
Updated MacBook Pros - Artemis2
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
======
Udo
I'm seriously wondering what my upgrade path is supposed to be.

I have an ancient 2011 15" MBP, which was also the last user-upgradeable Apple
laptop ever, but I remain hesitant to buy a new model. There is just not
enough storage in the new ones, or in models that come close to my old one
(1TB+) it's prohibitively expensive.

At some point soon, my old MBP will probably disintegrate or get stolen, and
it has features I'm not going to get back. I'm used to having my music, my
ebooks, my documents, my photos, and my code with me at all times. It's really
convenient.

~~~
nimish
Stop being a packrat and move cold data to an external drive.

Bonus: now you have your data around even if your laptop breaks.

Once I learned to live with a 64GB macbook air, I realized that 90% of the
data I was keeping around was not useful.

It's very liberating.

Yes, I realize 64GB of data is huge, but not for modern machines.

~~~
Udo
_> Stop being a packrat and move cold data to an external drive._

How does lugging around an extra piece of equipment that is inconvenient to
handle equate to being _less_ of a packrat? No. Inventing time-consuming and
frustrating coping strategies just because newer tech is more limited than the
old stuff? That's not a path I'm going to embark on. There is nothing
liberating about it.

The restrictions Apple currently imposes on us do not exist because they
believe we should throw away our data as a matter of Zen. They exist because
SSDs have not caught up yet, though at some point they will.

 _> Bonus: now you have your data around even if your laptop breaks._

What does breakage even mean in this context? My laptop right now has an SSD
for fast system things and an HDD for bulk data. If one of them breaks, the
laptop will still be usable and I just put in a spare part. If the laptop is
completely destroyed, chances are an external HDD in my backpack will also be.

It's not like carrying an external backup HDD is impossible just because my
laptop has adequate onboard storage - it's obviously a false dichotomy.

 _> It's very liberating._

I absolutely get that shedding ballast is a liberating experience, but it
pertains to physical things. I have gotten rid of many, many things in my life
that didn't have any real value anymore - including almost all of my books,
CDs, and DVDs. The books and CDs are still with me in digital form, which is
kind of the point here (the DVDs are, too, but on my home server).

The neat thing about digital possessions is that they can scale very well
without encumbering you.

~~~
mattlutze
"cold data" from OP was probably a key factor.

They're responding to a different philosophy.

Take music: The main case is generally "I want to listen to music that I like"
or "I want to listen to (specific) music from (artist)" of some sort. I have
150GB of music, but neither of those cases require most of it as most of it is
only accessed very rarely. The music file storage can stay somewhere else, for
occasional reference if I want to pull something esoteric from the collection.
"Cloud" or an external drive are great for this.

Wash, rinse, repeat for photos, movies, old software, etc.

And when it "breaks", i.e. that single-point-of-failure HDD fails, as they do
often catastrophically without warning, the files aren't lost. It's like
keeping your will, the deed to your house, baby photos, etc. in the
briefcase/backpack you carry around all day. Fine way to protect them until
something happens to that briefcase.

It's liberating dropping 3 pounds from your shoulder, as well.

~~~
_delirium
> Take music: The main case is generally "I want to listen to music that I
> like"

Sure, but that's not the same every day. I don't want to shuffle my music
collection around constantly; I'd rather just have it, so if on a trip I'm
reminded of $bandname and want to listen to an album, I don't have to futz
with downloading it on hotel wifi. To me the cognitive overhead of manually
operating some kind of caching scheme, where I purge rarely used files to the
archive and then have to page-fault them back in again, is not worth it.

~~~
mattlutze
I'd be willing to put money on the general person never needing more than a
small portion of their library but for the rare exception, at which point a
free Scroble-ing service or YouTube suffice. If you reflect, are you really
going back to the depths of your music library to find track 11 off that one
less-popular (insert band name) album?

It's simply the philosophy that most of the stuff we keep with us on our TB
hard drive laptops isn't actually stuff we need to keep with us.

Obviously Apple considers your philosophy to be an edge case to their intended
business model and would rather not offer you moderately priced options to
upgrade, which is certainly a shame.

------
KhalPanda
For those wondering, they've upped the base specs and dropped the prices
slightly. Nothing completely 'new', per se.

~~~
godDLL
Additionally the only model with a discrete GPU now base cost $2500

~~~
jahnu
For some reason $2499 == €2499 in Europe :/

~~~
vten
US doesn't include VAT on their price tags if I'm correct.

~~~
jahnu
Fair point but ($2499 * 1.2) == ~2250 Euros

------
frik
Why doesn't Apple ship MacBooks with optional anti-glare display anymore? Is a
third party anti-glare matte screen protector useful?

I would like to use the notebook outside too. Using the iPad outside on a
sunny day strains the eyes.

