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Apple lowers 13" Macbook Pro Retina prices

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Emarv said:
Isn't this just like when the Air was first released? It was a luxury laptop that slowly worked its way down in price until it became the Apple standard.
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It wasnt just the price that got better, but the computer itself. The Air was stupidly overpriced and underpowered when it came out. But when it dropped heavily in price, the specs also got a hell of a lot better and the computer became great. The big thing with the rMBP 13" now is they need a GPU in there. The price drop is nice, but that screen needs more power than that lil Intel chip can give it.
 
It's hard to believe people are actually comparing Chromebooks with MBPs :|

I still wouldn't buy a 13" retina though, it's too handicapped by the lack of discrete gpu
 
StopMakingSense said:
Yesssss. Favorite computer I've ever owned.
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Unless I need to do actual production work, I seriously don't see why I need a bigger laptop. The mobility aspect is huge.

Retina as it is now is nice and all, but no SSD and a massive upcharge?

tumblr_li5s1ymTD61qcbhpo.jpg
 
Wow.... Can't believe they shipped such a resolution with an integrated Intel GPU... Anyone know how this things actually performs? I can't imagine very well at all.
 
Still too much but maybe I can land a refurb for a decent price now. Really want that retina display but the price was nuts.
 
Been coasting on my early 2011 17" MBP waiting for the retina 15" 2n rev. Was hoping for more of a bump than this. Not sure if to pull the trigger or not now. Maybe worth it before 17" looses more value down the line, then sell the rMBP when a more substantial upgrade comes along...
 
joshschw said:
Wow.... Can't believe they shipped such a resolution with an integrated Intel GPU... Anyone know how this things actually performs? I can't imagine very well at all.
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when I've used it at the Apple Store, it seems OK at the default resolution when just browsing or doing light photo editing.

But, as soon as you want to get more screen space and the OS starts rendering larger canvases, mission control animations get choppy and scrolling heavy web pages can feel sluggish (although I read that webkit nightlies can improve the web scrolling performance).

the 15" rMBP is a great machine. legitimately powerful and fast with that great screen. The 13" model has the nice screen but isn't any more powerful than the 13" macbook air - and it can feel slower than the air because of the pixels it's pushing. It'll probably be a better buy if they can get a quad core chip in there and either have way faster integrated graphics or redesign the board to get a GPU in there.
 
Still way too expensive. Honestly, I find the 13 inch screen too small. So the fact that they offering it at the low price of 1,699 is laughable.
 
Yaceka said:
Still incredibly expensive. :(
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I am not sure if I am going with them again after my present macbook. Loved mine so far for the 6 years I have had it, but it is starting to show it's age and I am in need of a new one it seems rather soon. But the price of these new macbooks are kind of concerning, also the fact that the battery is glued in and the lack of the cd/dvd drive is concerning. I know jobs didn't like blu-ray's, but I would use it more for burning data and backing stuff up than movies. Things have gotten bigger since 2000 or whenever when DVD burners started becoming popular in laptops and such and I feel like a portable hdd is nice but I feel like Blu-Rays are a bit more permanent and store-able. Also, it is still nice to have a dvd player on hand and be able to rip a CD without buying an extra add-on external superdrive from apple.


I know you can get the current non-retina macbook pro with a dvd superdrive and is closer to the $999 I paid for my macbook at $1,199, but I am kind of waiting for the 2nd gen of the next refresh to come out and those will probably be all retina and all without optical drives of any kind.
 
Good news since I'll be getting either the 13' Haswell MBA or the 13' Haswell rMBP when they're released later this year. First gen 13' rMBP was too expensive for what you got. Hoping for some additional spec bumps in the base versions of both models though. More ram and storage hopefully at the same price.
 
Davidion said:
Unless I need to do actual production work, I seriously don't see why I need a bigger laptop. The mobility aspect is huge.
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After doing some side-by-side testing, I also think the keyboard on the 13 feels notably better than on the 15. Some advantage of being slightly thicker I guess.

The big problem with the 13 is that the "best quality" resolution is only equivalent to a 1280x800 workspace, which is way too small. That's smaller than the workspace of the Macbook Air, which already feels somewhat cramped to me. The "most space" resolution of 1680x1050 is a good workspace size, but then you have to deal with the lack of sharpness brought on by running at a non-integer-scaled resolution.

The laptop would be better if they had actually used a lower resolution 1680x1050 panel, IMO, since then the largest workspace would be the sharpest too. It feels like the current design is catered to people with bad eyesight.
 
no thanks, maybe this years 13" retina refresh will perform better than the current one.

Aurongel said:
$1000+ laptop with a 128gb SSD and no discrete graphics, it was always a joke of a machine centered on the retina gimmick.
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nothing gimmicky about more screen real estate
 
BolognaSoup said:
Some people don't seem to understand that some people are more interested than just a processor and GPU when buying a computer.
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the high margins apple gets proves your getting scammed
they can offer the same for way less

but sheeple keep buying it in droves so they are asking for it
 
tokkun said:
After doing some side-by-side testing, I also think the keyboard on the 13 feels notably better than on the 15. Some advantage of being slightly thicker I guess.

