Anyone getting a retina macbook?

[farmer_rob]

Has anyone ordered the new retina macbook? I reckon they look pretty good for photos and so I'm eagerly awaiting delivery. (Anyway, it will be better than my 6yo Dell desktop!)

Regards,
Rob

[ameerat42]

(Isn't this the cause celebre of the Macular D-generation?)

[inplace]

No issues with mine so far :)

Colours are richer, and the higher resolutions are definitely a plus even without retina supported apps, if the application you are using supports retina then you are in for a treat.

For me I did not upgrade just for the new displays as my previous MBPs have always had the Hi-Res Glossy (1680x1050) which is what i'm running the display in now, the addition of flash storage as standard and the weight reductions also are probably the biggest reasons as the is a very noticeable difference in weight over the last Gen.

Hope this helps,

Huw

[arthurking83]

while I have to admit I'm not an overly well known Mac fan .. the battery setup of these things would be my main concern and lack of interest.
(battery is hard wired and hence not user replaceable, unless you have some tech ability .. also a very expensive item ATM).

I just hope that this is not the way of the future for portables.

[ricktas]

No issues with mine so far :)

Colours are richer, and the higher resolutions are definitely a plus even without retina supported apps, if the application you are using supports retina then you are in for a treat.

For me I did not upgrade just for the new displays as my previous MBPs have always had the Hi-Res Glossy (1680x1050) which is what i'm running the display in now, the addition of flash storage as standard and the weight reductions also are probably the biggest reasons as the is a very noticeable difference in weight over the last Gen.

Hope this helps,

Huw

It would be good to see some of your photos processed on this screen, rather than just posting once every couple of months to keep your access to the site :D

[Wayne]

I am peeved that Apple quietly murdered the 17" MBP. I have had 2 of them now, and would without doubt keep upgrading if the 17" continued in the line-up. I don't want a 15" version, I want true screen real estate, not smaller items that appear to allow more on the desktop. I also don't want smaller storage capacity, although SSD is nice, the cost in capacity by using them is frustrating, i would rather a SATA drive with greater than 1TB, or 2x SATA drives.
No optical drive is another feature I wouldn't want to omit, given I burn discs on the go at times, and just because Apple wants all software going onto the machine from their Mac App Store, many others still distribute via disc, and it is useful for watching movies or sharing files too large to email.

All in all, I have no reason to go for the new MBP, and god forbid, if they don't release a 17" Retina version, I may be forced back to a Windows machine, which will really peeve me! Apple have really changed their game plan, catering more for the masses, instead of the professional and enthusiast markets they have typically built things for in the past.
Mr Cook won't be getting my $$ anytime soon without a 17" version.

[arthurking83]

I'm sure other PC vendors will catch up with retina like displays on their notebooks soon too.

If Apple don't bring out a 17" variant of the retina range, you would simply get another manufacturers notebook with 17" IPS display and load the Mac OS onto that ..... no need to go back to Windows is there?

[Wayne]

I'm sure other PC vendors will catch up with retina like displays on their notebooks soon too.

If Apple don't bring out a 17" variant of the retina range, you would simply get another manufacturers notebook with 17" IPS display and load the Mac OS onto that ..... no need to go back to Windows is there?

Although all Intel based in the Apple world these days, I have never tried to load a Mac OS onto a machine intended for Windows OS. I suspect it could be done, however think that there may be some hack required as Apple may have in the BIOS something that checks confirms the disc in the drive is Mac OS, so the OS may not load unless it gets that confirmation, which on a machine intended for Windows won't happen. You can't load earlier versions of OSX onto a Mac than what the machine came with, so there is some check there at present, and I suspect other checks as well.

[davsv1]

Although all Intel based in the Apple world these days, I have never tried to load a Mac OS onto a machine intended for Windows OS. I suspect it could be done, however think that there may be some hack required as Apple may have in the BIOS something that checks confirms the disc in the drive is Mac OS, so the OS may not load unless it gets that confirmation, which on a machine intended for Windows won't happen. You can't load earlier versions of OSX onto a Mac than what the machine came with, so there is some check there at present, and I suspect other checks as well.

Google "Hackintosh" it will list several sites that give instruction on how to build your own mac OS compatible machine, this will probably not work with a laptop of course since it is rather difficult to build your own laptop.

[arthurking83]

..... however think that there may be some hack required as Apple may have in the BIOS something that checks confirms the disc in the drive is Mac OS....


I see. I knew I was right about one thing tho .. that I know very little about Apple software! :o

[farmer_rob]

Well, mine arrived on wednesday, and I think it is great.

No cd drive, but i can always get an external drive if necessary.