~~~
coldtea
> _Why doesn 't Apple ship MacBooks with optional anti-glare display anymore?
> Is a third party anti-glare matte screen protector useful?_

Because it was not of very high demand, plus it's awful for color accuracy and
deep blacks, not to mention that it destroys a lot of the niceties of having a
retina screen -- it's literary adding a diffusion material over your screen,
that besides reducing glare also makes it more blurry.

Plus, the solution to glare is quite easy: turn the display away from a light
source. It being a portable computer, that's quite easy.

~~~
frik
> turn the display away from a light source

Working outside in nature (country side) or on a train/bus (next to a window),
a glare display doesn't work well.

I like to work outside under the shadow of trees and the wind constantly blows
through the leaves and shake them around.

A business notebook with mate display works fine in such conditions and the
colors are good and not blurry at all (one can always attach a high quality
monitor).

~~~
coldtea
> _I like to work outside under the shadow of trees and the wind constantly
> blows through the leaves and shake them around._

I don't think that describes much of the population. But if it does describe
you, just avoid having the sun on your screen. Either find a shade around
noon, or keep the display against the sun at other times.

------
bfwi
For those of you who choose Pros over Airs; why does a Pro serve you better
than an Air? Is it because it's your only machine, and you need the hardware
to be beefy?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Retina. Once you stop seeing pixels, it's painful to start seeing them again.

~~~
swah
Ì'm waiting for the retina iMac/display, because working without external
mouse and keyboard never worked for me (and 15" is probably too small for the
desktop)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Pity, apple has the best trackpad. My wife is also waiting for the iMac UHD,
though I'm tempted to buy a samsung 28" UHD myself.

------
jongold
The best time to buy a Mac is when you need one; if you wait forever you'll
never end up buying one. My work machine died less than a month ago; a little
bit annoying that this happened but there's _always_ going to be a better,
faster, cheaper Mac in the future.

~~~
supercoder
No the best time to buy one is immediately after they release a refresh.

~~~
Deinos
That is assuming that being on the cutting edge matters to you. If you just
need a machine spec'd to accomplish the tasks that you perform on a daily
basis, you buy when your old machine can no longer get that job done (and the
smart money might even be on an older model at a discount if it suits those
needs).

------
tkubacki
Nice but my next laptop will be some Chromebook + ElementaryOS rooted - if all
you use is terminal/sublime and browser - Mac is a waste of money.

~~~
rbanffy
I understand the appeal of a more or less throwaway computer, but I have to
add the Retina screen is outstanding, the OS is good enough and the machines
are incredibly well built.

My wife was in a car crash about two years ago and, while the car was
totalled, her MBP survived with exactly one scratch.

~~~
FireBeyond
That's kind of a weird thing to support that - not that I disagree, I love the
build of my MBP... but a) it takes very little to consider a car totaled, and
b) as a firefighter/paramedic, the very large majority of the time, even the
most serious of car accidents don't result in the vehicle being crushed to the
point where a laptop sitting on a seat is destroyed.

~~~
rbanffy
Most of the back of the car was crushed into the rear seat area. The laptop
was in the trunk, inside a briefcase that ruptured in the crash - the small
scratch/dent on the corner of the laptop was probably from a shock against a
metal object at that moment.

The fact my wife left the vehicle angry but without even a scratch is a
testament to the engineers who designed all cabin safety features. As for the
poor laptop in the trunk, well... That's entirely thanks to Apple's design and
engineering team. That thing is indestructible.

------
duiker101
wow, I bought one less then a week ago for £2200 and now it costs £1999 and
has more stuff... did I just gifted them £200 or if I complain I might at
least get the new model?

EDIT: thanks all, yes I remember asking the return policy is 14 days. I will
do that.

~~~
collyw
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple)

~~~
duiker101
Want to know even a funnier thing? I don't like Apple at all, the last product
I bought was an iPhone 3G because I didn't like their business practice but I
gave in to the mbp because it's a nice machine and I wanted to expand myself
instead of keep developing only on Windows. Guess I was right when I decided
to ditch Apple.

~~~
coldtea
> _Guess I was right when I decided to ditch Apple._

You came to the conclusion that you "were right when you decided to ditch
Apple" because they just put out newer, better models that the one you just
bought?

Sure makes sense...

~~~
swombat
Of course it makes sense. Other manufacturers don't release new products until
their current line-up is thoroughly obsolete.

The way they achieve that is by releasing stuff that's already obsolete on day
of launch, but you can't argue with the ethics!

~~~
WorldWideWayne
I've been living in the future with my Surface Pro for a while now.

Apple won't catch up to that until they can lock down the supply chain.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 've been living in the future with my Surface Pro for a while now._

So Philip K Dick was right after all, the future is a dystopia?

