The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2012 4:14 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
- Laptops
- Notebooks
The Design
The problem with being on the forefront of design is every iteration is expected to significantly outdo the one before it. The unibody MacBook Pro design took build quality to a new level for Apple. By constructing all parts of the machine that you generally interact with out of the same piece of aluminum, Apple significantly reduced the amount of flex and creaks you’d encounter during normal use.
The next-gen MacBook Pro chassis doesn’t revolutionize the design, but it does make some significant evolutionary improvements. The most tangible impact as I’ve already mentioned is the reduction in size and weight of the machine. At its thickest part, the 13-inch MacBook Air is actually a little thicker than the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Unlike the MacBook Air however, the rMBP does not feature a tapered design. Instead you get a constant thickness which is definitely reminiscent of the previous design.
The backlit keyboard and glass covered trackpad remain, although the key travel has been reduced somewhat - likely to help thin down the chassis. It's not worse, just different in my opinion.
The reduction in thickness also comes at the expense of a missing optical drive and no mechanical storage. Once again Apple has opted to use its own custom form factor and custom SATA connector for the NAND based storage in the rMBP. You’ll hear no complaints from me on the move away from mechanical storage as I’ve been recommending SSDs as upgrades for the past few years. The battery continues to be integrated but it’s no longer easily user removable as the custom cells are now glued to the chassis. A few years down the road your rMBP will have to take a trip to the Apple store (or a clever third party service center) to get its battery replaced.
The MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Image Courtesy iFixit
This is the first Pro appliance that Apple has ever produced. The CPU, GPU, DRAM, battery, display and, for now, the SSD are either non-removable or at least not user-upgradeable. On a $499 iPad that’s one thing, but on a $2199 professional notebook that’s a completely different matter. I can even make an exception for the MacBook Air as it is more of a consumer device, where computing needs have largely slowed down over the past several years. But for a professional machine, to have such a fixed configuration seems very worrisome.
| MacBook Pro with Retina Display Comparison | |||||
| 15-inch Mid 2012 MacBook Pro | MacBook Pro with Retina Display | ||||
| Dimensions | 0.95 H x 14.35 W x 9.82" D | 0.71 H x 14.13 W x 9.73" D | |||
| Weight | 5.6 lbs (2.54 kg) | 4.46 lbs (2.02 kg) | |||
| CPU | Core i7-3615QM | Core i7-3720QM | Core i7-3615QM | ||
| L3 Cache | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB | ||
| Base CPU Clock | 2.3GHz | 2.6GHz | 2.3GHz | ||
| Max CPU Turbo | 3.3GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.3GHz | ||
| GPU | Intel HD 4000 + NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M | ||||
| GPU Memory | 512MB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | |||
| System Memory | 4GB DDR3-1600 | 8GB DDR3-1600 | 8GB DDR3L-1600 | ||
| Primary Storage | 500GB 5400RPM HDD | 750GB 5400RPM HDD | 256GB SSD | ||
| Optical Drive | Y | Y | N | ||
| Display Size | 15.4-inches | ||||
| Display Resolution | 1440 x 900 | 2880 x 1800 | |||
| Thunderbolt Ports | 1 | 2 | |||
| USB Ports | 2 x USB 3.0 | ||||
| Other Ports | 1 x Firewire 800, 1 x Audio Line in, 1 x Audio Line out, SDXC reader, Kensington Lock slot | SDXC reader, HDMI out, headphone out | |||
| Battery Capacity | 77.5 Wh | 95 Wh | |||
| Price | $1799 | $2199 | $2199 | ||
Apple has definitely made accommodations to make this unupgradeable reality more palatable. Sure the primary silicon is fixed, but all Retina MacBook Pro configurations ship with a minimum of 8GB of DDR3L-1600 memory. The only available upgrade is a move to 16GB, which will surely suit most needs for at least a few years to come (if not more).
