I rationalized buying a new Retina MacBook Pro a few weeks ago by telling myself 1) it’s my responsibility to stay on top of new things that affect the web 2) I want to make sure the redesign looks good on retina displays 3) my current laptop had very little RAM and a small hard drive. I was always running out of space. And finally 4) I needed the extra horsepower for exporting/converting all the video I’d be doing.
But if we’re being totally honest: 5) I like new nerdy toys.
Here’s some thoughts after three weeks of use.
- It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned. It is very fast. For the first time I don’t even really think about what applications are open and which aren’t. It just doesn’t matter. I’ve had no problems with crashing, overheating, fans going crazy, not waking up from sleep, nothing.
- The screen is amazing. What looks particularly amazing on the web is all the CSS3 stuff like rounded corners, shadows, gradients, web fonts, etc. Icon fonts all the way!
- What looks the worst on the web are images that were created small and display small. Imagine a little RSS icon created in Photoshop at 16x16px and displayed at 16x16px in a button. Since that icon needs to display in the same amount of visual space it needs to fake a bunch of those pixels resulting in blurry garbage (like stretching a raster image larger in Photoshop… “zoom in, enhance” only works in the movies). It’s extra noticeable because at any given time there are things on your screen that look unbelievably crisp and beautiful and things that look blurry and worse than they did before.
- In order to get the best image display, you have to have it on the “Best for Retina” setting, which doesn’t get you very much screen real estate. You can opt for more room, but it’s at the cost of display quality. It’s too little room to have a web browser open on the left and a code editor on the right, which is how I prefer to work. For now I mostly work with an attached Cinema Display.
- We really gotta figure out this responsive images thing in a really good way really soon. The resource needs for the average website seems to be growing faster than internet connection speeds are increasing. We need the web to be faster not slower. But we want it looking good too.
- Screenshots are a pain in the butt. They snap at 2x, which then makes them look great when viewing them at 1x, but we can’t just start quadrupling image sizes for screenshots. Especially in blog posts or really anything on the web. I’m sure this is an extra huge pain in the butt for Dribbble.
- I prefer Chrome, which was only in the past few weeks retina ready. It was a shocker to get it and open up Chrome to find any web text blurry. Vector stuff is supposed to be wicked sharp not blurry. Anyway, that’s fixed all the way down to stable now. All other browsers are fine.
- Non-retina apps are annoying. The official Twitter app for Mac is totally unusable because all the text is super blurry. Third party Twitter apps just aren’t doing it for me. Don’t like Tweetdeck. Tried Fluid.app’ing the website but it’s too slow. Tweetbot is too buggy. I’m on Twitterific for now. Even little stuff like the fact that the Dropbox icon isn’t retina is a little annoying. I don’t blame them. I understand prioritization at software companies. I’m just saying.
- The thinness and lightness is really nice.
I’m still holding out for a retina macbook air…
I love the new macbook BUT working in PS is a pain in the ass. I’m finding myself saving my work to a png to have a good look at what i’m working on.
It is super satisfying when you land on a site that has been optimised for retina.
Awesome post, you are really getting me thinking about what to do with images. I agree with you completely, we need to figure out what to do with responsive design and responsive images. I’m sure you have a post about it somewhere but what do you do for images currently to compensate for retina and a responsive website? Can you direct me to a link/article you may have written or some small response? Thanks Chris, great work!
Full ack!
But Firefox is not ready! But who cares?
Since the end of june 2012, each website I released is retina optimized. Can’t even think about releasing non retina websites.
The MacBook Pro Retina makes it easy to optimize websites for the New iPad.
Great post – answered a lot of questions I had. Can you tell us what model/specs you upgraded from?
Upgraded from older MacBook Pro:
PROCESSOR 065-0092 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
MEMORY 065-0094 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x4GB
HARD DRIVE 065-0098 128GB Solid State Drive
To new retina MacBook Pro:
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
768GB Flash Storage
let’s also disclose the price here.
$3,749.00
damn, talk about cognitive dissonance
My problem with Macbook Pro Retina is the price.
