
So long, Retina - Void_
http://blog.rinik.net/so-long-retina
======
relix
Have the retina. It's an awesome machine, and his points are correct:

* A lot of them suffer from burn-in, mine doesn't (I have a samsung display). I'm lucky!

* The scrolling is jittery at times. Yes I do notice.

* You can't really update anything inside.

None of these things bother me, at all. Update things inside? Last time I did
that was to upgrade a 2GB to a 4GB for my previous laptop. It cost me as much
as my Apple upgrade from 8GB to 16GB. When you upgrade you 'lose' the old
components anyway, you might be able to sell them and recuperate a very low
amount.

The jittery scrolling is definitely noticeable, but it's not really
bothersome. I guess if it irks you then you're in for some frustration.

The burn-in is the one issue where Apple dropped the ball, but it's obviously
not big enough to get the attention of major media (like the death grip issue
of iphone 4). I'm still hoping Apple will get a firmware update or at the very
least will fix the problem and allow replacements. Yes, I know it's a
"hardware" problem, but tech like this is so complex it might very well be
solvable through a firmware update.

But the screen. Oh the screen. It's like being reborn with new eyes.
Everything looks so sharp and awesome. I've had it for a week now and I still
sometimes just stare at text, and sigh. It really is great, and there's
nothing like it out there right now. It's as if Steve Jobs is standing behind
you massaging your face. Highly recommended, and completely worth these
"hassles".

Anyway, this article is FUD. 3 out of 4 of his "issues" he could have
predicted before buying the machine. The last one Apple will probably fix in
the future. He doesn't talk about the other advantages, i.e. battery life,
weight, compactness...

~~~
rlu
Honestly to me, burn in seems completely unacceptable for a computer so
expensive.

~~~
xenophanes
I had burn in on my apple cinema display. got the screen replaced in warranty,
happened again mildly on the new one later (warranty has ended).

my 27" imac had serious burn in problems. got the screen replaced in warranty.
hasn't repeated yet.

neither a cinema display nor an imac is cheap.

burn in problems are common. shrug. if it's completely unacceptable, there are
a lot more completely unacceptable screens, and have been for a long time, yet
no one seems to be complaining.

a sibling to your comment says 1st gen ipads can get burn in issues and this
is expected by apple and not considered a serious defect when it isn't too
strong.

------
whalesalad
This is precisely why I did not buy one. I know it's a brilliant machine, but
it's also the first of its kind. Anyone who's ever been an apple early adopter
knows that it doesn't always end pretty. v2.0 of the retina's are going to be
solid, I have no doubts.

~~~
jakejake
I have a buddy who's a certified Apple tech who basically has said the same
thing. If you don't like being on the bleeding edge and prefer to play it safe
with your hardware purchases, wait for the 2nd version where all of the major
gripes have been resolved.

~~~
ktizo
Bleeding edge technology, or a cutting edge that slips. I like to get version
> 3.0 of things, or buy the best of the last generation of technology, or high
quality second hand, if I am using it for actual work.

~~~
jakejake
You don't get the bragging rights of having the latest/greatest. But you do
get solid gear that actually works properly. It's a tough tradeoff!

------
gvb
_It works best with 1440x900 resolution. So if you like 1680x1050, your GPU
will have to do extra work._

The display's native resolution is 2880x1800. Why would you set it to half the
native resolution? That defeats the whole point of having all those pixels!
You might as well have a 1440x900 (non-retina) display.

Setting the display output to 1680x1050 is totally whacked - that is
displaying each pixel in 1.7 native pixels. Mind. Boggles.

~~~
DeepDuh
When it comes to Apple's Retina displays there's a bit more to it than what
you're used to:

\- when OP says 1440x900 he means the pixel doubled version. All GUI lengths /
fonts have the size of their 1440x900 versions, but there are twice as many
pixels, enabling high resolution graphics and fonts. It's basically a crotch
because Apple never got around to make their OS resolution independent,
however from a programmer's standpoint it's actually not that bad, you just
have to specify images with @2x postfix in the filename.

\- higher resolutions are not scaled in the same way you're used to. They're
actually rendered internally at double the resolution after which they're
overlayed with the screen's native grid for some interpolation-like process.
The result is vastly better than what you know from usual screen
interpolation, it's hardly noticeable actually.

~~~
bobbles
A crutch is something that helps you when you are unable to stand on your
own..

A crotch however, is an area for your genitals to play

~~~
DeepDuh
Thanks, unfortunately it's too late to edit.

