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Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

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Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#101

Post by pook1e »

mwhawkins wrote: post #70
pook1e wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My late 2011 model HP DV6t quad sounds like a jet taking off at higher workloads, the trackpad drivers are garbage, and the "full HD" screen looks like crap compared to the MacBook. Sigh, I hate these arguments. You're comparing a laptop with (currently) a starting price of $899 to a laptop with a starting price of $2199. Do you really expect similar quality? Anecdote time: My 2009 HP Elitebook is extremely quiet u…

Sure - non-Retina, yes you could compare. That was precisely my argument in the beginning. But, actually, if you look at the specs, which I went heavy on the updates and mods for the HP, I actually spent closer to $1,600 to get the highest resolution display, fastest SSD, and highest performance CPU (which is still beaten by the MacBooks Ivy Bridge, but not by much I admit). $500 is a fairly negligible difference and…

> $500 is a fairly negligible difference

No, it really isn't negligible. $500 can be the difference between a laptop with absolute crap build quality and a laptop with great build quality. There is a reason that HP (and most other vendors) have different models with different starting prices, and it has very little to do with base specs.

The DV6t has such a low starting price because it isn't built well, simple as that. I don't care if you put a screaming fast CPU in it and the highest quality screen possible. It still has shit build quality. It is still built like a $800 dollar laptop.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#102

Post by chime »

ghshephard wrote: post #83
Tichy wrote: post #47

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".

I don't recall anybody saying the first macbook air was the "Best product Apple has ever built" - it was _clearly_ a concept piece that i wasn't even tempted to purchased. Too Expensive. Too Slow. Too little storage. No Optical Drive. - it missed the mark on _everything_ except for being small and light. It took a few years before the price came (way) down, it got faster, storage started to recover (a bit) and the la…

You're missing the 'x' that the gp implied. Every MacBook is the "Best MacBook Apple has ever built", every Air is the "Best Air Apple has ever built." In that line, the gp's comments make more sense.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#103

Post by TwoBit »

polshaw wrote: post #78
barrkel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you talk about a PC "at home", but it's actually just a cheap laptop. I only use laptops when travelling; weight and size then are far more important than performance. High-performance laptops, IMO, are for laypeople who can't afford two machines, students and homeless consultants. My PC, on the other hand, is liquid cooled for reduced noise, has SSD, 32GB of RAM, 680 GTX graphics, 2 monitors (l…

FYI almost all synaptics touchpads (ie almost all) have supported 2-finger scrolling for years . Not even specifically multi-touch hardware needed. Update your drivers @ synaptics.

Is Synapatics a hardware maker or a software maker? Every PC laptop touchpad I've ever used was crap compared to the MacBook, and I don't know if that's Synaptics' fault.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#104

Post by ghshephard »

chime wrote: post #102
ghshephard wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall anybody saying the first macbook air was the "Best product Apple has ever built" - it was _clearly_ a concept piece that i wasn't even tempted to purchased. Too Expensive. Too Slow. Too little storage. No Optical Drive. - it missed the mark on _everything_ except for being small and light. It took a few years before the price came (way) down, it got faster, storage started to recover (a bit) and the la…

You're missing the 'x' that the gp implied. Every MacBook is the "Best MacBook Apple has ever built", every Air is the "Best Air Apple has ever built." In that line, the gp's comments make more sense.

Nobody has suggested that the latest MacPro is the best anything. It was a huge disappointment and Apple fell behind the curve with their release of it. Nobody is that excited about the new MacBook Airs - they are reasonable updates, but the big jump came in 2010, with some dandy performance improvements in 2011. This year was just an evolutionary move - fine for 2010 users, but very few people with a 2011 MBAir are that excited about upgrading. Likewise, the upgrade from the 4 to the 4S wasn't a must upgrade - most pundits indeed, even suggested you could take a pass if you were an iPhone 4 users.

The rMBPro, on the other hand, moved the needle.

I would reserve the "Best X Apple has ever made" for the 2010 MBAir, iPhone 4, iPad 3 - though, you are right, obviously any product that is better than a previous "best", should, in theory, inherit the next best label. Maybe "Best" has to be judged based on what you expect at any given time to be deserving of that trophy?

I haven't played with the rMBPro - so not sure about that yet. I was never that pleased with any of the 3 MBPROs I owned from 2003-2009. They were well built, solid laptops (with the exception of having one battery go all bulgey on me) - but They didn't excite me the way recent products from Apple have.

Who knows - I may still be "meh" on the MBPro - it's still pretty heavy. Expensive. Low Storage. And if you use it, sounds like 3.5-5 hours battery is all you can expect. Not to mention that there aren't that many apps or content that can support that crazy display.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#105

Post by achompas »

Tichy wrote: post #47

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".

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...

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

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#106

Post by 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.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#107

Post by rimantas »

Tichy wrote: post #59
mwhawkins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as a lifelong PC user, I tend to disagree somewhat. It's hardly just 'a higher resolution and thinner design' by a long shot. There is a lot more here, and I was a huge Apple sceptic in the past. First of all, this is a powerhouse of a machine in a relatively small form factor. It's also one of the first 'mainstream' laptops to feature full-flash storage as stock and not as an available upgrade (ultra books excl…

Of course it is better than most (maybe all) notebooks that came before it. But only slightly better. There have been slim notebooks with fast CPUs and even GPUs before. There have also been very high resolution displays (probably not as high as "retina", but still). The higher resolution is nice, but will it lead to completely new applications that have not been possible before? I have switched over to SSDs for quit…

  > But only slightly better
You know, with this POV one can dismiss anything. One the other hand that's how we became humans — by getting only slightly better with each generation.

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#108

Post by Tichy »

achompas wrote: post #105
Tichy wrote: post #47

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".

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 "high…

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).

Re: Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review

#109

Post by Tichy »

rimantas wrote: post #107
Tichy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is better than most (maybe all) notebooks that came before it. But only slightly better. There have been slim notebooks with fast CPUs and even GPUs before. There have also been very high resolution displays (probably not as high as "retina", but still). The higher resolution is nice, but will it lead to completely new applications that have not been possible before? I have switched over to SSDs for quit…

> But only slightly better You know, with this POV one can dismiss anything. One the other hand that's how we became humans — by getting only slightly better with each generation.

I didn't dismiss the MBP - I'd like to have one myself, if I could afford it. I only challenged the notion that it supposedly changes computing as we know it. My "only slightly better" is a response to the article, not a shrugging off of the new MBP.
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