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Apple MacBook Pro
Apple MacBook Pro with "retina" display: pictures on the web simply can't do justice to its screen because they only have half the resolution.
Apple MacBook Pro with "retina" display: pictures on the web simply can't do justice to its screen because they only have half the resolution.

Apple retina MacBook Pro: review

This article is more than 11 years old
The price is high - but so is the quality of the stunning display, which makes everything else look blurred. With a Flash drive, USB 3 and Thunderbolt connector, it's got everything - except user-serviceability.

I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro with a "retina" display, and it's breaking my heart. Having used it as my main machine for the past fortnight, in a few hours' time I'll have to wipe the hard drive, find the cables, and send it back to Apple.

The world is going to go fuzzy again. Is this what it's like for people who wear glasses when they lose them?

OK, I'm back on my old machine now - with its standard display resolution of 1280x800 on a 13" screen. That works out to about 104 pixels per inch.

Know what? It's pathetic.

Here's the fact of it: with the "retina" display on the "new iPad" (aka iPad 3, aka the version released in January of this year), you had to put it side-by-side against another one to see the difference (something Gawker exploited wonderfully by giving people an old one and telling them it was a new one and filming their delight… and then telling them the truth).

The difference on this display leaps out at you. It shouts at you. "Retina-optimised" programs (especially browsers, but text and film and picture editing too) leap out at you, and demonstrate the precision. It has 220 pixel-per-inch precision, and wow, it's really stunning. Pictures on websites can't do it justice, because they're on websites, and those are only 72ppi, typically. Even TV can't really show you.

So here's what we'll look at...
Appearance
TAG-1
Flash drives: because you're going there anyway
Processing: there's fast, and 'already there'
Thunderbolt
USB 3.0
No Ethernet?
No lights?
Good news, Windows users!
Downsides (there's a few)
User-unfixability
Unready web
Price
Conclusion

You may have seen the photos and the TV pictures and shrugged. Nothing special, you think. Consider yourself lucky that you haven't used it for any length of time and then reverted to something older. I have. It hurts. Displays with a quarter of the resolution look as if they're smeared with butter. (Or margarine, health fans.)

Ironically, I can't show you any screenshots demonstrating the difference effectively, because we only do pictures at 72dpi - not the 144dpi that the "Retina MacBook Pro" (RMBP from here on) offers. Well, I can contrast how it appears on a browser (Google Chrome) that doesn't take advantage of the RMBP's text rendering, against another browser (Google Chrome Canary - the bleeding-leading edge version of Google Chrome; I found it very solid).

Retina MacBook Pro site comparison
Comparing the same site in a "retina-ready" browser and one which is not. Click for larger version.

See? There's a real difference. But that doesn't tell you what the experience is like.

Or try this:

Comparing text on Retina Macbook
Comparing text display between a browser not optimised for "retina" display and one which is. (Optimsed one on right.)

No Mac? No problem, for a while

Now, you might not use a Mac, and have no interest in doing so. Even so, you're likely in the next few years to benefit from Apple's decision to showcase high-resolution screens on its high-end laptops, because there's a high probability that that will first start appearing on more high-end laptops in the Windows world, and then - let's hope - on the cheaper ones.

But that's not the only way that the RMBP is leading the pack. It's basically a showcase by Apple for all the best things in laptops today. The display is the standout feature (obviously, since it's what you deal with), but that's not the only thing that's attractive about this machine.

Appearance

In terms of thickness, it's nearer to the MacBook Air (and "true" ultrabooks, hard though those are to find) than the MacBook Pro. In heft, it's not significantly heavier (2.02kg, 4.46lb) than an older MacBook (2.99kg). Again, it's in between the "standard" MacBook Pro laptop and the MacBook Air (1.35kg).

The 15in screen, though, is bigger than you can get on a MacBook Air (only 11in and 13in there). And when you open the lid, the screen seems to fill the entire space; the glass reaches to the edges, and though the bezel is obvious once it's illuminated, the feeling of being immersed in the screen is very powerful. It's also bright.

Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief, introduced it to an eager room of developers at WWDC in June by saying that the company had tried to imagine an "ultimate" machine, the sort of thing that will be commonplace in the future. That turns out to mean Flash drives only (not even an option of a spinning drive), no DVD drive, Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectors, an SD card slot, surprisingly powerful (and bassy) speakers. And that display. "The pixels are so small you can't distinguish the individual pixels," he said. "It's the world's highest-resolution notebook display."

Flash. Because you're going that way anyway

Flash drives are what you'll have in your computer in five years or so. Per-gigabyte prices are dropping precipitously, while those of hard drives have actually risen over the past year because of last year's floods in Thailand. Apple offers three configurations - 256GB, 512GB, and 768GB. It also says that the throughput is three times faster; I asked whether this was due to its (rumoured, but pretty much confirmed) purchase of Israel's Anobit last year. As is the Apple way, I got a blank stare, rather like someone who'd just had their memories wiped in Men In Black; they wouldn't say. It seems a good bet, though.

Processing: there's fast, and there's already there

I never managed to stress the machine; the Ivy Bridge CPU and NVidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card simply laughed at my simple text ways. Really it's built for heavy-duty pixel-pushing such as video editing, and I did demonstration machines simultaneously running four HD video streams, and switching between them. If you wanted to do real-time editing in the field, this would be the machine to do it on. The fact that it also uses a Flash drive means you'll get a far faster throughput.

Thunderbolt

Other laptop manufacturers have been reluctant so far to adopt Intel's Thunderbolt technology, which allows you to chain displays and hard drives together - rather like Apple's proprietary Firewire did (with hard drives and disc burners). It has a throughput of up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) and can drive multiple displays.

USB 3.0

Finally, Apple is offering this. (It's now also on its lower-end MacBook Pro models.) Nice to have caught up with the Windows fraternity - or majority. Apple seems to have ignored USB 3.0 so that it could focus on Thunderbolt. Now the latter is settled, it's catching up elsewhere.

No Ethernet

Wired connections are a thing of the past, apparently, or should be. You can buy a Thunderbolt-Ethernet adaptor/connector, but the idea that you'd connect your professional-class laptop to a wired Ethernet is apparently too retro. Ethernet jacks are too fat and old; only slim Thunderbolt jacks (able to shift up to 10Gbp/s, mind you) count here.

No lights

There are no lights on this machine. Since about 1999, Apple laptops have had a little light on the front which, when the lid is closed, indicate whether it is "sleeping" (in the Suspend state) by pulsing slowly. If there's no light, the machine's off.

Here, though, no lights. (OK, there is a light on the power cord connector, to indicate whether the machine is charged or charging.) The assumption seems to be that you'll always put it to sleep, and it will never run out of battery before being reconnected to a power point. Apple suggests it'll get up to 30 days standby time.

The lack of a light makes no difference to everyday use - unlike spinning drive machines, where you needed to wait for the drive to spin down before moving it (in case you caused a head crash), Flash drives don't care about movement, so you can shut the lid and the "suspend state" data gets written whether or not the machine is moving.

This difference is really interesting, especially when you compare it to many Windows laptops, which have blue lights, green lights, red lights - it's like the Las Vegas strip once the hard drive gets working. Perhaps we needed reassurance that the hard drive hadn't died in the old days, hence the lights. Now, it's lights-out.

Good news, Windows users!

Although you can install Windows 8 on this device, and it will run perfectly well, and the Windows 8 elements will be sharp, the text itself doesn't get the fine-grained sub-pixel rendering, according to PC Pro, who have been trying it out.

But, equally, now that Apple has shown the way it's very likely that other PC manufacturers will follow, and try to push high-end machines with these capabilities. If they want to keep any clients in the photographic business they will, because once any of those use one of these for any period, they'll not go back to a normal screen.