~~~
WorldWideWayne
I guess one man's dystopia is another's utopia? Because I'm in the latter ;)

I think Apple has brought us closer to dystopia than anyone with their
hardware + software lockin monoculture. At least I can move to other hardware
vendors if I don't like Microsoft's hardware. If I want to run OSX I have to
buy Apple's hardware (and I do when I have to, but I certainly don't enjoy
it).

------
mattcornell
In the "mine is older than yours" category, I still program on a mid-2007 15"
MBP! I recently upgraded it to 6GB RAM (I don't know why I waited so long),
but I now have those vertical lines on the display that are from the internal
connector (or something similar). Drat! Now I feel dumb for upgrading the RAM.
The machine isn't bad, but replacing the screen is a no-go given that I could
buy one on ebay for the price of a replacement screen. And I agree re: new
ones' not being upgradable. I'd rather have a relatively bulkier form factor
that's hackable, but Apple disagrees. Also, $2K is a lot for me.

------
SandB0x
Am I right in thinking you need to buy the top ($2500) model if you want to do
any CUDA work? Or am I misreading the table and all the MBP models have both
the Intel and nvidia GPUs?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
For CUDA HPC work, you really need a desktop/server Linux machine that you can
use remotely from your laptop. Only the highest end MBP has a discrete nvidia
GPU.

~~~
mdda
Yes to the more reasonable px/performance of a desktop/server Linux backend
for HPC. OTOH, if you were doing OpenCL instead of CUDA, the i5 would happily
run that as an OpenCL target (albeit more slowly), so that you could do
compilation/test dev on any newish laptop.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The intel integrated GPUs also support Opencl, though I'm not sure how useful
that is.

------
jontro
What is the difference of the high end models compared to the release last
fall?

Only thing I can see is a faster cpu, is there anything else?

~~~
skrause
Slightly faster CPUs, more RAM for some models and somewhat lower prices.

The real update has to wait because Intel's Broadwell CPUs are delayed until
2015, so they're releasing a minor spec dump today to keep customers happy.

------
kgorin
Now base 15" model has 16 gigs of RAM, that's actually pretty sweet
improvement

------
teekert
Compared to my 2011 MBP I Like the Retina, 16GB is nice as a standard but I
have that now (and honestly I don't foresee needing more soon). But man would
I trade that 256GB SSD for a 2 or 4 TB HDD in a heartbeat.

~~~
mrvagabond
Just add an external HDD if you need the storage. Booting and running your OS
off an SSD is a major speed improvement over HDD.

------
philliphaydon
I currently have a 2012 MBP/r, but considering getting the Asus NX500. After 2
years of seriously using a mac... I still can't stand it. I feel much more
productive in Mint or Windows.

/opinion

~~~
defective
Thanks for mentioning the NX500 -- I have the 2012 as well, and I have been
looking for months for something that could be a better Windows laptop than
the rMBP -- I've come up with nothing. I like OSX when I'm a user, but not for
working.

The NX500 looks like it might be the one -- but I'm probably filling in the
information gaps with hopes and dreams.

------
jdmitch
summary of changes from macrumors.com:

 _The new notebooks feature faster versions of Intel 's Haswell processors, as
all 13-inch models now come with 8GB of RAM standard while all 15-inch models
now feature 16GB of RAM. The high end 15-inch model also received a $100 price
cut, going from $2599 to $2499._

and this analysis:

 _Today 's minor refresh is primarily a stopgap measure until Apple can launch
a more significant update to its Retina MacBook Pro line once Intel's next-
generation Broadwell processors hit the market._

~~~
asenna
From what I have read, the Broadwell processors will only be ready by Q1 2015
and not the holiday season 2014?

------
jedanbik
I'll upgrade when I start seeing 32 GB RAM options.

~~~
andyfleming
Why do you need 32 GB RAM in a laptop? (not criticizing, just asking) I've
found with the speed of these SSDs, memory swap is almost unnoticeable anyway.

~~~
hippiefahrzeug
While I can't speak for someone else, I find myself in the same place: I have
16GB in my mid 2010 MacBook and it's not enough when you develop with Xcode
(incrementally eats memory up to and over 1GB), have an IntelliJ (~1.5GB) up
while having one or two ubuntu VMs running (each 4 GB). Add to that the fact
that Chrome eats a terrible amount of memory and all these developer tools
running at the same time (kaleidoscope, sourcetree, db browser, xemacs,
sublimetext, etc) have their demands as well, and I find myself running out of
memory all the time. Fast paging doesn't do the trick.

------
sellmyair
I just got a Mac Book Air for similar price two days ago. Should I refund it
and get these? Will apple refund it? When will these start shipping?

~~~
rbanffy
You can return it and get a new model.