Batteries - I've only replaced a battery once in a laptop (in 15 years of using them). In reality, my experience is that getting good life depends on using the battery and not the power cord. (and in three years, this laptop will be just as obsolete as every other bit of tech gear I have over 3 years old.)

17 inch screen? It makes the laptop too big IMO. I've got all the screen real estate I need, and the display is super sharp.

Now to get back to photography instead of fighting photoshop on a 6yo dell. (And see whether it really makes it easier to process them).

Regards,
Rob

[MissionMan]

I think the 17" was a small market for them and about 75% of the people who had 17" laptops could get away with the 15" with improved resolution. I used to use the 17" but have since moved to the 15" high res and will probably get a retina in the next 6 months. These days, 24" screens are so cheap that the requirement to have large displays on laptops is largely negated because its cheap to have 2 displays (one at home and one at work).

On the issue of storage, the latest MBP's are 750GB of SSD so storage is less of an issue than it used to be with SSD. I bought my 480GB when it was $1000, they were $2000 not long before that and its already down to $700 or less for a 500GB SSD. Reliability is also no longer an issue and the performance (500MB/s vs 70MB/s) gains on SSD make the sacrifice of storage a non-issue. Having had one SSD fail recently, I was forced back to spindle for a day (had to continue working) and that was enough to have me pulling my hair out with frustration on the speed. I couldn't imagine living without an SSD anymore. If storage is really an issue without having to lug around an additional drive, you could always buy a Macbook Air storage chip and insert it in one of the OWC Envoy (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENVOY/) housings. If you look at the dimensions of the drive and housing, its tiny and goes all the way up to 480GB, and offers USB3 as well. I know of people who have purchased these so they have mobile backups all the time in a compact package (4.5cm x 15cm x .7cm) and have lightening fast performance.

Although its easy to harp on about how you've always done things, I think the reality of the market and technology is changing. When Apple first took away the floppy, people complained like hell. Now it seems ludicrous to even consider a floppy. The CD/DVD is dying as well. With the cost of USB drives being cheap ($5 for a 4GB USB Stick), I'd be inclined to rather give people a USB drive rather than issuing them with a CD/DVD anyway but if its really critical, external Bluray's and DVD writers are dirt cheap. Even install disks are redundant. When I recovered my latest drive after the failure, I didn't even need an OS install disk to do it. I started the restore went an relaxed and 3 hours later I was working. I usually carry a full bootable backup but as I had time in the evening, I could start it and forget about it.

[Schy]

Just wondering which model you guys got? And did you get 8 or 16gb RAM?

Is 16gb RAM necessary for PP purposes? Even for a beginner?

[MissionMan]

Just wondering which model you guys got? And did you get 8 or 16gb RAM?

Is 16gb RAM necessary for PP purposes? Even for a beginner?

8GB is more than enough for PP unless you're planning on doing some pretty spectacular stuff or lots of 1080P video.

I'm running 8GB on a standard Macbook Pro i7 with SSD and I have no performance issues with photoshop, aperture etc.

[Schy]

Thanks MissionMan! :)

What do you mean by 'doing spectacular stuff'?

But do you think its better to upgrade to 16gb to future proof? Or 8gb will be more than enough for me?

[MissionMan]

I'd personally upgrade to be future proof but to put it into perspective, I have 35000 images in my aperture library and I've never seen aperture max out the ram other than the initial processing of images when I had to do a restore after a hard drive failure. Both CPU and RAM ran full tilt for two days and that related to generating thumbnails and facial recognition (left overnight - I didn't have it open during the day and you can pause it if you need to).

The extra ram only comes into play if you're running multiple virtual machines at the same time. 99.9% of people will only ever run one VM at a time so it's unlikely they'd need the extra ram.

Because the RMBP has a solid state, system performance is going to be lightening fast and it's unlikely you will see much of a performance gain from the ram, but it make help at some point in future if software requirements are higher.

[Schy]

I might go the 16gb RAM route as all my computers lasts me around at least 3 years. However this will be my 1st mac computer.. (i only get laptops as i need portability but is my main computer as well.)

Another question is will 256gb of SSD be enough for softwares? Im planning to get the base model (upgrade to 16gb RAM) then buy either a thunderbolt or usb 3 external drive for all my other media files.

What do you think? Will the image editing software run a bit or a lot slower when getting the files from the external drive, edit, then save back to the external drive?

I will be a beginner in PP, never tried it before.

My usual use is normal everyday use, occassional gaming and now for PP..

[MissionMan]

I might go the 16gb RAM route as all my computers lasts me around at least 3 years. However this will be my 1st mac computer.. (i only get laptops as i need portability but is my main computer as well.)