You can buy the same one for $2,199.00 in the USA and… 2.279,00 € in Europe (Apple Store official prices).
Normally, $2,199.00 means 1.758,00 €! (1 USD = 0.799836 EUR).
I don’t understand why this laptop is so expensive in Europe. What does it mean? Do you have an idea?
Olivier
Man, do you think it’s expensive? Here, in Brazil, the same entry-level MBPR is R$9999, which means we must pay $4925.61 (1 USD = 2.03 BRL) to get one.
So, European Macbooks are not that expensive, don’t you think?
@Ericki unfortunately, $4925 in Brazil doesn’t make the European version cheaper..
@Olivier: unfortunately, most stuff imported from US are converted to euro in 1:1 ratio. The real shocking stuff? It applies to software too! Try to buy Photoshop from adobe.com and you will know what I mean!
Probably it has something to do with customs & craps like that.
You know if you don’t like it, you can just go to US and buy one, right? :D
@Ionuț: You’re right. I’ll probably visit NY and buy a retina. I’m not sure to save a lot of money but I’ll have a lot of fun!
I believe the US prices are before tax and EU are after tax… not sure though but that’s what I heard.
I believe you are correct, Will. In the UK they add the equivalent to the sales tax we have in most US states into the sticker price. Plus, the VAT is a lot larger than the ~5% sales tax that most of the United States charge.
Since the tax can vary from state-to-state, as well as city-to-city (or even between different regions of a city, in some cases!) it’s simply not feasible to add the sales tax into the list price.
I believe it is the 1:1 conversion ratio and not the taxes.
This company has a rotten policy on money, no matter how well the product is designed they’ll never have a penny from me!
Just as an example:
US:15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display $2,799.00
IT:15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display € 2.929,00 ($3.660,40)
Feel free to disagree with me but i really do not understand…
I havent used the new retina mac yet but I suspected it to be much like you described above. Honestly, as a web designer I am getting tired of all these tech leaps apple is making.
It isn’t that I don’t like progress, in fact the opposite. But the things apple is changing on the web seems to be continually making my work more time consuming but it isn’t a cost I can easily pass on to the client. My clients just want their sites to look good. Its a really tough sell explaining to them that now we have to charge them more because we have to build the site for several different pixel densities.
There is a cost involved with managing every asset at 1x and 2x quality. Furthermore the screen sizes are more arbitrary than ever. While responsive design is great in theory it simply does not meet the needs of many client projects. Also what happens when other PC manufactuers start using high density displays? Will we have 1x, 1.5x, 1.7x, 2x, etc? to meet the various demands? Even all 3 of Apple’s retina devices have different pixel densities.
Furthermore, as you said, the internet just isn’t fast enough. Especially for delivering video. 1080p just isn’t good enough for the retina macbook but even if we could get the video content at 1920p streaming it to the user at such a resolution just isn’t viable yet.
I felt the retina display on smaller devices was fine simply because it brought their native resolution up to about the graphic size we were already serving for desktop but now that a full size computer is boasting retina we are looking at having to serve graphics and double the normal size. This will be compounded even more when Apple inevitably announces a 27″ iMac with a retina display in the next year or so.
Like I said before I support the web moving forward but at the same time I am struggling to be able to deliver quality websites to clients without raising the prices to reflect the added work this new technology brings to the table.
I have to agree with you. Great comment and pretty much sums up my feelings on these new requirements that the retina devices bring.
Ryan hit it bang on. Great comment!!
Well, you don’t have to use images only. Many webdesigners often use images when they can achieve the same result or better with css3 or svg – both work on retina-devices. For older browsers, the webdesigner uses fallback-images. They don’t have to be retina-optimized because the older browsers, which don’t support css3, svg, etc., are likely installed on a non-retina device, I suppose. The few cases, in which you really rely on images, can be optimized, I think.
You don´t have to put down all that work you talk about..
Just, when you´re in the making, make one image like you use to, and make one that is -x2 and you´re done!
Check out my solution:
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina
The script simply grabs an -x2 image if there is one by the same name and fix the CSS.
