MacBook Pro with Retina Screen

[mwfanelli2]

Although I won't be rushing out the door to buy one, that newly annouced 15-inch MBP with Retina display (220 dpi) and all-SSD storage must have photographers salivating. Anyone considering a purchase in the near future?

[Medley]

MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display
2.7GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
512GB Solid State Drive
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

I'll pick it up the first week of August.

I waffled for awhile between the 2.6 and 2.7 GHz processors ($250.00 difference), but the 2.7 is still squarely within my budget, so.....

[geraldb]

I'm giving back my Older MacBook Pro and an older iMac to Apple under the trade in program and using the gift certificate towards the purchase of a Retina machine.

[SmartWombat]

Yes, nothing to trade in though.
Disappointed there is no alternative memory now, it's all built in on the board at production.
So the price is steep, nearly £3000 here.
MacBook Pro 15-inch Retina Display
2.7GHz i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz
16GB
768GB Solid State Drive
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

About 4 weeks for delivery here ?
Wish there was a non-glossy version for use in the garden while working from home

[geraldb]

Well, I bought it ------ and returned it for full refund. DON"T BUY IT. It is the worst Apple machine I have ever laid a hand on (I'm talking 20 years of Apple experience). It is very expensive, fewer features, no CD drive, no firewire port, and small hard drive that I couldn't copy everything on (I bought the 250GB).
Now I got a refurbished MacBook Pro 15" for only $1300 from Apple with one year warranty and I'm very happy with it.

[SmartWombat]

Certainly it is expensive, the technology is like the Macbook Air, thin and light as possible.
With proprietary SSD soldered in and RAM soldered on the mainboard there are no cheap upgrades (I bet the third party suppliers hate that) which means a radical walletectomy is needed.
I doubt there will be price drops while it's taking them a month to manufacture to order.
So to want it you'd either be a Apple fanatic, or want highest resolution possible and thinnest and lightest.

Most apps these days come from the Apple store, or are downloadable (like Adobe apps) so the lack of built in drive wouldn't be important to me.
I haven't needed one on my lenovo S10-3t. I backup to the house NAS and that is backed up to USB HD.

Now 250G is small for most serious purposes and even the 778G is only just big enough for a decent size Lightroom catalog and some other work.
But external drives on the network (or USB) are fine for storage - taking enough to work while away on the laptop SSD.
I have over 2TB of images, so no laptop is going to carry all that with me. At least not a laptop I want to carry

Macbook Pro 17" screen would be barely big enough for me, as I would use it for software development and want the 1920x1200 pixels as a minimum.
With the retina display I could run a remote desktop session to the development system in Belgium and still have bit of space for things like Skype round the outside

Hmmm I'm almost talking myself into it

[geraldb]

I had a gift certificate from Apple, so I had to buy it from Apple which they had it in stock at my local Apple store, you should call your local store and see if they have it in stock.
One of the strange things about that machine that I forgot to mention is the keyboard. when you touch the keys your finger prints shows on every key, so if some light is reflected on the keyboard you'd see it full of finger prints that keep you from seeing the letters clearly, really ugly.

[SmartWombat]

One of the strange things about that machine that I forgot to mention is the keyboard. when you touch the keys your finger prints shows on every key, so if some light is reflected on the keyboard you'd see it full of finger prints that keep you from seeing the letters clearly

I haven't found that an issue at all.
With the backlighting on the keys, using it indoors (yes, even in bed) I've not noticed it.
Even after eating prawn crackers, with greasy fingers, it wasn't a problem.
I don't spend much time looking at the keyboard anyway, I can type pretty well.

[SmartWombat]

One thing to watch out for is the way Apple draw at 2x on the screen, so the wonderful high resolution screen doesn't get you anywhere near that resolution without some tweaks.
Having dived into changing settings already, I've got the scaling turned off and the resolution set to maximum. I can now use ITAP Mobile to link to the Windows desktop machines in Belgium at full 1920x1200 and it's working well.