The SSD is physically removable although there isn’t presently a source of 3rd party upgrades. I suspect we will see some in the future although there are always concerns about any legal claims to Apple’s unique form factor and physical interface. Apple’s concession here is it offers as much NAND as is physically possible today: up to 768GB if you’re willing to pay the handsome upgrade fee.
We’ve long given up on upgrading mobile CPUs or GPUs, and more recently abandoning the removable battery in favor of increasing capacity and reducing form factors is a trade off we’ve accepted as well. Apple has tried to help on the memory and SSD sides but the whole package is still very...fixed.
Despite all of this my only real complaint about Apple’s fixed configuration is the $2199 spec comes with too little storage by default. If I want to carelessly use my machine and not worry about regularly deleting unused files I find that I need 512GB of storage. At 256GB it’s too easy to run out of space, particularly if I’m on the road and dealing with lots of photos and videos. If you’re like me then you’re shoehorned into getting the $2799 configuration as there’s no way to just upgrade the size of the SSD in the $2199 model. And if you’re spending $2799 you might as well get the 16GB memory upgrade, if you can convince yourself that you’re not going to buy the Haswell version next year.
Retina MacBook Pro Silicon: One Big Happy Family
Powering the Retina Display MacBook Pro is Intel’s latest and greatest quad-core Core i7. A part of the new 22nm Ivy Bridge family the Intel silicon in the system is well done as always. The default configuration ships with a 2.3GHz quad-core offering, while the upgraded option is clocked at 2.6GHz. Apple offers one more upgrade at 2.7GHz while upping the L3 cache to 8MB. Since these are i7s all of them have Hyper Threading enabled, making the major difference between parts frequency and cache size in the case of the most upgraded part.
| Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display CPU Comparison | |||||
| 2.3GHz quad-core | 2.6GHz quad-core | 2.7GHz quad-core | |||
| Intel Model | Core i7-3615QM | Intel Core i7-3720QM | Intel Core i7-3820QM | ||
| Base Clock Speed | 2.3GHz | 2.6GHz | 2.7GHz | ||
| Max SC Turbo | 3.3GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.7GHz | ||
| Max DC Turbo | 3.2GHz | 3.5GHz | 3.6GHz | ||
| Max QC Turbo | 3.1GHz | 3.4GHz | 3.5GHz | ||
| L3 Cache | 6MB | 6MB | 8MB | ||
| AES-NI | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| VT-x | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| VT-d | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| TDP | 45W | 45W | 45W | ||
| Processor Graphics | Intel HD 4000 | Intel HD 4000 | Intel HD 4000 | ||
| GPU Clock (Base/Max) | 650/1250MHz | 650/1250MHz | 650/1250MHz | ||
Turbo Boost is supported and active on all options. As always I verified its support in OS X as well as its functional operation:
889A refers to the max number of speed bins supported by Turbo Boost for 4, 3, 2 and 1 active core, respectively, in hex. For example, the 2.6GHz base clock of the Core i7 in my test system can turbo up a maximum of 8 bins with three/four cores active (2.6GHz + 800MHz = 3.4GHz), or 9 bins with 2 cores active (3.5GHz) or 10 bins (A in hex) with 1 core active (3.6GHz). Just as with previous mobile Macs, CPU clocks remain unchanged regardless of whether the system is running on AC or battery power.
Intel's quad-core 22nm Ivy Bridge
All of the CPU options feature Intel’s HD 4000 graphics, which handles the majority of graphics duties unless you fire up an application that triggers the discrete GPU. All of the rMBPs feature NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M equipped with 1GB of GDDR5. Apple went aggressive on the Kepler implementation and ships a full 384 core GK107 in the rMBP. The GPU clock is set at a very aggressive 900MHz with a 1254MHz memory clock. I do appreciate that there’s no variance in GPU/memory configuration across all of the Retina MacBook Pro options, it greatly simplifies the purchasing experience.