------
abalone
Trollbait. 3 out of the 4 bullet points are also true for his previous 3 year
old MacBook Pro: 1440x900 is the best (actually max) resolution and it's not
user-serviceable or upgradable.

As for the screen burn-in, the very thread he links to notes that Apple had
been replacing defective units. You don't have to "get rid" of it, just bring
it in to an Apple store.

~~~
aeturnum
I have the previous model macbook. I've upgraded the ram twice, and I have the
higher resolution screen option. The setup described by the author would mean
I'd lose screen real estate and be stuck at whatever ram I bought, so they
don't seem like bad points to me.

~~~
seandougall
The three-year-old model (which I also have) has a native 1440x900 display, so
abalone is right about that -- though you're right that RAM was upgradeable on
the 2009 model.

But the bigger question is, why the crap is this polluting Hacker News? This
horse isn't getting any deader. Yes, OP's complaints are legitimate, but so
old at this point that the only reason to post this is Apple-bashing. It's
tiresome, and it's decidedly not news. Let's talk about something interesting.

------
brackin
I love my Retina. I haven't noticed problems with scrolling, I have my
resolution set higher than 'Best for Retina'.

I upgraded the SSD with ease, pops in an out once you remove the pentile
screws to open it up. It's easy to do and your point about "None of the
components can be upgraded" is incorrect. I don't believe anything else can so
it is limited but this was enough for me.

Source for one way to upgrade: <http://twit.tv/show/know-how/10>

~~~
X-Istence
Do you have a source for this upgraded SSD? Would love to purchase a higher
capacity one.

~~~
teilo
Aura Pro from <http://www.macsales.com>

------
rm999
The Retina is a fascinating and revolutionary laptop. But it's the first
generation, and most companies' (including Apple) almost always mess up their
first generation products in substantial ways. Everyone I know with a Retina
is mostly happy with theirs, but I am going to hold off until the Retina grows
into its high price. Meanwhile, a 13" macbook air and a 27" cinema display
costs the same and is more compelling to me.

~~~
mkhalil
How's the MacBook air for dev? Was debating if it was powerful enough or if I
should get a pro.

~~~
rm999
I do almost everything remote via ssh, so I'm not positive. The macbook air
has an i7 upgrade which should help, but my guess is it's still significantly
slower than the pros.

~~~
mkhalil
Thank you all for your replies. Really helpful!

------
scblock
Oh for Christ's sake, this is what passes for the "top story" on Hacker News
these days?

~~~
mark_story
Slow news day I guess.

------
kposehn
"I got rid of my retina macbook pro today."

While I can understand the issue being something that annoys you, deciding to
simply rid yourself of it - despite the bug being as you state "not something
that disturbs your normal workflow" - strikes me as rather silly.

~~~
rm999
He presumably returned it, getting his money back. It's not silly, maybe he
just felt it wasn't worth the premium.

------
mbailey
Sucks, but I think it's a good idea to wait a generation for stuff like this;
even if it's apple. I got a big IPS LCD from Sony back when they were a new
thing. I thought $1500 was well worth it for 1920x1200 in 24". I still use it
but it has a similar burn in issue.

Display tech is a shady game, figuring out the actual panel mfg is hard, and
years of custom modelines have taught me to avoid being an early adopter on
displays. Retina is "teh futar" though, and I welcome it once it's been
refined; we've needed higher dpi in large displays and software that can
handle dynamic dpi well for a long time.

------
kevincennis
I've noticed that scrolling in Chrome is pretty bad on my retina Macbook, but
in Safari it's super smooth.

~~~
xemoka
I noticed this too, you can make it better by going to chrome://flags and
enabling GPU composition on all pages (leave threaded compositing off though,
seems like a good idea but it has some implementation problems with back and
forward gestures). It's not perfect, but it does make a marked improvement to
stock settings.

~~~
kevincennis
Wow, it's like night and day. Thanks for the tip.

------
stevencorona
I have a retina. It has the burn-in problem. It's not noticeable and doesn't
bother me.

It's the price you pay for 1st-gen, new technology.

~~~
goldfeld
I have a retina. It has the retinitis pigmentosa problem. It's quite
noticeable but only bothers me sometimes.

