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
Ports & Expansion
Port layout has been greatly simplified on the next-gen MacBook Pro. Along the left side there’s now a MagSafe 2 connector, two Thunderbolt ports, one USB 3.0 and one 1/8” jack for mic/headphones. The right side has the other USB 3.0 port, a full sized HDMI port and an SD card reader.
MagSafe 2 is a thinner version of Apple’s MagSafe connector, and it’s used on both the Retina MacBook Pro and the 2012 MacBook Airs. The rMBP still ships with the same 85W power adapter as before, but now with an integrated MagSafe 2 connector. In order to deal with the change in connector, Apple offers a $10 converter that allows you to plug MagSafe 1 power supplies into MagSafe 2 systems. All new Thunderbolt Displays shipping from here on out will include the MagSafe 2 converter.
The absence of an integrated Gigabit Ethernet port will surely bother some, but Apple offers a Thunderbolt to GigE adapter for $30 to accommodate. Since Thunderbolt effectively offers an external PCIe interface, there’s no performance loss if you go this route vs. the old integrated GigE connector. I was able to sustain nearly 930Mbps between the rMBP with the Thunderbolt GigE adapter and last year’s MBP:
At a price of $30 Apple is most certainly using Intel’s Port Ridge Thunderbolt controller, a cost effective single-channel TB controller without any support for DisplayPort passthrough.
USB 3.0 is provided courtesy of Intel’s 7-series chipset. Apple supports the USB Attached SCSI protocol which should allow for even better performance than what I’m showing below (with all of my focus on Thunderbolt I actually don't have a 6Gbps UASP enabled USB 3.0 dock in house):
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blackmagnum - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
New super resolutions are coming to notebook/ laptop computers. Thanks to Apple and their forward looking business sense. Wonder when it comes to PCs..... with Windows 8?Fleeb - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I don't get it, I mean, what if another manufacturer thought of the idea first. I guess it wouldn't sell then.KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
It probably wouldn't happen since other manufacturers are more focused on cutting corners and driving costs down as much as possible. Great for making their products more accessible but not so good for putting in bleeding edge technology.Johnmcl7 - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Rubbish, there are plenty of other companies who are far more innovative than Apple whose machines look basic in comparison - Sony's older Z series had a very high resolution 13.1in 1080p screen, blu-ray writer, quad SSDs in RAID 0, integrated and discrete graphics card and the fastest of te dual core i7's while still smaller and lighter than Apple's 13in machines and that was a couple of years ago. Apple aren't even close to touching most of its technology and probably never will.John
tayb - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Link to prove the existence of that product? It does not seem possible to put all of that into a 13" chassis that is thinner than the incredibly thin MB. Honestly, it doesn't possible to fit all of that into a 13" model in general.DeciusStrabo - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Ca...and that's the third iteration of it, 1080p 13.3" - they did it 4 years ago already.
tayb - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
That doesn't have 4 SSDs, which was the biggest red flag in my eyes.Turbobusa311Hp - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I remember that laptop. It didn't have 4 separate SSD's like you are thinking, but individual chips in a RAID 0. The Signature model was like $4700 though.DJTryHard - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
It had quad Raid 0, 4 separate chips.http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sony-vaio-z-quad-...
To summarize:
Core i7 620M
13.3inch 1080p matte panel
256gb ssd in quad raid 0
6gb ram
geforce GT 330M w/ 1gb vram
optical drive
and all this was in 2010...
extide - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
i7 620M is Dualcore Arrandale, not Quad.Anyways, yeah, that laptop is pretty sweet for it's day.