Done! =)
Files:
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina/index.html – the html code
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina/jquery.js – the jquery.min library
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina/retina.js – the script that takes care of everything
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina/500×500.jpg – the ordinary image
http://ww.peterohlsson.com/retina/500×500-x2.jpg – the -x2 image
Yeah I feel the same, I have recently been creating all my icons using css3 but now having problems with mobile display…
How does the display work when you’re working in Photoshop or other graphics program? I can’t wrap my head around doing pixel-level editing on a 2x display. I’m assuming Photoshop is certainly not Retina-optimized, so are pixel boundaries still sharp and easy to work with?
Non retina-optimized apps look as they did before, its just that you now notice how bad they look. There are no pixel boundaries anymore
What I’m doing with Photoshop/Lightroom/InDesign is using the largest resolution where the pixellation is minimized, then you have a giant, smooth image to work with. It’s not like I really need to “read” the Photoshop menus anymore ;-)
That screen is the “demon”: one look at it and you can never look at any other screen again!
BTW: The Adobe Lightroom 4.2 Release Candidate out today includes Retina Support.
Adobe Illustrator CS6 (creative cloud edition) released today also supports Retina Displays. So a Photoshop Retina update can’t be far behind.
My experiences:
First off, it’s fast. It’s the first machine I’ve ever had that I really, finally fully satisfied with the speed. There’s no lag anywhere. The only time I’ve ever experienced a slowdown is when an App is breaking (Chrome Canary Web Tools, Dropbox Indexing). Other than that, everything is blazingly quick.
The Retina Display is nice. I only wish it was optimized to be “retina” at 1680×1050. But beggar’s can’t be choosers. Maybe in 2013 this’ll be an option.
As far as website images looking like crap: I don’t notice it too much unless it’s a logo. Sharp transitions in colors within logos make it very obvious which ones are Retina and which ones aren’t. Photographs are harder to tell the difference since photographs have so many different focal variations anyway. However, once they are optimized they definitely make me go “wow.”
As a web developer, I’ll implement double-width / double-height (@2x) logos and use CSS/HTML to size them correctly. If the logos are optimized PNGs anyway, the size hit won’t be very bad but the net result will be worth it.
Adapting larger photos will be a more substantial undertaking and will need some nice JS polyfills or CSS Media Queries for responsive images.
Totally agree with you comment man, I just finished a webapp for two guys who loves mac. How I will tell them that they need to pay me more because Apple improve their monitors??, they would think that I want to just sell more. Beside I need to buy a new computer in a couples months wtf!!!!
Nice. This came just in time to get me more excited. Work bought me one and it gets here in a few days.
I was thinking about some of this lately as well, especially the Twitter app dilemma.
And the more important stuff of course, like responsive image solutions.
I would be very curious to hear peoples experience with Photoshop and Illustrator. How is the speed of the machine in PS with a very large amount of layers? Is it workable on the retina display or do you prefer an attached monitor?
There you are: retina icons for the dropbox app: http://cl.ly/IoRm
Hey Chris,
Which processor did you go with?
breaking out of normal density resolutions and silent marketing it as the future of modern web-design (web-development) is not necessary best practice, nor is it a new standard at any kind to say this first. when rereading this article, it feels like besides the non display hardware, nothing works it should be. at least not for the moment…
Thank you Chris!
Thank you for this post! Real quick question – has anyone found a website and/or app that “mimics” what a website you input into looks like on a retina display? I’m not likely to be splurging for a retina display in the next couple months, but I would like to start keeping an eye on such design items now. Thanks to anyone with ideas!
Zoom to 200%.
I had upgraded about 3 weeks ago, but finally got to transfer all files from my old pro to the retina this weekend. Ditto on Chris’ configuration and his thoughts. A pure joy to work on, super fast, super slick. No major issues so far. The biggest I have right now is with some of the migration. Of course 10.8.1 was released about 4 hours after I migrated….
Just to update my status on this. Not a Retina issue, but will say that there are serious issues with Mt Lion and the wifi (threads abound) and Time Machine as well. Slow doesn’t describe it. I have updated to 10.8.1 and it actually made it worse.