------
wavesounds
I have one of these I haven't noticed any of those problems you mentioned but
I do have 1 dead pixel that is starting to drive me nuts. Anyone else notice
any dead pixels on theirs? Other then that I love it, fastest most beautiful
machine I've ever used.

~~~
WillyF
A single dead pixel is pretty hard to notice on the rMBP. Chances are that it
is multiple dead pixels. I love my machine but it's going back at some point
because it has what seem to be 3 dead single pixels, a couple doubles, a
quadruple, and maybe an octuple. Only the two big groups are noticeable during
my typical workflow.

------
randartie
Seems like it's just too 'high-end' currently. I would definitely consider it
if they ever made a low-end retina. Actually, I think Vizio had a retina
competitor and it looked pretty good, so did the price.

------
jazzymorning
Haven't noticed any problems mentioned on my mbp retina. The text and most
images are so incredibly clear that other screens look pixelated to me.

------
zachalexander
"After a couple of days" he noticed that "it's a disposable machine" and "none
of its components can be upgraded"? Those are valid complaints, but they're
public knowledge. If he didn't do the research before buying it, it's a little
silly to be complaining about those two things now.

~~~
watty
You should give the full quote. "Started noticing some of the well known
problems" implies that he did know about them, just didn't notice the
negatives of them himself the first couple of days.

Lots of hate on HN for this article...

~~~
zachalexander
That makes it worse :D He knew it wasn't upgradable, bought it anyway, and now
he's complaining about it?

------
partymon
If Samsung makes some of the retina displays, does that mean more laptops will
have it soon?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Eventually, but two problems that could slow down the process (meaning, not
necessarily "soon"):

(1) Apple has made lots of forward looking investments to get long-term lock
ups on supplies even if the manufacturer is Samsung. So perhaps they've
already bought the next 1 or 2 years of these displays that Samsung can
produce. Samsung would then have to build more factories to supply the needs
of other OEMs, where the OEMs did not help invest ahead of time to help build
this capacity themselves.

(2) More significantly: the operating system and its software eco-system must
actively support high-resolution displays. Since Windows 8 is more popular on
the low end, there might not be much incentive for Microsoft or their software
partners to actively change their software to support what would initially
probably be a very niche market for them. Without the software, there isn't
much motivation to produce the hardware. Apple doesn't really have this
problem: they've sort of forced the issue by releasing the hardware first,
they've upgraded their OS to deal, they've primed the market with a few
enabled apps, and their users are fairly high end, will demand more apps,
where the app developers will quickly oblige (Adobe came out with a HiDPI
version of the Creative Studio tools recently).

Eventually we will all get high resolution displays, but it will probably take
much longer for the PC ecosystem than the Mac ecosystem. If its successful
enough on Mac, however, I would expect the process to speed up on PCs so they
remain competitive.

~~~
tesseractive
There have been high-end Windows laptops for a while now that had higher
resolutions than Apple was willing to go. For example, for several years, Sony
has had a 1080p option on the Vaio Z's 13" screen. That's a lower PPI than the
Retina screen, but it's a much higher resolution than the 1366 x 768
resolution of a MacBook Air.

Nowadays, I think 1080p screens are starting to creep into even smaller
10"-11" devices. And with the light Apple is shining on high resolution
screens now, I expect this will accelerate, and we'll see more high resolution
screens on laptops filtering down from specialty PC laptops to midrange ones,
and extreme high resolution screens start to show up on the specialty ones.

This is a lot like how it worked in the iPhone vs. Android world of phone
resolution. Android phones jumped up to 800x480, then the iPhone jumped all
the way to 960x640. Android stayed at 800x480 at first, then 960x540 (qHD)
screens became more common, and now a device doesn't count as a high end
Android phone unless it has a 720p screen, a higher resolution than the iPhone
(though usually at slightly fewer PPI because of the different screen size).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You can't just upscale most apps for a higher PPI. The art is mostly pixel
based and upscaling will create artifacts. So for some boosts in resolution,
this is ok, the art just gets smaller, and app developers slowly adapt by
making their art bigger. But from 1X to 2X...upscaling works a bit better but
is still not ideal, while you really have to go and completely redo your pixel
art.

------
willthefirst
The burn-in/ghosting issue only affects the earliest batch of screens. I just
took my retina into the Apple store, and they will decapitate it and add a new
screen for free. Annoying, but it doesn't affect all whole line.

------
aklofas
Wow, that's kind of petty. The author is _never_ going to find the perfect
laptop. There are always going to be some issues, so deal with it. While I am
always in favor of throwing out apple products (apple sucks), this article is
just stupid.

~~~
watty
How is it petty? He stated multiple valid reasons why he decided to switch
laptops on his personal blog. Nothing petty about them either, I can imagine
jittery scrolling being very annoying/disruptive to some people.