------
deusebio
Looks like you can get the 13" at close to the specs of the 15" now. Seriously
considering downsizing on my next one.

~~~
weiran
Lack of quad core is the only serious issue I have with the 13" now. Hopefully
Broadwell will let Apple put a quad core into the 13".

------
hyperliner
Does anybody have an estimate for when Airs will get their next refresh?

~~~
waitingkuo
You can reference mac buyersguide
[http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air)

------
blackaspen
Sigh... I'd still like to see real graphics on the 13".

------
jamespo
£200 more for 128 -> 256GB SSD on the 13" stings a bit

------
benaiah
Does anyone know what the previous prices were?

~~~
ezzaf
Archive.org does:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140722172840/http://www.apple....](https://web.archive.org/web/20140722172840/http://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/specs-retina/)

The new base model has double the RAM and a .2ghz bump for the same price.

~~~
andyfleming
Yeah, a small bump, but still nice. It was already rumored that we wouldn't
see a new gen of processors until next year.

------
gutkowski
I hope they will release 12" Macbook Air this year.

------
pppaul
battery life isn't improved?

~~~
rsynnott
This is only a minor iteration; they've bumped the processors, but left them
at the same TDP, and bumped the RAM. That's about it. Battery life changes
will happen when Broadwell Macs show up, late this year or early next
depending on how Intel's schedule works out.

------
jokoon
if only they could serve warfare tested windows drivers.

I can't believe when people tell me my macbook pro 2009 with 2GB of ram is a
"little too cheap" for mavericks or xcode 5. I can't even install windows on
it because the superdrive is busted. I managed to install ubuntu, but there's
ALWAYS a wifi/touchpad/heating issue.

Not to mention the hardship getting some C++ project working on xcode. (like
ogre for instance). Making games on it seems to be a pain since you need to
find a way to move around the displaylink.

I won't try to get a mac again. If a computer cannot be nice enough to build
C++ projects with, I won't use it. You all are working on web based apps, but
I'm clearly not a customer of this.

preference:

1\. windows laptop 2\. linux laptop 3\. mac laptop

It's a shame because the hardware is great, but since apple force feeds you
with itunes and doesn't really want you using windows, I'll pass. Their
hardware is dedicated to their OSX thingy, and I don't want it.

~~~
aschampion
Then don't use xcode as your C++ IDE. Xcode is for developing in the Apple
ecosystem, but there are plenty of other options on OSX if that's not your
target. Nearly every C++ toolchain and editor available to you in linux is
available in OSX as well through brew/macports(/fink).

Also windows can be installed from USB nearly as easily as ubuntu.

~~~
jokoon
> Then don't use xcode as your C++ IDE.

if the native IDE is not adequate, I don't think I'll find anything else. Most
native apple things are cocoa-centric.

also the last version of Ogre3D engine is not even available, because of XCode
and how apple builds its stuff. I hate hacking through galaxies of makefiles.
I've lost patience :) It's just exhausting to rebuild everything everytime
there's a xcode or OSX upgrade. I'm done. Microsoft supports backward
compatility much better.

------
chx
This is the same; there's nothing new; the whole laptop market is dead.
There's not a single machine I would buy -- the combination of decent
keyboard, screen and user replaceable components is nonexistent now. ThinkPads
had good keyboards and replaceable components and (unless you want to go back
to T60 times) shitty screens. Now they have shitty keyboard, many don't have
replaceable components but the screen is good. The Apple trajectory is not
better.

------
underlines
I needed to buy a MacBook Pro 2013 13" retina for live music performances. The
1000$ soundcard has optimized OSX core audio drivers and Win7 drivers.

Danger: Cynical, heavy stereotyping and biasing comment following...

I can work with OSX, _nix and Win boxes, no problem, but OSX ' interface isn't
optimized for simple tasks like cutting and pasting various folders form one
to another, where some of them will be overwritten, as there is no merge
option and no CTRL+X short cut. Are they nuts? Yeah, I can write a shell
script to do it, or I can install XtraFinder and also have Folders on top of
Files in lists. But wtf? Is that system designed for idiots and grandmothers?
Oh yeah and I love to pay a sh_tload of money for kinda outdated hardware
components... Still some things are cool on OSX. It's snappy, fast and it has
a decent shell. The retina display is even usable, when installing the 5$
pupil.io to natively switch resolutions for non-idiots (Actually seeing the
resolution as xxx X xxx value instead of Small, Middle, Large)

Enough OS bashing for today.

PS.: Windows sux and *nix as well.

~~~
underlines
And I love the fact that the "upgrade path" of Mac users is kind of "buy it,
use it until the next gen comes, throw it away". Thats super cool and totally
fits into the common starbucks customer, wearing neon colored running shoes
while listening music on beats head phones.

~~~
thatswrong0
Except for the fact that macs maintain their value, so selling your last-gen
Mac and upgrading to the new one is pretty cheap, all things considered.