I know that isn’t a Retina issue per say, but the OS is tied to it, so I feel justified in lumping that in with my glowing praise of the Retina as a machine. The old machine hums along very nicely without Mt Lion.
Anyone else notice this? An FYI if not.
Normal displays look ok already. This is adding too much unnecessary work for webdevs. Some Apple innovations are not that good.
Yeah, and tube TV’s looked “OK” but I bet you have an HDTV in your home? Progress, perhaps? What about a 21.1MP camera like Canon 5D mkii? I remember when 8MP was like “Wow, how will we ever top that?!”. Same with hard drives… my first windows machine had a 3GB hard disk, and I just never imagined it’d get any bigger, let alone super fast like ssd’s are now. Stop whining… or get out of the web design game. Having said that I DO agree with what Ryan said above…
Hi Chris,
Is there an easy fix such as…. just spekaing out loud, increasing the resolution of standard web images from 72 to a higher number?
seems to me like the most popular approach is similar to preping up images for Android, so cutting for different sizes and let the code read the device and pull accordingly.
Josh A.
Long time fan of css-tricks :-)
Does this mean we will finally be seeing .svg being used for web based content more often now? Finally learning Illustrator pays off.
I hope so.
The main selling point of this laptop is supposed to be the retina display, but then you say “For now I mostly work with an attached Cinema Display.” To me this means that this laptop might be a cool device, but as a productivity tool it actually failed.
What is best for productivity is a nice large monitor and a good keyboard and mouse. And if you are going to have those then you might as well get a good desktop which can give you the power of the Retina MacBook for a fraction of the price. I understand that this might not be an option for some people who often work from multiple places, but such arrangements are a compromise, not the ideal.
So if the Retina Display is not good enough for productivity, and you are only going to use the display for other non-productive purposes, then you might as well just get an iPad 3 for $500 to satisfy your urge of looking at a small high pixel density display.
I think getting a Retina Display now is the worst time to have one, they’re not ready yet for the Web and the Web is not ready for them. Happily, this will change soon.
Adrian,
I totally had this viewpoint. I got my Retina MBP 3 days ago as a bonus for finishing a job ahead of schedule (otherwise I would never have paid for one).
As a programmer, I didn’t think the screen would make any difference one way or another. In fact I was worried about how bad all of the non-retina ready stuff would look. But even non-retina stuff looks good enough.
The speed though, is more than worth it. The size is perfect. I do use a 24″ external monitor, but the Retina screen is big enough for most stuff and it actually feels lighter than my 13″ MBP.
I can absolutely say I am impressed and very happy with it.
Moved from a
13″ MBP
2.26 Dual-core
8GB RAM
160GB 5400RPM HD
To a
15″ Retina MBP
2.6 Quad-Core
16GB RAM
256GB SSD HD
I think i am not invited to retina party because if you convert to our currency it’s gonna be
I need a contact lenses to make my old eye retina powerfull.
Who affords :)
Hi chris,
can you tell me if css-tricks is retinafied ??
I can’t check it out because i have no retina display ??
The v10 redesign will be
Great …
You summed up everything that I think about this computer in this article. I love my MBP to death. So fast.
I guess watching youtube on retina must a poor experience
What do you think about upgradeability, Chris? As far as I heard, RAM and Harddrive are glued to the aluminum. When you outgrow this hard drive, for example, will you have to buy a new computer again?
Wow – the iBots are all over this, aren’t they?
Why not buy a PC, and have the freedom to upgrade parts without spending $1,999 every time you fancy a slightly bigger drive, or a smidgen more RAM, or even a faster processor? Or maybe you like throwing money away. I don’t know.
Become a serious computer user, then your reviews would be worth reading.
How an Apple user can review a computer, is beyond me.
I tip my hat to you, Sir
As a web designer I am no more interested in playing with the internals of my computer than I am changing the internals of my cell phone or my car. Like Chris I just want to buy a machine that works out of the box.
