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
All Flash Storage
As expected, the next-gen MacBook Pro ditches mechanical storage in favor of a MacBook Air style NAND + SSD controller on a custom PCB. Apple refers to this solution as all-flash storage.
Apple’s distinction between Solid State Drives (SSDs) and all-flash storage boils down to what form the storage comes in. If it’s a standard form factor device in a chassis, it’s a solid state drive. If it’s just NAND + controller on a PCB? Then it’s all-flash storage. I suspect it’s a nicer way of saying proprietary SSD but either way they are technically the same thing, just in different forms.
The Samsung PM830 based rMBP NAND flash storage card, image courtesy iFixit
My Retina MacBook Pro was the upgraded model with a 512GB SSD, featuring Samsung’s PM830 controller. This is the same controller as in the Samsung SSD 830, which I’ve long felt was the best pair for Mac users who wanted an SSD upgrade. I’m not sure if other Retina MBPs may come with Toshiba’s SandForce based drive instead. I have one of these drives in house for a review but that’ll have to wait until next week.
Although both the Samsung and Toshiba/SandForce controllers support full disk encryption, neither hardware based encryption is supported by OS X’s FileVault 2. When OS X encrypts your boot volume not all areas are encrypted (such as the recovery partition). While I know SandForce allegedly offers multiple encryption levels across a volume I’ve never seen either controller claim support for partially unencrypted volumes. In this case it looks like for Apple to take advantage of SSD controller based encryption it would need more flexible encryption support on the controller level. If I were an SSD controller vendor I’d be paying close attention to this requirement.
Both the Samsung and Toshiba controllers support 6Gbps SATA - as a result performance is significantly better compared to previous Apple branded SSDs. I borrowed a friend’s 2010 MacBook Pro which happened to have a Toshiba based SSD installed and ran it through our standard Iometer four-corners test suite. This was a well used drive and thus the performance is even worse than last year's MacBook Airs. The improvement in performance is astounding:
The move to 6Gbps SATA is often associated with a huge bump in sequential transfer rates, but in this case Apple enjoys a significant increase in random speeds as well. Note that some of this improvement is going to be due to the fully populated configuration of the PM830 in the Retina MacBook Pro's SSD, but that shouldn't downplay the significance of the move to Samsung's latest controller. The previous generation controller used last year just wasn't very good, and the Toshiba alternative was even worse. This year, Apple finally has a good solid state story to tell.
How much of this are you going to be able to actually tell in day to day use of the system? The sequential transfer rates are most tangible when you are writing to or reading large files like movies to your drive. Obviously you need a source that's fast enough to hit these speeds. Although USB 3.0 can come close you're unlikely to have a USB 3.0 SSD that's as fast as the internal drive. Moving large files between your internal SSD and Promise's Pegasus R4/R6 is where you'll really appreciate this performance.
The random access improvements are likely overkill for most normal uses. Things like program launches, compiling, web browsing, and any other normal application IO will depend on a mixture of random and sequential IO. The key is to have good enough random IO performance to avoid becoming a bottleneck. I can safely say that the numbers we see here are more than enough.
While previous Apple SSDs were nice only from a convenience standpoint, at least the Samsung option in the Retina MacBook Pro is what I’d recommend even if Apple didn’t bundle it with the machine.
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orthorim - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - link
A very high resolution display is not a retina display - totally different thing.Retina is a special mode where each logical pixel is made up of 4 physical pixels, and special support for fonts and images.
It's a huge step to go from 1:1 logical : physical pixels to a different factor. It's like bitmap based fonts vs. points-based vector fonts.
Maybe a lot of PC manufacturers just don't get that?
vegemeister - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Apple is not using a PPI independent UI for their high-res displays though. There's a separate set of assets at 2x resolution, and programs that don't acknowledge that they're rendering at 2x resolution get upscaled.A real PPI independent UI, such as Gnome 2, uses vector resources for everything and allows applications to query the PPI of the display so they can render at appropriate dimensions.
maraboshi - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link
and still that was FAIL because it runs Windows and not a brilliant OS like the Apple one...when will you stupid Apple haters will understand the fucking difference?????gbanfalvi - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
I have it. It's a piece of crap. It feels like they just stuffed everything they could in this device without thinking.The pads on the bottom fell of from the heat.
The battery died seven months in.
The trackpad starts glitching regularly (not to mention it's terrible in general).
The 1080p screen gets lines across it.
The laptop overheats when I put it in speed mode.
Evidence: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/245279/Photos/Photo%20201...
azaat07 - Friday, July 13, 2012 - link
Hole in your hyperbole...Only option is Intel Graphics 4000, shared memory.
Intel 4k graphics are on par with 2007 discrete.
Andrew
woodsielord - Sunday, July 15, 2012 - link
I have the said computer. I bought it with very high expectations, and the screen is still amazing, but the rest of the hardware keeps causing trouble. I have lived without my computer 3+ months due to repairs, and currently I'm typing this from my girlfriend's Zenbook (which, on the other hand, is zero problems and all play).The lack of international Sony support and the proclimity to hardware failure rule out Sony of all my future purchases. Many times I said to myself that I should have bought a MBP instead. If Sony stopped spewing forth so many products and instead tended to the details of flagship products and cared about its customers, it might have worked.
mark3785 - Saturday, September 8, 2012 - link
Ok, I'll play the fanboy…This is where Apple haters really get pissed (and as an Apple fan from the mid 80s (and a loyalist from the 90 days from bankruptcy days) (if I'm playing the fanboi thing I may as well go whole hog) I really start to chuckle).
The MacBook Pro with retina display is proof positive that Apple can do things that the windows community can't because Apple has control of both sides of the coin, the hardware and the OS, plus (and this is a really huge plus) they have some very smart people working for them. It's one thing to put a hires display on a computer and an entirely different thing to make that display resolution independent. Sony may have come out with a hires laptop back in 2010, but they didn't do anything interesting with it.
Eventually 2880x1800 will be run of the mill and higher resolutions will start to dominate. It isn't the number of pixels, it's how the system uses them to it's best advantage. This is (hopefully) the beginning of a new trend.
BTW, one helluva review! Reviews are boring, though comforting when they state the obvious (yes, you bought a nifty machine, pat on the head) but a review this informative and complete just reinvigorates my interest in the hobby.
Targon - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
You need to look at the different price points that machines are sold for before you make statements like that. Most manufacturers see far greater volumes in the $500 range than they see in the $1500+ range, and it is that range that the majority of consumers look when it comes to buying a computer, either desktop or laptop.The area that manufacturers SHOULD be moving in is to make the move to a 1920x1080 display across their entire range of 14 inch and greater machines as the norm, rather than as an extra feature that people need to pay extra for if you are in the $450+ price range. Higher resolutions should be offered as the norm for higher end laptop displays. Until that happens, the PC side of the industry will seem to be inferior when it comes to display technology.
If you think about it, display technologies have been fairly stagnant except from Apple, and we have not seen an aggressive attempt to improve what we see out there. 1920x1080 displays have been the norm for too long, and going to 1920x1200 isn't enough.
OCedHrt - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Check out the new Sony TTvegemeister - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
1920x1080 should be the norm for 11".