so.
An Apple user has a different perspective on this. If you have to be Apple certified to replace the battery in your macbook, not many regular users could do that. But a seven year old can replace a battery in a thinkpad. (I've seen one do so.)
It's important, I think, to agree to a common definition of terms. Non-Apple users, for instance, don't consider replacing the battery to be an "upgrade".
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:4, Informative)
I'd much rather have a lighter, more durable notebook and buy my RAM now, than save maybe $100 by buying it next year.
Factory-installed ram is three times as expensive as what you can get on Newegg now, and this holds for pretty much every laptop vendor. Face it, the new MBP is a $2100 machine with only 8 GiB of memory, and if you want more you have to pay an extra $200.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Funny)
if they still choose to go with Apple let them be bitten by the consequences of that decision.
in capitalist america, apple bites you!
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Funny)
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: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:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
The right thing to do is...
...always a matter of perspective. The iPod (and a lot of Apple's devices) offers a far superior interface and experience for the vast majority of users. If my mom buys an iPod and it breaks and she's upset, I will argue that the "right thing" for me to since, since I have the capabilities to fix it would be to do so. By doing so, I increase my mom's happiness, I get to undertake a fun little technical challenge, and both me and my mom are happy. If instead, I "guide" her to buying a user-serviceable device that she hates to use due to an inferior interface from her perspective, then she's lost money, doesn't have a device she likes, and she's mad at me. I cannot see how that would be the right thing to do.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
You can't replace the battery in the Galaxy Tab, either, but nobody around here sharpened their pitchforks over it.
Oh, on an unrelated note: Battery life on the Tab is pretty good.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
I just checked my Asus Transformer. SHIT NO BATTERY BOX. Let me go get my pitchforks. We can storm these companies together.
Re:has no user-replaceable parts at all (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually not. [arstechnica.com]
While Apple uses the latest SATA protocol, the connector is physically incompatible with either Mini PCIe or mSATA.
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.
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.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
...they decided that selling $150 replacement batteries wasn't enough, now they need to sell $150 replacement batteries AND $150 replacement battery services...
Hmm ... seems to me that it costs $129 for a new battery and that includes installation. Apple MacBook Battery Replacement [apple.com]
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
For the Retina MacBook Pro, it's actually $199 [apple.com]; $129 is for the MacBook, or the normal 13/15-inch MacBook Pro. (The 17" MacBook Pro battery replacement is $179.)
That said, the price isn't far off other manufacturers' discrete battery prices; Dell's prices for similarly-sized batteries range from $146 for their cheapest 90 Wh 9-cell battery (for certain Inspiron models), to $300 for a 97 Wh 9-cell extended battery that covers the whole bottom of a Latitude, with most 90 Wh batteries at about the $170 price point. Compared to that Latitude one, $199 isn't such a bad deal for a 95 Wh battery...
Re: (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: (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:Christ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it did, and it still does. It's a perfectly valid complaint.
Something to be weighed when considering the whole.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, yes it does. My old MacBook had the battery die after two years. I had to replace it ($150 mail order from Apple) and the laptop still works fine otherwise, despite being nearly four years old by now. (Oh, and I upgraded the hard drive. Something else you can't do any more.)
Having a non-replaceable battery, especially given that it's Apple [google.com], is absolutely a deal-killer.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
Yay, anecdotal evidence time!
I have managed over 20 Macbooks over the last 7 years and have had to replace only 3 batteries, all of which were covered as warranty replacements and so wouldn't have mattered if they were user-replaceable or not.
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: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: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.
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:Christ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Informative)
Quick search on newegg.com has 16GB DDR3 RAM at $149, versus $200 from Apple, preconfigured. Your prices suck because you live in the UK, not because of Apple. And yes, I used to live in the UK...don't miss UK prices one bit.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
I love my first gen MBP, it has served me well. But it has gone through 3 batteries, and I need to order another one now. (They bulge out and die)
There is a difference between 1st gen and current MacBooks. The user replaceable batteries only lasted for 300 charges, while the new non-replaceable ones should last 1000 charges. With larger capacity to start, so you will use fewer charges.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Interesting)
and I see it as a Major PLUS!
It means in 3 years a Macbook Pro will be sold on the used market for a LOT less than current models with a replaceable battery. Those of us that actually have a brain will be able to trade an hour or so of time for a $300-$400 lower price on a used mac laptop.