Sadly, the trash that Microsoft calls Windows 7 simply does not deliver this experience, I pay the Apple premium because as a serious professionally user I need my equipment to be reliable. If a better alternative came to market I would dump Apple in a heartbeat.
I have owned both Windows and Mac machines over the years and I have found that Apple devices simply get the job done. The operating system is more users friendly so I am more productive. When a problem arises fixing it is much easier. Furthermore the hardware seems to last longer. I still have a Mac tower from the mid 90s running OS9 that I play around on sometimes for fun. Still works great. I also have an iMac G5, works like it is brand new. In fact the only apple computer I have ever had die on me was a macbook that I accidently dumped a pot of tea on. I feel lucky if one of my windows boxes lasts more than a couple years.
For people that like tinkering and customizing their devices by learning how they work, Windows is sufficient I suppose, although I would argue Ubuntu is better, but for a serious professional that wants to minimize downtime and maximize productivity OS X is the clear and obvious choice. Also if you like screwing with your internals Apple does sell a tower for that type of user.
@Ryan it’s great that you find a mac useful but don’t trash other OSs. Windows 7 works just fine out of the box. Removing parts (like replacing battery on a long trip) is a good thing. Adding RAM is a good thing. So is changing your video card. You can upgrade your computer for 200 not 2000 after a few years.
And your a web dev, you work in a browser with a texteditor. Your OS makes no difference to your productivity. Your apps do.
So stop being ignorant by saying it just works….
@Ryan
“The operating system is more users friendly so I am more productive. ”
Try creating a new file in Finder.
P.S.: My primary computer now is a Mac. I just find it ridiculous that there was no cut/copy/paste in Finder till recently and there’s still no way to create a new blank file!
@Will I only took a harsh tone in response to his troll like comment. Also my focus isn’t in a text editor. I am a designer, I work in graphics applications. That said, I put in about 6 hours on a Windows 7 box per day and another 8 or so on mac because of requirements by my employer. (Same applications) I usually accomplish about 1.5-2x more per hour on the mac than the windows box. It actually amazes me, the windows machine has better specs too. I just end up getting bogged down by Window 7’s myriad of bugs and poor user flows.
And it does just work. I’m no IT guy and have been using Mac for since OS7, I rarely if ever have issues and when I do the solution is always intuitive. Never so simple on windows.
@Sridhar
I don’t think I have ever had the need to just create a new empty file in the finder. Generally, when I am creating a new file it is because I have something that needs to go within it which means I just make the file in it’s respective application. Plus I rarely need to cut and paste in the finder. The hold command to duplicate has been around for ages. One thing that does drive me batty though on the windows side of things is lack of a UI similar to column view so I can move things around easily without having to open a second window.
Fuck Apple, Fuck Mac and Fuck Retina. I will never design for that sh*t. Windows and Android until I die, bitches!
1. Tech is moving forward guys! HiRes-Retina will be standard in a couple of years. Software and UI-Elements will have to adjust to that.
2. What I don’t understand is why they glue the components to each other. That’s really not professional.
OFFTOPIC: This has got to be by far one of the most hilarious comments I’ve read in a very, very long time.
Absolutely memorable.
RELOL.
After using Retina when I look at my women is she going to look ugly? Or if I look at the flower or tree are the going to be blured?
So Retina is the way that the pictures that look good now look bad? And now we need 1000px photo to show it at 500px?
I think I’ll give up on (web) design and go planting tomatoes.
:D
Interesting article Chris. I envy the retina displays as much as the next tech nerd, but what are your thoughts on the fact that this is Apple’s least serviceable device to-date? Like many of their upcoming products, more and more components are soldered together permanently requiring users to completely replace entire systems rather than smaller parts.
I’m sure there are a lot of engineering reasons behind the choices, but both ethically and environmentally I think it’s shaky ground. Not that there’s much out there that can affect a behemoth like Apple, but if we buy into this we’re essentially giving a consumer thumbs up for products with a very blatant expiration date. Great for their bottom line, but not so much for us :(
Love your writing as always. Best of luck!
It’s nice to read a well reasoned and thoughtful comment.
