
Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review - zdw
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review
======
rfrey
He's unsatisfied with his 'old' MBP 15" (previous gen) because "it always made
me feel like the old fogey at tradeshows where everyone else had something
13-inches or smaller".

Stuff like that defies parody.

~~~
arihant
That's signature style of a lot of great, obsessive reviewers. Connecting to
what a particular product ultimately "means" to you is something that
differentiates reviews from spec-sheets.

This reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson on Porsche Boxster - "The only reason you
would buy one of these is because you can't afford﻿ a 911... so what you're
doing as you're driving around is advertising the fact that your life hasn't
worked out quite as well as you had been hoping"

~~~
brisance
And that is why Jeremy Clarkson's reviews should not be the final arbiter of
what constitutes a "good" car. The Boxster/Cayman has been consistently judged
to be a better driver's car than the 911 because the engine is mounted in the
right place to begin with. It's very much similar to Intel and the x86
architecture where its greatest success is keeping it from future greatness.

~~~
archangel_one
I think you've rather missed his point - it has nothing to do with how good
the car is to drive or not, it's a judgment on what buying the car would say
about your aspirations. As usual from Clarkson, it's extremely opinionated and
nobody sensible would take it as the final arbiter on anything, although it is
a unique and fairly perceptive take on the car.

~~~
brisance
In which case the poseurs driving 911s should go out and shoot themselves in
the head since they can't afford a Carrera GT... which is also mid-engine.

~~~
sliverstorm
They made 1,200 of the things. Failing to be wealthy enough to own such a
limited-production car is only called "failure" by a very few.

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Gring
The "glare handling" pictures makes me wonder why anybody would buy a portable
device (=to sometimes be used outdoors) and be happy with those outrageous
reflections. I mean, you can barely see the content!

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-
pro-w...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-
retina-display-review/4)

With the new decice, Aplle again tries to makes those unusable mirrors the
only display you can order. I'll pass.

~~~
astrange
Glossy displays are exclusively better in controlled lighting, because their
black levels are actually good. Controlled lighting is not difficult to
achieve and is already a necessity for graphics work.

Actually, it can even be better outside. A screen with reflections on it is
not as bad as a screen that you can't see due to low contrast.

(I'm currently using a matte desktop LCD, but wasted tons of time looking for
a model with an 8-bit screen and good contrast.)

~~~
majormajor
Whatever happened to the matte-ish finish used on some late-90s-and-on CRTs? I
had some with way less glare than my MBP, and, being a CRT, about as perfect
black levels as you're going to get.

------
untog
I'm hoping that we see a 13" Air edition with the Retina Display sometime
soon. _That_ I will pull the trigger on.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Considering the 13" Pro doesn't have room for a discrete GPU, I doubt we're
going to see a retina Air until a few more revs of Intel's integrated GPUs.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Have you heard of the iPad?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The iPad needed nearly double the battery to keep up with the larger
display+GPU's power requirements. The MBP still had to add 20% to keep up.
There's no room in the current Air for extra battery, so even if the current
GPU could keep up to Apple standards, running time wouldn't. Which means
either becoming less Air-y or waiting for a more efficient part (likely
Haswell)

------
axxl
The most interesting section for me was the performance issues of the retina
display ( [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-
pro-w...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-
retina-display-review/8) ). I wonder if waiting for a next generation mbp to
really be able to push those pixels would be a smart choice. I had noticed a
few stutters when playing around with one in the store, though if Mountain
Lion will optimize it as claimed then that could fix it.

~~~
mtgx
What I'm surprised about is that people are just realizing that retina uses a
lot more processing power. I bet most people still don't realize that a
"retina-optimized" game should should have half the performance on iPad 3
compared to the "low-res" version on iPad 2, if everything else is equal, even
though the GPU in iPad 3 is twice as strong.

~~~
kenrikm
Yes however retina games don't require 4x AA to look great. So you're trading
one performance hit for another.

~~~
FrankBooth
4x AA is only a 15-20% hit when you're talking about MSAA:
<http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/535?i=455.488.456.492>

~~~
kenrikm
Not all games support MSAA, however yes it's much more GPU friendly.

------
Tichy
I'm allergic to the "best product x Apple has ever built" line, it is such an
obvious manipulative marketing spin. Of course every new device should be the
best they ever built. All the components have been improved - it is just the
way computer technology has progressed for a long time now.

Also, it is just a slightly slimmer notebook with a higher resolution. It is
not "changing computing as we have known it".

~~~
achompas
_Also, it is just a slightly slimmer notebook with a higher resolution. It is
not "changing computing as we have known it"._

Wow. This is like saying "the iPad is just a tablet you can touch." You're
completely trivializing the rMBP's benefits.