Another question is will 256gb of SSD be enough for softwares? Im planning to get the base model (upgrade to 16gb RAM) then buy either a thunderbolt or usb 3 external drive for all my other media files.

What do you think? Will the image editing software run a bit or a lot slower when getting the files from the external drive, edit, then save back to the external drive?

I will be a beginner in PP, never tried it before.

My usual use is normal everyday use, occassional gaming and now for PP..

OWC normally release third party SSD's for these machines (yeah, even the strange ones found in the latest rMBP and Air) so you should be able to upgrade the drive later if you want to. If you can afford the larger drives its worth doing but its not critical.

Aperture (fairly cheap) is better than the standard iPhoto and allows you to manage photos and relocate them to 3rd party media. Initially, if you are not that familiar with PP, I'd stick with a photo management tool like Aperture or Lightroom and then switch to some of the plugins or Photoshop once you start to understand it better. I tend to keep my images online for about a month while I'm editing and then move them to external media. One of the big benefits of Aperture is it also allows you to combine the RAW and JPG into a single managed file and you can switch between them depending on which one you want to edit from so you can start shooting with RAW and JPG, stick with the JPG's and then move to the RAW files once you get to grips with PP. The speed difference shouldn't be massive between the internal drive and external. Most of the time is taken while the application itself opens. Thunderbolt is faster but substantially more expensive. The only issue with thunderbolt is its only really beneficial if the drive in the external housing is a SSD otherwise you'd be as well as using USB3.

There is a tutorial for moving the photos from the internal library to the external drive on Mactalk (http://www.mactalk.com.au/content/moving-your-photo-library-external-drive-aperture-1657/)

You can use time machine (standard functionality) to back up your primary drive and external photo library as well so its worth investing in a larger drive to keep all your backups on. I have a 3TB backup drive (firewire), 1TB photo library drive and then my current machine with a 480GB SSD. That said, most of the 480GB is consumed with VM's and my photo library is only about 50GB at this point with 30,000 images. Time machine will take incremental backups so you can literally look at your machine on a particular day and see exactly what it looked like. From OS Lion and Mountain Lion you can then restore your machine in its entirety with only a wifi connection and the time machine backup. I.e. you connect to wifi, it downloads a small file to initiate the recovery and then you plug in your time machine backup and it restores the machine to the last backup. I had to test it recently with an SSD failure and it works flawlessly.

[Schy]

Is the time machine backup via wifi automatic or do you need the time capsule for that?

Sorry, what is VMs?

so you reckon just get the usb 3 external drives? I was looking at the lacie and western digital thunderbolt drives.. Do you recommend any usb external drives?

I was planning to get either thunderbolt or usb, 6tb or 4tb then configure to Raid 1..

[MissionMan]

Time machine is only via wifi with the time capsule. There are pros and cons to this. Obviously having it constantly update automatically is great but its slow. With non-wifi, if you daisy chain different drives together using a USB hub or Thunderbolt, every time you connect to your drives it will backup everything at the same time anyway.

I used Firewire and prefer it to USB purely because of the daisy chain ability (thunderbolt would have the same advantage). I.e. you have one connection going into your laptop for multiple drives. What this means is every thunderbolt devices has two thunderbolt ports. The cable goes from your laptop into the first, the cable goes from the first to the second, second to the third etc. It means you only ever have to plug in one cable rather than 3 or 4. You can use USB hubs but they tend to degrade performance which is less of an issue with thunderbolt.

For the drives and raid, you need to consider how you intend structuring the drives. RAID offers performance but the question is whether that performance is actually worth while and sometimes I've seen recovery issues with RAID which still results in some data loss. My recommendation would be to rather split the device into separate drives. Drive A will be your external storage and drive B will be the backup of your Laptop and Drive A. If drive A fails, you have the backup on drive B, if drive B fails, you have the original data on drive A and your laptop. The only thing this doesn't cater for is a complete failure of the entire device so you could consider splitting your devices. I.e. have two smaller thunderbolt externals, one of 3GB and one of 1GB. Use the 1GB for external storage and the 3GB to backup both your laptop and the 1GB.

VM's are virtual machines. I.e. you can run windows on your mac in a virtual machine. You will still be able to do this but if you wanted to run 3 at the same time, the additional RAM would be handy. This wouldn't normally be an issue unless you were a techy running multiple windows servers on the same machine.

[Schy]

Ah! The 3tb and 1tb might be a good option! Thanks for that! Can you daisy chain them as well? Hehe!