Well, it worked (eventually) with the MacBook Air, imitations of which (with Flash drives) are busting out all over in the form of ultrabooks. High-res displays are sure to follow as manufacture gets cheaper.

Downsides: there's a few

If you're buying this machine and you haven't yet got Thunderbolt, you'll need to buy new display adaptors. If you've got an old MacBook laptop which uses the MagSafe connector (it attaches using magnets, rather than a socket, so if the power cord gets yanked nothing gets harmed), you won't destroy the computer.

User-unfixability. This is the big one, actually. You can't upgrade the RAM because it's fixed in place, so buy the maximum you can bear. You can't swap the battery, because it's almost moulded into place. Over at iFixit, Kyle Wiens has written at length about this - and not just as a critique of the machine itself, but of the general trend towards unfixable appliance-ness, which he says is "leading humanity down a perilous path". You can think that he's being hyperbolic, but I agree with him. We've got plenty of landfill, and too much of it taken with gizmos sealed so tight they can't be recycled without melting them down - which uses energy we should be sparing.

Suggesting that Wiens is just trying to preserve his third-party repair business falls, to me, is to miss the point. Computers don't always go wrong in times and places where you have the time, money or transport to get them to an Authorised Apple Repair Centre. These laptops are intended to be used by video editors in the field (as their processor punch indicates). Hell, what if a cat knocks your drink over your keyboard? And what if that happens while you're in the bush in Kenya making a documentary?

We can hope that the SSD won't go wrong - but are we sure? SSDs can fail suddenly. When travelling, I carry a backup drive and the tools to fit it (thankfully minimal on the four-year-old MacBook I use) just in case. Laptops have never been easy to repair, but Apple did seem for a while to be heading towards standard connectors and fittings. No more.

One could discuss whether the trend towards non-fixability is a reflection of our modern consumer society to become appliance-fixated, ignoring what happens to products after they've fulfilled their usefulness to us. But that's probably one for another time.

Battery life. Apple claims seven hours. Well, there are lies, damned lies, and battery lives. I didn't do a strict "let's see how long we can string it out" challenge; I simply used it with Wi-Fi running, and usually got battery lives of up to three hours. That's with a lot of applications (and Wi-Fi) running; quitting applications, turning the screen down and turning off Wi-Fi all increase the potential life. Three or so hours isn't terrible, but we still haven't reached the era when a computer will last all day. (It's those damn display pixels sucking up juice.)

Web ain't ready for it. Especially for the photographers who will be oohing and aaahing over this, visiting many websites will incur the feeling web designers get when you say "Hey, can we have a blinking sign that says 'Enter' on the home page of our website?" Most sites aren't doing 144dpi pictures, and likely won't be for some time; all the "legacy web" (ie everything pretty much up to this point) is going to be in grotty old 72dpi. I'm not sure much of it will ever get updated to a DPI requiring four times as much storage.

Equally, the pleasure of using something that renders text so well is huge. (And Google will roll the text-rendering part of Canary into its main Chrome line in time, if that's your main browser; Safari already does. Firefox… well, that's not clear.)

Price. Well, yes, this stuff doesn't come cheap. In the UK, the starting price is £1,799 (15in screen, 8GB, 256GB Flash, 2.3GHz processor) while that for the non-retina, non-Flash 15in screen version is £1,499 - although for 8GB RAM and 750GB of spinning storage you'll pay £1,799. Frankly, you'd do better with the RetinaBook.

It's that combination of price and user-unfixability (especially the latter) that really takes the star off. Mostly, the unfixability. Say all you like about how it's modular and great and how car engines all look like one single moulded piece of plastic when you open the bonnet - but this is meant to be for professionals. They have problems in the field, and they made need to solve them there.

Conclusion

It's an amazing machine, and it's got every technology you're likely to need, and a screen to die for, and a price to gulp at.

Personally, my heart says yes. My head says no - apart from my eyes, which say definitely, absolutely yes. My insurance broker says no.

I guess I'll get a piggybank and start saving.

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