It's not just "slightly slimmer," it's a 15" laptop that weighs _4.6 pounds._
I see one laptop in that range (Sony Vaio S series), and it has an i5 and a
spinning platter. A "higher resolution" is also too hand-wavey, since the
screen has 220 ppi. I couldn't find a 15" screen that comes within 80 ppi of
that mark. [0]

Apple's ridiculous marketing ("the most magical, splendiferous touchscreen
device since the last touchscreen device we produced!") can be too much, but,
I mean...have you _used_ one of these? They're amazing in person--it weighs
less than my 13" MBP, the screen is infinitely nicer, and apps launch so
fast...[1]

[0] [http://sortable.com/find-laptops/high-PPI-
laptops-15-to-16-s...](http://sortable.com/find-laptops/high-PPI-
laptops-15-to-16-screens)

[1] Granted, I don't have a SSD in my laptop, but still.

~~~
Tichy
I've had laptops that weigh less than 4 pounds for years. It's nice that we
can now have one with a bigger screen, but show me the revolutionary new
things you can do with it that you couldn't do before?

For what it's worth, I think broad availability of capable netbooks for 300$
was probably more of an evolutionary jump. Or things like the Rhaspberry PI -
those things open up new use cases. Like, it makes a difference if everybody
can afford to buy a notebook instead of a desktop PC, because it makes mobile
computing take off (in turn leading to localized services).

~~~
achompas
_I've had laptops that weigh less than 4 pounds for years. It's nice that we
can now have one with a bigger screen, but show me the revolutionary new
things you can do with it that you couldn't do before?_

You're doing it again. Do any of those machines have a quad-core CPU with SSD,
8GB RAM, a 220 ppi screen, and ~7 hours of battery life?

I'm not arguing that the rMBP is revolutionary or magical or whatever, but
give it it's due: this is a uniquely practical and powerful machine. I'm sure
you've used sub-4lb laptops before, but I bet none of them posted Geekbench
scores over 7000, much less 13000. [0]

[0]
[http://www.maclife.com/article/features/benchmarking_macbook...](http://www.maclife.com/article/features/benchmarking_macbook_pro_retina_display)

------
wolf550e
I prefer reading it this way: [http://www.anandtech.com/print/6023/the-
nextgen-macbook-pro-...](http://www.anandtech.com/print/6023/the-nextgen-
macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review)

------
albertzeyer
I didn't realized until now that the Ethernet port is gone. I need that! That
might actually be the main and only reason for me to not buy this. How sad, I
really like the device otherwise.

~~~
efraim
They will be happy to sell you yet another adapter.
<http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/MC704ZM/A>

~~~
sounds
Note: the ethernet chip _is_ present. In this article (anandtech) they look at
Gigabit Ethernet performance and benchmark it at 925-928 Mbps - using the
_Thunderbolt_ adapter.

Over at the iFixit teardown (step #13), you can see that the ethernet chip is
present on the I/O board:

"Broadcom BCM57100 series Gigabit Ethernet + Memory Card reader controller"

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-
Displ...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display-
Teardown/9462/2#s36202)

~~~
tedunangst
I'd like to see a teardown of the adapter. My understanding of thunderbolt is
it's not going to carry ethernet signals. There's _another_ ethernet chip in
the adapter (I think). The one on the motherboard is there primarily for the
smart card reader and because it allows Apple to use the same chip on the
laptops that do have ethernet jacks.

~~~
kika
Correct. Tunderbolt is PCI-Express + Displayport. PCIEx part is what makes all
these dongles possible at great speeds.

------
Kerrick
I didn't realize Apple was pushing graphics so hard the past few years just to
get to a point where retina-level resolution was possible at these sizes.

Funny, it reminds me a bit of the big push Vista caused in hardware
manufacturers to stop stagnating on the amount of RAM considered 'normal' in
computers.

------
mikelbring
So how will my code editor look on Retina? All blurry?

~~~
mwhawkins
That is the issue I am having. Eclipse-based IDEs are not ready for Retina.
The text is legible, the IDE is usable, but its noticeably blurry. I've logged
a ticket with Aptana Studio and Eclipse, but they have no solution to this
issue, just workarounds which don't really work.

If you are using Vim or a simple text editor, however, there is no issue with
the appearance of the text.

Xcode works just fine, too.

~~~
Ogre
There's another option. You can get a third party utility like SwitchResX ($,
but the free ones didn't work very well when I tried them) and run your
display at native resolution. Yes, you get a full 2880x1800 desktop, and yes,
some things get terribly small. But, you can then set your font sizes larger
in things you use all the time, and I find the really small stuff to still be
readable, maybe just not pleasant for long term use.