Now im debating whether to get 8gb ram or order 16gb ram as some retailers are offering 10% off their apple computers but for the base models only and are not allowing for customised ones.. Haha!

8gb would be enough for me? Am not really techie.. I just use the computer.. Haha

[MissionMan]

I don't think you'll need 16GB but as I said, its more about future proofing. I personally doubt that 16GB will be the minimum requirements for any software in the near future unless its hectic video editing.

It doesn't look like Lacie do a bigger drive than 2GB so you may have to look at other brands for that. I use the WD MyBook (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=630) (I only have firewire but will move to a thunderbolt device later) which is quite a nice chrome style. They also do a thunderbolt but only in 4GB and 6GB.

This is what daisy chaining looks like (from Lacie but the drive make has no dependency, it would work this way with any thunderbolt drive). The nice thing this graphic shows is that you can buy an external thunderbolt compatible 24 inch monitor, plug your drives into the monitor and you only have one connection for both your drives and external display.

http://manuals.lacie.com/_media/products/thunderbolt-pro/thunderbolt_series_daisy_chain.jpg?w=500

This is the dual ports I was referring to on the back. This allows you to connect the drives together.

http://www.lacie.com/imgstore/product_large/LBD_TB_frontback.jpg

If you look at the WD thunderbolt version, it also has two ports so its a standard way of working with thunderbolt.

http://www.wdc.com/global/images/products/models/img1/300/wdfMBThunderbolt.jpg

[Schy]

Thanks a lot missionman! Helped me a lot! :D

Im pretty sure lacie has the 6tb and 4tb as i saw it in apples website.. Hehe! But western digital is the cheaper option! :D

I might get the 4tb and 2tb and go with your suggestion with the 3 and 1tb.. Use the money saved to purchase the external storage.. :)

[farmer_rob]

Re 8 vs 16 gb. I went for 16 gb. The 16gb is total overkill, but the memory is not upgradeable later. For the cost, it was worth the future-proofing. But i have yet to really torture the memory limits in spite of trying hard.

I was also a bit worried about the 256 gbyte ssd size. However I think it is enough for a portable machine. Thanks to all for the advice regarding other storage options - i'll be looking into some of this soon.

Btw, i think the retina macbook is great. Well worth the money.

Regards,
Rob

[Ventureoverland]

Re 8 vs 16 gb. I went for 16 gb. The 16gb is total overkill, but the memory is not upgradeable later. For the cost, it was worth the future-proofing. But i have yet to really torture the memory limits in spite of trying hard.

I was also a bit worried about the 256 gbyte ssd size. However I think it is enough for a portable machine. Thanks to all for the advice regarding other storage options - i'll be looking into some of this soon.

Btw, i think the retina macbook is great. Well worth the money.

Regards,
Rob

I don't think the 16gb is total overkill.

I have 12gb in my 2010 quad core i7 iMac and use aperture 3 & CS5. A good mate of mine has just bought a 2012 quad core i7 MacBook pro (non retina) with 8gb ram. He has a slightly faster processor than me but if you start doing the same thing on both machines, mine still has the edge on memory hungry tasks.

Bottom line, id say you made the right call in going down the 16gb route.

R
J

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[MissionMan]

I don't think the 16gb is total overkill.

I have 12gb in my 2010 quad core i7 iMac and use aperture 3 & CS5. A good mate of mine has just bought a 2012 quad core i7 MacBook pro (non retina) with 8gb ram. He has a slightly faster processor than me but if you start doing the same thing on both machines, mine still has the edge on memory hungry tasks.

Bottom line, id say you made the right call in going down the 16gb route.

R
J

Sent using Forum Runner

Just remember there is a big difference between desktop and mobile processors. An iMac should always be faster than the laptap equivalent. Mobile processors have to run under power constraints for battery life, heat constraints etc.

[Ventureoverland]

Just remember there is a big difference between desktop and mobile processors. An iMac should always be faster than the laptap equivalent. Mobile processors have to run under power constraints for battery life, heat constraints etc.

Interesting and that would go a long way to explain my experiences...

Are you saying that, for example, a "2.6Ghz quad core i7" in an iMac is different to a "2.6Ghz quad core i7" in a MacBook pro?

I know there are mobile intel processors out there and commonly used for PC laptops, i'd need to check the apple website but can't recall them detailing one being a mobile processor...

Thx
J

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[Ventureoverland]

Interesting and that would go a long way to explain my experiences...

Are you saying that, for example, a "2.6Ghz quad core i7" in an iMac is different to a "2.6Ghz quad core i7" in a MacBook pro?

I know there are mobile intel processors out there and commonly used for PC laptops, i'd need to check the apple website but can't recall them detailing one being a mobile processor...