Hell I now have two iPad 2's that I paid nothing for except for the price of a new digitizer front and 1 hour each to replace it. They were GIVEN to me, one is a 64gig 3G unit.
I want apple to make everything hard for the general moron to fix. Because it turns into a boon for those of us that have ability and IQ.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats fine, and if youre buying the laptop because of the slim formfactor, the lower weight, the aesthetics, or the superior resolution, and its truly worth it to you, go for it.
Just dont try to feed the rest of us some line about how its a superior machine; I could easily link a $1400 laptop that has superior specs in various areas that ARE important to some people (like upgradeability, video performance, etc).
Im not against Apple as a market option, im just against the idea that we need to swallow some bull about how PCs are inferior. I have a $450 laptop that does 1366x768, and you know what? The fact that I have a built in ethernet port and can expand the crap out of it is far more important to me than any of that other stuff, and it doesnt mean my machine is inferior.
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:Christ... (Score:5, Funny)
Its just a fucking laptop.
Well, in some circumstances, that would be considered a big plus, even if it doesn't quite rise (ahem) to the level of an engineering marvel.
The Mona Lisa wasn't built ... (Score:4)
with user serviceable paint either.
The tinkerers don't like it for the same reason that they don't like modern cars with electronic fuel injection systems.
You can't pop open the hood and get at the system's guts.
If it was easy to do, we'd all have cheap, reliable, fast flying cars already.
The component layout, the integrity and holistic design approach make this an assembled piece of industrial art.
As for Apple's achievement... I'll let the lick-worthy-ness of all of their pieces of functional industrial design speak for Apple's real genius.
Re:The Mona Lisa wasn't built ... (Score:5, Funny)
People like you are the only reason Apple is making money. Period.
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Informative)
>>>Mac plus -- the greatest Apple Macintosh ever built.
Really? A 68000 @ 8 MHz computer that cost $2600 in 1986. The best? No wonder I never bought one (though I used them in school). The Commodore Amiga cost about 1/3rd that price, at approximately the same speed, but with full 4000-color display and TV compatible resolution, so it could show full-sized video. In fact it was used to produce special effects for several sci-fi shows. Plus it had preemptive tasking.
The Mac+ was a boring black-and-white with teeny-tiny screen, that could only run one task at a time, and frequently crashed when I was using it.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Funny)
Okay guys. Lets freeze, and back slowly away, off his lawn.....
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
No. The Video Toaster was a genlock with built-in special effects (wipe, fade, etc). We used to have one in our college TV station. That's all it did. BUT the Amiga's 68000 CPU did the number-crunching to generate the CGI, and the Amiga coprocessors displayed the 704x480 image that was captured to videotape (one frame at a time) for Babylon 5, seaQuest, Above & Beyond.
If for some reason you STILL don't think Amiga can do CGI, just go watch the Star Wars Walker Demo. Or any other video/demo from that era. Or you could rewatch B5's axis transport/elevator and notice how pixelated everything looks..... a side effect of the Amiga's low resolution.
>>>The Amiga hardware wasn't fast enough to do video production (most 486's of the era couldn't either.)
It doesn't have to be "fast". They are only generating ONE frame every hour or so. According to one of the animators Mojo, it could take an entire week just to generate a few seconds of CGI.
.
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:Christ... (Score:4, Informative)
So why hasn't anyone else built something better already?
because the parts lines(in factories) came online just this spring? and apple doing what it does usually, buying the entire supply(the screen) for the line.
I guess it depends a bit also on what you consider better too. on a machine like that, I wouldn't mind some extra thickness for better ventilation. asymmetrical fans or not it's going to scream with load.
but the ive video regarding them "designing everything" just oozed with bullshit, especially when none of the chips come from apple, the display isn't manufactured by apple and cramming the motherboard into that space really isn't an engineering marvel in 2012...
the real marvel is that they didn't pair it up with intel shitgraphics really. and another thumbs up marvel is that the included an actual hdmi port! maybe steve is really dead.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Apple made some rather significant investements in their supply chain - they've paid Sharp and others billions to improve LCD screens, paid millions to the factories in Japan that produced raw materials for the batteries affected by the earthquake, etc.
So it's not just buying up entire supplies (when you think about it, if a Mac sells a million units, that's a million screens - a rather considerable amount of product to produce. Not counting ones that fail Apple QC and end up on the secondary market as cheap monitors).