I am running that way right now, using Firefox zoomed in slightly, and it
works beautifully. SwitchResX lets you set up hot keys to switch resolutions
too, so I've been switching back and forth between 1920x1200 and native
resolution trying to decide what I like best. So far, I think 2880x1800 is
winning, with Firefox zoomed in, and a 14 point font (Inconsolata) in Emacs
and iTerm2. Though both of the latter work correctly at Apple's scaled
resolutions already (I've so far settled on Inconsolata 11 at 1920x1200)

For me, the biggest thing that's changed is that I've used Monaco 9, or
variants thereof on non-Apple platforms, as my code font for the last 15
years. This was already too small for some people to read, and I've had
hotkeys set up to switch to larger fonts when showing other people code on my
screen for years. Monaco 9 doesn't even really exist at scaled resolutions
though - it is NOT the same font you get if you render any other point size of
Monaco, which is what happens at Apple's scaled resolutions. "Monaco 9" looks
like the rest of Monaco now. (Techincally the old pixel version does still
exist when running at native resolution, but it's crazy small and although I
can read it with some effort, it's not really practical). But the screen is so
great that I'm finally over my obsession with pixel fonts. Inconsolata is a
fantastic tiny font when the pixels are too small to see. I'll probably try a
few more now that I've been liberated, that was just the best I happened to
have installed already.

~~~
kylec
If you're using the "best for retina" resolution, you can get Monaco 9 on the
native pixels by selecting Monaco 4.5. It will be extremely small, but if you
have good eyes it should still be readable, more readable than anti-aliased
fonts at that size anyway.

~~~
Ogre
Hey thanks for that. I wasn't aware I could type smaller sizes into the font
selector. It doesn't seem to work very well though. iTerm2 still renders a
scaled font when I do that. Terminal does render the bitmap font, but bold
text is all screwed up - apparently it's bolding by rendering twice, slightly
offset - only that offset is now multiple pixels, so it doesn't look bold, it
looks like two overlapping renders. Emacs has issues with the font selector
dialog in general, and doesn't appear to accept typed values at all. Further,
when setting the font the normal emacs way (using an X11-like font
description), it errors out when trying to give it a font with a fractional
size. Monaco 5 does work, but it's not quite right.

Anyway, I wasn't really trying to get Monaco 9 back, I'm actually happy I can
use "real" fonts now and still get as much code as I'm used to on screen.

------
npalli
It would have been great if apple introduced a regular macbook pro with an IPS
screen. I have a hi-res 15.4" macbook pro and a 1080p Dell XPS 16. Both are
non-IPS. I recently picked up a Lenovo 12.5 HD IPS screen which is lower DPI
than either the mac or the dell. However after using the lenovo for a couple
of days I'm blown away how shitty both the mac and the dell screens looked
(dull, like someone had put a film on top). Given many applications are not
ready for retina display, apple could have used their supply chain prowess to
get an IPS display on their regular macbook pro line.

~~~
superdude
I agree that it would have been awesome to upgrade the non-retina MacBooks to
IPS. But go try the 14" Thinkpad. It uses the shittiest LCD panel in the
industry, way worse than any MacBook and worse or on par with the worst Dell
laptops.

------
eli
Ugh, having to upgrade to the outrageously priced high-end CPU just to get the
512GB SSD is killing me.

I need to upgrade, but I'm seriously considering a fully loaded Air instead
because it'd be nice if this came in under $3k.

------
zokier
I find the desktop performance bit ridiculous. I mean, a (very) high-end
hardware manages only 20FPS while browsing Facebook? It would have been
interesting to see similar benchmark on Windows.

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forgetcolor
i'm so tempted by the weight and the screen resolution, but thrown off by the
glossy display and the sluggish frame rates at > 1440 resolutions. i tried a
glossy in 2010 and returned it for a highres antiglare because the reflections
created a serious eyestrain problem for me. i doubt the new one will be much
better, but look forward to seeing one. and i wish he'd try the framerate
tests on mountain lion.

i really need the performance increase over my 2010 but may go w the old style
until they work out the bugs in a year.

------
tftmon
is it still TFT IPS display, its so thin on photos.

------
fabiandesimone
The article adds nothing of value and the use of different names for the same
machine is nothing but an attempt to do some SEO.

How is this on the front page?

~~~
jaems33
It's a pretty comprehensive review. Page 16 on the battery life at various
workloads was important to me.

~~~
fabiandesimone
Oh man, I'm an ass. I read the first page on my phone and did not see the
following pages. My previous comment has zero merit.

~~~
rhizome
All of the major review sites split their articles into 20+ pages.