Thx
J

Sent using Forum Runner

Ok, just had a look on the apple store, the following screenshots detail the processors for a current iMac and MacBook pro.

MacBook pro first, then iMac. Both use the same quad core i7 logo and does not specifically detail mobile processors.

Having said that, my mates MacBook has a 5400rpm drive, mines a 7200rpm that only goes part way to explain the differences that are apparent.

Next time in in the city I'll pop into the apple store and ask a 'Genius':)

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[MissionMan]

Ok, just had a look on the apple store, the following screenshots detail the processors for a current iMac and MacBook pro.

MacBook pro first, then iMac. Both use the same quad core i7 logo and does not specifically detail mobile processors.

Having said that, my mates MacBook has a 5400rpm drive, mines a 7200rpm that only goes part way to explain the differences that are apparent.

Next time in in the city I'll pop into the apple store and ask a 'Genius':)

Sent using Forum Runner

Yup. The short answer is yes. If you have the same speed, the desktop processor will always be slightly faster. This is largely due to a number of factors like those mentioned above (power consumption, better graphics card etc), but there are other considerations like amount of memory for shared L3 cache on the processor (I think the notebooks have 6MB vs 8MB on the desktops)

Hard drives do make a difference as well obviously.

[JM Tran]

I am peeved that Apple quietly murdered the 17" MBP. I have had 2 of them now, and would without doubt keep upgrading if the 17" continued in the line-up. I don't want a 15" version, I want true screen real estate, not smaller items that appear to allow more on the desktop. I also don't want smaller storage capacity, although SSD is nice, the cost in capacity by using them is frustrating, i would rather a SATA drive with greater than 1TB, or 2x SATA drives.
No optical drive is another feature I wouldn't want to omit, given I burn discs on the go at times, and just because Apple wants all software going onto the machine from their Mac App Store, many others still distribute via disc, and it is useful for watching movies or sharing files too large to email.

All in all, I have no reason to go for the new MBP, and god forbid, if they don't release a 17" Retina version, I may be forced back to a Windows machine, which will really peeve me! Apple have really changed their game plan, catering more for the masses, instead of the professional and enthusiast markets they have typically built things for in the past.
Mr Cook won't be getting my $$ anytime soon without a 17" version.


I remembered commenting in the past on your decision to purchase the 17 inch MBP Wayne, and also questioned your need to upgrade every time Apple releases a new MBP - as the upgrades are quite incremental and not that much of a sound business decision.

The 17 inch has and never will be a popular choice with professionals in photography, music and other professions due to its size, my professional colleagues and I would never edit seriously on a 17 inch, nor would a sports shooter or DJ want all that room and size taken up next to them. The 15 incher which I have - and which is the leading model will always be the perfect fit for us - not too small, and big enough to carry in a lot of backpacks and satchel bags etc.

You also commented that you bought the MBP back then for the new Thunderbolt connection - when I thought that it is still in its infancy and will be slow to catch on. To this day it is still not widespread enough and it is still very expensive for Thunderbolt products.

Your complaint about SSD - I bought the 1st generation SSD for the MBP - at a paltry 128GB two years ago, I still dont complain about the capacity, as all of my photo work are kept on separate back up drives and loaded onto the SSD for editing, then deleted again later. This is what myself and other pros do for speed and effiency of utilizing the SSD. Now with the new MBPs at 512GB, thats a bargain I reckon! So why should we go back to something slower like a normal HDD even if its SATA?

The only thing I would agree with you on is the lack of optical drive, as I burn a lot of discs for clients too. But lately - I have been using Dropbox to send files to clients now - saves us time altogether and no need to mail it or drive to the office to meet etc. I can also just buy the separate optical drive when I upgrade to the new MBP soon. I am always open to adapting to changes instead of resisting.

[MissionMan]

The only thing I would agree with you on is the lack of optical drive, as I burn a lot of discs for clients too. But lately - I have been using Dropbox to send files to clients now - saves us time altogether and no need to mail it or drive to the office to meet etc. I can also just buy the separate optical drive when I upgrade to the new MBP soon. I am always open to adapting to changes instead of resisting.

I still think CD's and DVD's are a dying breed. You can pick up bulk 1,2 and 4GB memory sticks for under $5 each so its almost worth just using those because its only a couple of bucks more than a CD or DVD. You can buy them in bulk off ebay and its quicker to write to memory stick than CD, not to mention the issues with failed writes etc.

I also think long term that thunderbolt will be good, I think its just early days. The fact that you can have one connection going to your laptop which includes your monitor and a number of externals is great.