The big problem with the 13 is that the "best quality" resolution is only equivalent to a 1280x800 workspace, which is way too small. That's smaller than the workspace of the Macbook Air, which already feels somewhat cramped to me. The "most space" resolution of 1680x1050 is a good workspace size, but then you have to deal with the lack of sharpness brought on by running at a non-integer-scaled resolution.

The laptop would be better if they had actually used a lower resolution 1680x1050 panel, IMO, since then the largest workspace would be the sharpest too. It feels like the current design is catered to people with bad eyesight.
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That's an interesting observation; it definitely makes me want to go do some side-by-side testing. For the record I have 20/20 vision and the 11" Air has been surprisingly pleasant when it comes to the visual aspect. Screen real estate can always be bigger, but that's just a given.



StopMakingSense said:
Seriously. I have a 27in iMac for my design/media work, but do all of my coding and whatnot on my Air.
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And wireframing! Low-horsepower work high five.
 
MrHicks said:
the high margins apple gets proves your getting scammed
they can offer the same for way less

but sheeple keep buying it in droves so they are asking for it
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I know I can get a PC for a lot less then I can get an equivalent Mac for, I choose to get the Mac because I like the Hardware and I like OSX. So how am I getting scammed?
 
ari said:
These prices are really laughable. Can't believe people still eat this shit up compared to a $249 pc with superior software capability and the same exact specs but without retina.

Should be a law or some shit.
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It's honestly posts like these that keep me coming back for more, GAF. Great comedy.
 
LyleLanley said:
I know I can get a PC for a lot less then I can get an equivalent Mac for, I choose to get the Mac because I like the Hardware and I like OSX. So how am I getting scammed?
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if people didn't buy it at the current prices you would have the exact same hardware with OSX for less

buying apple's shit at these ridiculous premiums en masse is basically consumers fucking each other over in the long run
 
We need to start a social campaign to get all the rich people to stop buying BMWs! Then the rest of us can buy them for the same price as Honda Civics! That's how the free market works right?
 
MrHicks said:
if people didn't buy it at the current prices you would have the exact same hardware with OSX for less

buying apple's shit at these ridiculous premiums en masse is basically consumers fucking each other over in the long run
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Couldn't that be said for almost any product? Surely budget priced PCs could be even cheaper right? Either way, I'm not trying to make some stand for or against consumers when I purchase a computer.

I still don't understand why I'm a "Sheeple". I know what I'm getting, I know what it costs, I know I could get a similar device for cheaper but I choose not to.
 
tokkun said:
After doing some side-by-side testing, I also think the keyboard on the 13 feels notably better than on the 15. Some advantage of being slightly thicker I guess.

The big problem with the 13 is that the "best quality" resolution is only equivalent to a 1280x800 workspace, which is way too small. That's smaller than the workspace of the Macbook Air, which already feels somewhat cramped to me. The "most space" resolution of 1680x1050 is a good workspace size, but then you have to deal with the lack of sharpness brought on by running at a non-integer-scaled resolution.

The laptop would be better if they had actually used a lower resolution 1680x1050 panel, IMO, since then the largest workspace would be the sharpest too. It feels like the current design is catered to people with bad eyesight.
Click to expand...

But you still see more detail when running a retina MBP at scaled 1680x1050 workspace than with a lower res native 1680x1050, so I don't see how that is better.
 
moniker said:
But you still see more detail when running a retina MBP at scaled 1680x1050 workspace than with a lower res native 1680x1050, so I don't see how that is better.
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Are you sure about that? I don't know with certainty how the scaling is handled in OSX, but my assumption is that it renders the desktop at 1680x1050, then the image is scaled to 2560x1600. I don't see why that would have more detail than an image rendered at 1680x1050, then displayed on a native 1680x1050 panel. If anything, I would expect it to look worse in terms of sharpness and detail.

Here is what The Verge's review says, which seems to corroborate this interpretation:

Lastly, it’s important to note that 1280 x 800 isn’t actually a huge amount of screen real estate. It’s about the same as the standard 13-inch Windows laptop resolution of 1366 x 768, but it’s noticeably smaller than the 1440 x 900 on a MacBook Air. Everything is far more beautiful at the Retina setting on the 13-inch Pro, but you’ll have less working space than you might be used to.

You can go into the display options and switch to 1440 x 900, which still looks nice, but you lose a hair of Retina crispness since you’re scaling to a non-native resolution. Think about it this way: where the Retina "best" setting fits each pixel of a 1280 x 800 image perfectly onto four pixels of a 2560 x 1600 screen, each pixel of a 1440 x 900 image fits imperfectly onto 3.6 pixels of the display, so it’s a little bit blurrier. You might not notice it, but it still isn’t what you’re paying for. And running at higher resolutions imparts a performance penalty, which isn't good news on this machine — more on that in a bit.

(You can also set the display to a max of 1680 x 1050, which I was very excited about since that’s the same workspace as my older 15-inch Pro, but it’s just too tiny for my eyes.)
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