There are other companies able to do so as well - Samsung invested heavily in OLED display technology, hence why practically all their phones have it. Heck, perhaps Apple was willing to pay for significant investments in OLED screen technology so they can use it in the next iPhone, but Samsung rejected it. After all, Apple doesn't throw you a billion dollars without expecting something in return.
Re:Christ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Christ... (Score:4, Funny)
You ever played a video game on a Roman aqueduct? The frame rate is atrocious.
It plays "Pipe Dream" pretty well.
"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.
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Funny)
Appliance buyers don't tear down their toaster very often either.
Your childhood sucked didn't it?
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Interesting)
> Appliance buyers don't tear down their toaster very often either.
Not very often. On the other hand, toasters last longer, (ours is over 17 years old, my mother-in-law's still functional toaster is from a time when Bakelite was considered a valid construction material) and don't cost nearly as much. And they *are* fixable by anyone with a screwdriver and some aptitude.
> I won't be buying one. The ability to quickly repair Thinkpads is a key reason I buy them instead.
Agreed. Exactly. I just recently "repaired" my daughter's T30 -- open one door, replace battery, open a different door, replace hard drive, install OS, done.
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Funny)
Yes FOOL, but this is iRam.
Which is much shinier than regular RAM.
One could say it's an ENGINEERING MARVEL TO BEHOLD!
Re:"effectively unrepairable by the user" (Score:5, Interesting)
More than 1080p (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
> Yet it's a measly 15 inches.. but it is 16:10, so I'll give them that. It's an improvement over this 16:9 shit standard nowadays
Yes yes yes! Not an Apple fan, but 16:9 is pants!
Re: (Score:3)
Well apparently big and high PPI is more expensive and complicated than small and high PPI, but first the iPhone (3.5"), then the iPad (9.7") and now the MPB (15.4") it's pretty obvious to connect the dots on where this is going. I'd be very surprised if we did not have a high PPI iMac/Display within a year or so. Particularly since 4K TVs are finally starting to pop up in the market place, although still at outrageous prices.
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.
no user-replaceable parts (Score:5, Informative)
This is quite annoying. When I bought my macbook three years ago, it had a 160GB harddrive. If I wanted to upgrade to 250GB I had to pay €130. I went to the nearest computershop and bought a 320GB drive for less then €100. That means I had a spare 160GB drive as well. The same goes for memory. I buy it via ebay in the US, for half the price. I hope there will be shops who will replace these parts for normal prices.
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:4, Informative)
Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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.
Did I miss something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is something made with the current generation of components considered "an engineering marvel "?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because it has a shiny fruit on the back of it.... duh.
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:Did I miss something? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps if you also added, "No other competitor offers this combination of features in this small a package. Most compact competitors do not offer discrete graphics, nor quad-core CPUs. No laptop of any kind offers a retinal display for any price. Most competitors are only beginning to offer Intel's Thunderbolt connectivity. Apple continues to design systems, while their competitors throw components together."
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.
Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
Heat (Score:4, Interesting)
I read a few articles on the new shiny, but there seems to be no information on how the thermal and related noise situation is. How does the smaller design and needed computing power to drive that screen impact the temperature (under stress)?
My old MBP already gets annoyingly hot and loud when i am doing stuff on it.
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:This is the problem I have.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But many can, and those are Apple customers.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
You want a T series Thinkpad (Maybe W and X is also similar)
SSD storage? (Score:4, Interesting)
The limited writes are likely to be a factor for some uses, surely? I certainly wouldn't want to be using one as a development machine, or for serious photography (my other main computer use).
Re: (Score:3)
While limited writes are certainly a factor, they probably aren't going to be a major issue for basic consumer use.
Most SSD storage drivers these days automatically spread the writes around the drive, so to hit the write limit you will need to write the equivalent of the capacity of the drive multiplied by the write limit of any particular register. Assuming 2 million write cycles per register, and the low-end 256 GB drive, that's 500,000 TB of writing before you burn out every register. Obviously the user
Didn't ViewSonic have a 22" 200ppi display... (Score:3)
... like 10 years ago? Well, hopefully since apple stuck their logo on it, high ppi displays will be the next big thing. It managed to convince people that tablets aren't the totally useless toys they are. Maybe it will do the same for something that's actually useful.
IT Nightmare (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IT Nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
Predictions before reading thread: (Score:4, Funny)
My predictions about complaints before reading any comments include:
No physical media (wah).
No ethernet and/or have to spend money on cheap ethernet dongle (wah).
No 17" version (super wah).