Whilst you could argue that a 16GB i7 quad core machine isn’t going to become obsolete any time soon (how many here are still running Core 2 Duo or even AMD processors?), it’s probably true that component failure will lead to expensive replacement costs. I’m thinking about batteries and even RAM here (yes it does fail sometimes).
But then you could buy Apple care.
Every ounce of my heart wants one, but every little bit of my brain tells me I’m stupid for even considering it. My laptop cost £600 new and does over 10 hours most days.
Very nice, but in my mind, working on a Mac is a mistake. I know that Apple has done a great job marketing to the design industry, making them believe it’s an absolute necessity of the job – but it’s not. In fact, it’s a hindrance.
Having a computer like this is a bit like having a Lamborghini in the USA. It’s got the capacity to drive 200+ mph – but no place to drive that speed (legally).
Macs make up 7.5% of the web browsing world. Which means when you develop on one – seeing a web page in all it’s Italian sportscar-worthy glory, you see it as only a minority of the population does. While the rest of the world sees it….like the 92.5%.
Design and web development are about communication. When you develop a site – ostensibly for a client – you develop for the client’s customers, not for yourself. If you design for 8% of the population, you are saying that your client should be ignoring the 92% potential customer base, in favor of the few that have the same computer you have. ….seriously?
I am surprised at the talk about how fast it is, and not worrying about how many programs you have open. Photoshop loads in 15.94 seconds. I timed it – just for this comment. I can survive 16 seconds. I don’t have many life threatening Photoshop emergencies that can’t wait 20 seconds. Photoshop runs along side 3DS Max and Illustrator, with Aion running in the background in windowed mode…a 13 GB video game that’s incredibly intensive on video, if you’re not familiar with Aion.
And all these are running perfectly smoothly on a $400 Acer laptop I bought at Walmart back in May (2012). I did spend $49 and upgrade from 4GB of RAM to 8GB, but other than that, no modifications. If I wanted Photoshop to load instantly, I could swap out the hard drive for a SSD, but again, I am not in such a state that I need Photoshop open in .0281 seconds.
And in saving $2,000 I get to work in an environment that lets me see the web the way the users I develop for see it – and that’s what really matters.
Every webpage has to be fast, Mark. And if you develop it the right way, it will be that on every device: on your walmart laptop and on the slowest smartphone. css-tricks.com runs fast on every device and other websites developed on a mac will run just as fast on your walmart machine as on Chris’ Mac. Web-Speed does not only depend on your machine. Just for those who can afford it, it is an extra-pleasure.
My Mac laptop is a 2010 version of the pro-version and I’m glad the components aren’t glued to the inside. In a few years I might do some upgrades. I’m lucky because I didn’t have to pay it myself but I know that a mac is a wonderful machine and I will have it as long as possible. I don’t understand why one has to be on the newest version of everything. I’m not the grand-daddy who says that: I’m seventeen! You don’t have to have the newest hardware to develop for the web, Chris! Did you buy that with the money you got from kickstarter? Glad I didn’t contributed.
Anyways: Be happy with your Mac, Chris, and hopefully it will serve you a long time.
I doubt he was talking about speed in his dev concern. He was saying you are looking at how the site will look to the minority. I don’t think that it matters what you develop on as long as you are testing on Windows machines as well.
I personally prefer Windows software over OSX in development myself, although people are starting to develop applications only for Mac that would be helpful. I can’t work without my snap
Remember that a lot of windows market share is still driven by big american corporations employing thousands with cheap windows towers. In the consumer sector Mac is making significant gains. It just depends on who your market is. If you are building B2B websites, retina is probably a waste of time. If you are building websites targeted at 20 year old students you absolutely need to support mac.
On most sites I am paid to manage OSX is coming in at about 20% of the desktop traffic. (They are more consumer oriented sites)
If you go by Google’s stats about 30% of the world is on the web. Which is about 2.3 billion people. 7.5% of 2.3 billion is 150 million people. That is a heck of a lot of macs. ;)
Granted most don’t use retina macbook pros but it is important to think in terms of the lifespan of a web property when building it. If I create a site that likely will stay live for 2-3 years before a major redesign I should be looking forward to what technology likely will be like 2-3 years from now and make sure that I do what I can to maximize compatibility going forward and to be honest, 3 years from now I expect high density displays to be common for both Windows and Apple users.
