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MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

arstechnica.com

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Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#301

Post by ericd »

pkamb wrote: post #170
moystard wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love this new Macbook Pro with this beautiful retina display, Mountain Lion is just another iteration in the iOS direction and I still don't like the user experience. As usual, I will use several tools to get back to the old but good desktop metaphor with less shiny but functional features.

The problem will be when Xcode stops working on Snow Leopard.

I think it already has? That's why I had to finally bite the bullet and upgrade to Lion. My reluctance wasn't unfounded, it turns out.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#302

Post by kylebrown »

phamilton wrote: post #31
marquis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be specific about what swayed you? I'm not sure what is so new, announced today, that you couldn't have bought yesterday: Retina? Will you continue to run Windows?

It's an Air-like laptop with real performance. It has a real graphics card, can support 16 GB of ram and has a rockin Ivy Bridge processor. The retina display is very impressive as well.

Its the fragility of the retina display that has me has hesitating. I'm still using an iPad 1; I decided not to upgrade after reading that the retina screen on the iPad 3 cracks on drops that have yet to put a dent in my 1st-gen. If my gf gets the new MBP, the warranty will be absolutely necessary (she drops her laptop constantly, SSD's were a godsend for her).

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#303

Post by chipsy »

jurre wrote: post #97
calinet6 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Apple fanboyism is not a problem in the hacker community. It's a well-built solid metal portable development workstation. With BSD UNIX. And a pretty layer on top. Among programmers, I never need to explain why we would buy these things. It's outside the programming groups that the conversation gets hostile. I find most programmers avoid this completely, knowing that they're simply using the best tool available…

I study computer science and the amount of banter I get from fellow students for using a macbook air is unbelievable. Other people usually seem quite ok with it, although self proclaimed power users usually seem to have an opinion about it.

CS students are among some of the most hostile, sophomoric people you will ever encounter in software development. They all have something to prove, even though they've barely started themselves, so putdowns are common.

Grain of salt. Experiment. Do what works.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#304

Post by falling »

mwyvern wrote: post #164
breckinloggins wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my Mac (as I said in my reply to OP), but I agree that Mac OS takes some getting used to. Luckily I had some Linux experience before switching so I felt right at home at the terminal. But some things still feel odd to me, even after several years. - The unified menu bar makes sense and saves space, but it's still somewhat disconcerting to someone who is used to their menus having some spatial context with what…

It always shocks me tha Finder doesn't have cmd-X cut... cutting is by far the most frequent operation I do in other non-dual-pane file managers. But what do you like better about windows explorer? Finder's "view as columns" makes it feel a little bit more powerful to me.

it doesn't have Cut, but it now (as of Lion, I think), Move Here as an alternative to Paste, use it with Cmd-Opt-V.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#305

Post by sliverstorm »

untog wrote: post #14

Once you go Air, you never go back. And this year's Air announcement (like last year's) is pretty 'meh', so I'll be keeping with my old faithful 2010 Air for the time being. The retina displays are fantastic, but as a web dev I'm already dreading the merry havoc it's going to wreak with images on web pages. On a wider note, I feel myself... drifting away from all of this. In previous years I would have been all over…

On a wider note, I feel myself... drifting away from all of this.

That happens. In my case, it's the "seen it all before" effect.

It would be exciting if something really noteworthy was happening, but a bump in resolution or a new I/O interface are not groundbreaking changes in computing.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#306

Post by blubbix »

jakeonthemove wrote: post #273

2880x1800 pixels on a 15.4 inch display? That's pretty impressive from a technical stand point, but I can't see how it's going to be useful in real life - I find 1680x1050 to be at the threshold of usability for me. 1600x900 is perfect on a 15.6, and 1920x1080 is the maximum I'd go for on a 17 inch display. Any higher and I'd just connect a bigger external display... Can anyone give me an idea of what this resolution…

It will work just like the iPad. GUI elements will stay the same size, only at a much higher resolution. Old apps will "see" a 1440x900 display and just look more blurry.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#307

Post by speleding »

bratsche wrote: post #122

I'm curious to know how Mac handles apps moving between a Retina Display Mac and a non-Retina display (Thunderbolt, whatever). Apps need to be updated to handle retina, otherwise they draw double pixels.. so what happens when you have a window that's halfway between a Retina and non-Retina? My two guesses: 1. The entire window draws as doubled pixels, as if it didn't support Retina at all 2. The window gets two separ…

I don't think apps need to be updated, the OS will just send two separate screen redraws to the app. If you put a window half on an 8-bit color screen and half on a 16-bit color screen it works fine too, I don't see why this would be different.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#308

Post by thom »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #70
microtonal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I have been using a Mac since 2007. So far, I haven't seen anything spectacular in this keynote except for the retina display. But $2199 (probably 2199 Euro in Europe) is a steep price. Edit: Given the lack of real interesting updates in OS X since Leopard and recent iOS versions, I am actually quite interested in Windows 8 and Windows Phone after ~18 years of using Unix-like operating systems and ~5.5 years a M…

I thought 10.6 was so-so - I preferred Leopard's Exposé. I hate 10.7. But 10.8 makes sense again, especially now that 3rd-party apps are catching up with the concepts of 10.7.

The more apps catch up with 10.7, the more they all do that unbearable fullscreen-on-some-weird-new-unexpected-virtual-desktop thing, yuck.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#309

Post by dangrossman »

swalsh wrote: post #60
pclark wrote: post #23

all I want is 3g on laptops

I'm sure as LTE gets going, you'll see 4g built in. I would bet you could fit 4 antennas in one. Which would give you some amazing throughput in a 4x8 MIMO setup. Of course the interference from the computer might cause a lot of issues?

There's no technology problem waiting to be solved. Laptop manufacturers could build in LTE chipsets today if they wanted to. The issue is that no cell carrier wants them to; it would create demand they're not prepared to meet. The current trend is just the opposite -- to lower monthly limits and increase prices for 4G data services. Creating more demand would just lead to cities where there are more people connected than the towers can handle.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#310

Post by wmf »

fjorder wrote: post #226
fjorder wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent a reasonable amount of time using Windows, Linux, and OSX. All of them suck. All of them are also awesome, at different things. If you want an living room PC for entertainment, Windows is king. Neither Linux or OSX support Bluray properly and Windows still has a huge edge in gaming. Windows also supports the most hardware. That's become unimportant to most people, but if you work in a research lab with var…

One further note on hardware quality: Perceived hardware quality is something Apple is fantastic at. Their laptops look and feel great. They feel like they'll last decades. This is misleading since they're actually built to be disposable. e.g. If you spill coffee on your Macbook Air, it's dead. You can't fix it because you can't remove the battery in a timely fashion and don't have the tools to open it. Apple won't f…

when the non-user-replaceable battery inevitably fails

Battery replacement is $99.

For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops.

Windows probably doesn't support retina properly (which is sad, considering that MS has been working on retina support since Vista). Also, Apple may have outbid Samsung for the panels.

Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything.

Except software.

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