Something about random slashdot guy's opinion about glossy/non-glossy screen and/or other insignificant personal preference
I bet it will run too hotly.
Not enough USB ports.
And then a whole bunch of technically incorrect gripes about resolution, screen size, and dpi...
Oh and let's not forgot the popular:
OS X sucks (even though you can still run Windows on it if you like)
no user-replaceable battery
merely an expensive fashion item/social status
And one last prediction is I'll have to correct some snarky fool who will say something stupid like "no right click" or something track-pad related where they miss the entire point of gestures because they've actually never used an Apple notebook and are trying to wedge their Dell-centric worldview onto Apple hardware.
This should be fun.
No, really 2880x1800 (Score:4, Informative)
What you are confused by is the scaling for elements (like images) that are not built for a hi-res display. All system text, and all of the applications that come with the Macbook have everything at the full resolution.
Anything built for a high-res display can be displayed in pixel perfect accuracy.
Re:No, really more like 1440x900 (Score:5, Informative)
You are wrong. It's a 2880x1800 display. You can address each and every one of those pixels individually.
If your code editor uses Lion's text rendering APIs but is not aware that the display is high DPI, Lion will lie to it and tell it that it's on a lower resolution screen so the text isn't ridiculously small. If your code editor IS aware that it's on a high DPI screen, it can display the text as small as your tired eyes wish.
Re:2880×1800? More like 1440x900. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's how Apple does high DPI - it's basically a 2x mode. The idea is that programs not designed for a Retina display will still act like they're running on a 1440x900 display (and thus will be of a decent size on the screen) but programs with 2x assets will display with the increased sharpness. Non-Retina-aware programs still get some of the benefit in terms of font and UI rendering (as standard system widgets are always displayed at Retina resolution regardless of whether the app is Retina-aware). This is the same way that it works on the iPhone/iPod touch 4 and the iPad 3.
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.
Re: (Score:3)
font spacing will be way off in some programs because Microsoft chooses to hammer fonts to the pixel grid.
I'd thought cleartype and the font system in Vista and later had gotten a lot better. I'd thought the reason Windows can't do high DPI well was more related to things like toolbar icon assets etc.
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: (Score:3)
I was reading about the display on AnandTech [anandtech.com], but one thing I don't get is what the actual resolution of the retina display is. From what I can tell, the images are rendered at 2880x1800, but can't actually be displayed at that size with pixel-perfect accuracy. Text cannot be read on higher resolutions without increasing the font size, which I thought was the whole point of having a higher resolution.
It seems to make sense, they will either have an option where you can get the display to act like it's 2880x1800 (and everything will be super fucking small like you are saying) or you can have the display scaled to a slighly more normal 1900x1200 aka 1080p-like but at the cost of having the GPU do some upscaling so that all the apps still pump out a lower number of pixels, but the screen gets all the pixels it needs thanks to what is probably a pretty well thought out smoothing algorithm. And as the scree
Re:2880×1800? More like 1440x900. (Score:4, Informative)
It's 2880x1800. Your confusion stems from Lion's text and OS UI element handling, which basically gives you choices about how big you want text and UI elements to appear. It looks like you can specify a kind of effective resolution, telling Lion to fool all the old software that doesn't know about high dpi screens into not rendering things too small to see.
OpenGL and the Cocoa drawing APIs have full access to high resolution screen.
Wrong, semi-matte by default (Score:5, Informative)
No matte option, only glossy
The new screen has a much different front, they said in the marketing materials 60-70% less reflective than the older glossy models. It's why there's no matte option this time around (I have a matte screen currently and wouldn't go for a glossy option again either).
Re: (Score:3)
And external storage isn't expensive... $70 for a 500GB and $90 for a 1000GB drive.
The only measure of a laptop is its thinness, and you're not going to find a 1/16th inch thick 1 TB drive anywhere soon. So you've gotta make a flash card RAID array out of about forty 32 gig SD cards and a zillion USB hubs and cables and adapters. The price is gonna add up.
Re:No dvd drive is too soon for me (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3)
Ask customers of Acer about being seperated from their money.
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: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:Dont buy apple for the hardware... (Score:4, Informative)
The Alienware M14x has a 14" 1600x900 monitor (I assume TN). It's 1.71" thick, It weighs 6.45 lbs. I can only assume you're the stereotypical "all that matters is performance per dollar" type who will not be swayed by any argument...
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:Could Linux on there skip the "retina" part? (Score:4, Interesting)