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Fx1 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Whine Whine Whine.In the UK we have the best warranty going thanks to UK Regulations and EU protection. Plus 3 year free on education discounts of which i have bought 2 MBP's and never set foot in a university in my life.
Just because in NZ you don't have that protection then blame your gov for not passing legislation.
Also why bitch about Ram? just put the 16GB in and then your good for the next 10 years i expect. £13 a year cost
Spunjji - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
You're so full of shit it's bursting out at the seams. The NZ government have imposed much better consumer warranty protection than we have here in the UK. You might know that if you weren't a fucking cretin who spouts off nonsense before thinking. The fact that you seem to think it's his fault that he lives in NZ where Apple give shitty support just shows what a jingoistic little fanboy you are.That's also an interesting "£13 a year" theory. It'd be neat if it wasn't a complete and utter crock. If more than 10% of these laptops are used regularly for 10 years, Apple pixie magic included, then I will eat my goddamn chair. Maybe you should have gone to university, they could have slammed some sense into your tiny little skull.
Solidstate89 - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
"Apple’s impact on the industry has already been felt. The threat of Apple bringing Retina Displays to its entire lineup forced ASUS’ hand and gave us 1080p IPS panels in the new Zenbook Primes."Isn't that a little fucking arrogant to say with absolutely no proof to back that claim up? You know better than anyone how much design work goes into producing these products, and just how LONG the process takes. You really think in just a few months time of rumors, ASUS could have completely revamped their product line-up? Or maybe they were just doing it, because they had already started with the higher resolution displays on their tablet line-up? Or maybe they were even trying to match the absolutely superb and high density display that Sony has been using in their Vaio Z series for all these years.
Claiming just the RUMOR of Apple doing it was UNDOUBTEDLY the influence behind ASUS' IPS, high resolution screens is baseless bullshit. And you know it.
Iketh - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
what i don't get is how people could care so much to get pissed off like you... get a hobby!and i agree 100% with Anand's statement... you're blind to not agree, and i'm a PC developer
wfolta - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
ASUS may have decided to carry higher resolution displays from their tablets to their laptops, but Apple beat them to the punch with the retina iPad and the rumors of a retina Macbook have been around since at least that far back.Considering most manufacturers have reduced pixel density over time, and considering it was Apple that pushed the retina display first to the iPhone, then the iPad, I think the burden of proof is on you to say that these netbook makers were just itching for higher resolution.
In fact, most of them stopped at the stupid 16:9 1080p (1920x1080) resolution because that's what HD TVs have and they've wanted to tout their ability to play BluRay's at full resolution. There was no concept of making a beautiful display: it was all about a marketing checkbox. And that's what they guy is saying.
kmmatney - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
I'm a windows developer - have been for almost 20 years now. I also travel a lot so all my development is done on a laptop, across several virtual machines. I'm currently using a 2007 Dell 17" 1920 x 1200, and have not upgraded yet, waiting for another windows 1920 x 1200 laptop to surface. I've run out of hope now - if Apple comes out with a 17" version of this I'll have to try and convince my company to buy one. I've never used a Mac in my life, but will pay the "Apple tax" to get what I need hardware-wise. I currently have about 20 VMs packed onto a Samsung 256GB 830, so I'm good with storage space.The Windows laptop makers just don't get it - not everyone watch's movies all day - some of us want to use our machines for real work and want to have extra vertical space. Is it that hard to make a 16:10 screen? An ugraded screen is a "3D" screen - really?! The "True-life" screen on my old 2007 Dell is still better than anything you can get nowadays - I've directly compared it with co-corkers brand-new laptops.