Also consider that retina is not exclusive to a single desktop computer. Both of Apple’s mobile devices also offer retina displays and those devices have excellent market share.
I think, that it is your excuse for buying something new. :P
Can I use this list to try to convince my wife that I need one?
” I’ve had no problems with crashing, overheating, fans going crazy, not waking up from sleep, nothing.”
I’m glad you mention these issues. It’s nice to see a reputable person admit in front of other Mac users (and the world for that matter) that Macs DO crash, DO overheat, DO have components that go crazy, DO NOT wake up from sleep.
Ironically I’ve never needed to work on Macs and I’ve worked in the printing industry, advertising agency industry and now I’m a Web Designer, but I’ve always heard many Mac lovers, if not all of them, say Mac is absolutely flawless and built with ungodly reliable technology. That’s not the case, read above if you missed it.
I’ve built all my computers myself and after finally UNDERSTANDING the technologies (video, RAM, processors, motherboards, bridges, ports types, cooling systems, etc., etc., etc.) many years ago, I know that all those assumptions are only insecurities from Mac lovers.
Macs and PCs (well both are PC’s technically speaking) haven been leveled for years now already: Macs ARE NOT better than PCs anymore FFS.
HOWEVER, I really like Apple and their products because they’re always innovating and pushing the envelope in many, many fields. “Retina” displays (stupid word for “more resolution”) are a great example… they are making our Web Design lives a living bandwidth/responsive layouts hell, but WTF cares, it’s part of the job, man up.
In all of this, Mac or PC laptops, there should be a laptop product that you could actually build yourself, just like you build a desktop machine: choose your chassis, mobo, processor, RAM, HDD type, video, screen, etc.
I don’t think there’s anything like that out there, at least I haven’t heard/read anything about it :p
Agreed. But nothing beeds the touchpads on the Apple laptops. The multi-touch and gestures are better than any other laptop I have used. Desktop wise I see no benefit of Apple over Ubuntu though unless you need specific Mac software
And also, there’s isn’t a benefit of Apple over ‘PC’, unless you need specific Mac software as you said.
Agree, the touchpads on Mac are incredibly usable. However, designing on a laptop screen with a touchpad (Mac or PC), you gotta be on a plane or in an urgent situation of trying to fix the broken company’s website or a client’s “About Us” section.
*Yeah, it sucks that you can’t edit your posts.
*beats
I’m waiting for the new iMac’s. Hopefully some are out by the end of the year, if not then I’ll be getting a Retina Macbook
I am still using my old Mac Book and i dont know when i will go for the Retina MacBook!!
I agree the screen is amazing, especially for displaying photographs, but the fact that the vast majority of the web is much lower resolution makes it a non-starter for professional work for me at the moment. But it’s definitely the shape of things to come.
Am currently using an iMac and a new MacBook Air, which is great.
Agreed. Best laptop I’ve ever purchased. Love it. I was a little worried the glare on the screen would give me headaches. I’ve always owned a matte screen just because I used to get headaches on my old iMac. No problems so far.
From an entertainment perspective: Skyrim runs 40-60FPS with almost everything set to ULTRA. Battlefield 3 runs 35-45FPS with almost everything set to high. Runs 60FPS with everything on medium.
I wonder how long until we have a new image type. Serving large graphics or vector images don’t seem to be a big problem. Using SVG or text as icons works well.
But actual photos, or photoshop designed graphics need a new image type.
Ya good point. It would be interesting to see a new web graphic standard that can support more than one pixel density within it and that only the required resolution is downloaded for display. (sorta like icon files)
Exactly. But I cannot imagine that coming anytime soon. It will probably take some time before retina displays on laptops / desktops become a standard.