KPOM - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Is it possible that Apple's solution for making the rMBP work will scale to the new iPhone? In other words, does it offer Apple a way to increase the screen size without causing a break in compatibility between older and newer apps?gstrickler - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
The iPhone and iPad already handle the HiDPI displays, Apple deployed Retina displays there first. The scaling to non integer resolutions is definitely something Apple could do on the iPhone or iPad, but since it takes significantly more CPU/GPU power and affects both performance and battery life, I would not expect it anytime soon. If Apple goes to a larger screen on either device, it's likely that it will support the same total resolution as the current devices and have slightly lower dpi. If we see a 3.7"-4.3" iPhone display, I expect it to be 960x640, just like the current iPhone with Retina display.They already have 4 native resolutions to support on iDevices, 480x320 and 960x640 on iPhone, 1024x768 and 2048x1536 on iPad. I don't believe they'll want to increase that as it has an impact on the hardware, battery life, and every developer, so while it's possible, I think it's unlikely.
raclimja - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Ingadgethrrmph - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
This one is *extremely* close to allowing me to replace a full tower workstation and my current laptop. Apple has built a very, very impressive machine that should be a wake-up call to the industry: Move forward, or be left behind.Even so, it falls slightly short of my ideal specs. If Apple would make the next one a 17" or 18" version (please make it Retina, I love the foresight there :), add a 10-Key section to the keyboard, upgrade to Giga-WiFi-ac-1.3Gbs, upgrade the quantity of internal drive ports (yes plural - I can use up to 5 immediately, if they will fit), and pretty please give us a standard drive connector.
While we're at it, can we have all of the drives running at speeds of at least 6.0Gbs? You know, like putting the drives on the current standard mSATA 6.0Gbs connectors, or even hooking them up to a better, newer, smaller, open standard connector at 12.0Gbs.
That's a lot to ask of course, but if they 'just' managed to make it a 17" Retina display, with three drives, with standard connectors, and WiFi-ac-800Mbs, and managed to do it this year, then I would feel they have done as much as anyone could do in in the time available.
If they miss out on delivering a 17" model this year, then it becomes more of a wide open competition where almost anyone could deliver a competitive product in the 17"+ space. After all, the display actually only has to be better than 1920 x 1200 to exceed the specs of my current laptop display.
Right now Apple appears to have the hardware lead and a fairly big one at that. If such a 17"+ machine appears, as described in any of the scenarios above, then it would solidify Apple's hardware lead. With a move like that, Apple would firmly and aggressively cement its position in every laptop screen size category that matters. They could have a compelling position in perhaps 99% of the laptop market.
It would also satisfy my need to have a portable large display machine that can go on infrequent, but very long trips, where I am sometimes remote, and I often need to be fairly self-sufficient and fault tolerant (ie: fix any of the inevitable data glitches myself).
It would improve my situation very significantly if there were sufficient physical drives to have separate system, data, and auto-backup drives internally. Also, having extremely capable external ports is important. So both keeping the existing wired ones just released on the current 15" Retina model, and adding the nascent WiFi-ac wireless internal hardware that is debuting this year in non-Apple equipment, would be super helpful for enhancing my ability for doing redundant off-machine data backups - just in case the internal auto-backup gets thrashed.
In fact if Apple were able to produce such a machine, I would be virtually forced - in a very pragmatic sense - to shell out the cash, move to the dark side, and purchase my first Apple product, ever.
Yes, after 25 years of computing I would lose my patience with the laggards that comprise the rest of the laptop market. With deep, naughty feelings of dark misgiving, I would both splurge and switch allegiance at the same time. I wonder how many others would do the same?
If this should come to pass, then I would inevitably wonder if Apple's real intentions are as wicked as I fear: To eventually try to lock all of us as 'sheeple', into a proprietary hell on Earth. You know... like Sony's thankfully failed attempts to force 'works only here' on us. Umm... let's see... MMC Memory Sticks, anyone?.
Well, back to Apple: Just sayin'... I would do it... even though I know better.
Hey... isn't Microsoft supposed to be getting back into the hardware business in a big way?
What do you think the chances are of a company like Microsoft and a machine like that...
So you're telling me there's a chance... *YEAH!*
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