Bought a Mac book Pro last year because I was tired of windblows 7. Much to my surprise it did crash often but crashed quietly. The programs would just disappear! No warning, no nothing!
I thought it was that unit, so I took it back and got another one. Same problems. I returned it and got a refund.
So I am back at my old windblows and through the many updates from microstuff, it now doesn’t crash anymore.
The lesson I took from that experience, told me that like new cars, new computers have defects in their designs or OS and I wouldn’t buy them if they JUST came out. I’ll give it a year or two and let them work out the kinks before buying. Remember the iphone4 with the antenna problem?
If I get some bucks, I will buy the new mac with retina next year. By that time, I am sure they’ve worked out the bugs in the OS and maybe some H/W bugs.
To be honest, like so many commented already, I don’t see how I can easily justify to my clients the extra bucks for the extra work. It’s bad enough that I have 3 versions of CSS to choose from a media query. Majority of people don’t even have 1080 and most websites would look like crap when viewed on a retina display. But I too love gadgets and suffer from the “gotta have one” syndrome.
Although keep up with tech saviness is a pain and a lot of work there is a good side. The hardware of the past becomes cheaper. I was reading one comment that somebody mentioned how the iPad 2 was perfectly fine when it came to viewing the web and video, so the need to jump to retina was in some ways a snob move (my feelings). However, I can now purchase various products at a reasonable price because it isn’t the “new hottness” and still provides a superb product.
With great power comes great responsibilities… maybe Apple should solve our problems.
Hello guys,
Many people doesn’t like to experiment with new things. They want to do the things the old way. Same thing is here with majority of people who share the opinion that “retina” kinda sucks.
I’m a PC user and I have never used MAC.
But honestly, retina will become something like LCD TV’s are today. Our web is now kinda like CRT TV, it’s good, but LCD came out, and it’s awesome but you don’t have the digital signal yet. So the picture is still bad. Time will pass, retina will be more user-friendly and eventually, we’re gonna get used to it. By then, web designers will have to work a little bit harder to satisfy the needs of retina display users, just like they are doing everything they can to make website look good on old, obsolete web browser such as IE 6,7 and 8.
Be a man, and do the job. Cheers.
Sounds like in a nutshell it’s pushing boundaries but it’s still mostly a toy. Stuff needs to catch up, and in the mean time there’s just a lot of pain in your butt to deal with.
OS X on and solid state drive is truly a dream. This is probably the single best performance upgrade any power user treat themselves to. That’s the speed thing you’re noticing on the new Retina, but it’s totally something you could have had on your non-Retina MacBook Pro.
Thunderbolt density is really, really nice I think and doesn’t have any of the display issues you mentioned.
I’m still holding me away from the Macbook Retina… This seems to be so overpriced. I have a MacBook Pro Early 2011 and I seriously see no reason for me to switch, it’s so overrated, since I use an external screen anyways and just retina, just for travelling?
One of the upsides the new RetinaBook has the SSD Drive which can be built in, but guess what? There are ssd drives available for the others as well, that you can build into them. Apple also offers Macbooks with 8 gb of ram (max), guess what. You can push it to 16 gb without ruining your apple care or w/e.
The performance might be a bit better, I myself got an early 2011 mbp (as written above) with the following spec:
– Intel i7 2,2 Ghz
– 8 GB Ram
– 750 GB HDD
And I will order the ssd drive and 16gb ram this week and if I calculate everything together I will have a better mac as the ones from apple.
But besides all the apple Macbook things and equipment. Seriously. Get a Lenovo thinkpad if you want power. At my work they are working with machines that are below the price of mbp and are so much faster.
Got a 3rd generation i7, 2,7 ghz. 32 GB of Ram and 2 harddrives. 1 of them is ssd…
They are definitely not the best looking laptops, but the power and the screens? Oh my god, I love it!
so, let’s ask the REAL question: does it run diablo 3 on full settings smoothly???
Has anyone posted anything on Adobe Indesign and the incompatibility with the MacBook Pro Retina Display. What should I do, return new Retina and get regular MacBook Pro, or wait it out. Not seeing much from Adobe about dealing with Indesign specifically.