I am a first time Apple buyer and I love this machine. It was fast to set up, intuitive features and layout. The Retina Display is crisp and easy to use, the keyboard has a great feel to it, the construction is great, and the machine it self if very responsive. The battery life is actually a little more than 7 hours with the SSD hard drive I average about 7.5 to 8 hours on a normal day.The only thing to be careful of it the display there are two manufactures for the display, LG and Samsung. The LG display has an image retention problem, while the Samsung display does not. But there is no way to guarantee which machine you are going to get. But Apple will replace the machine if you do get an image retention problem.
WHAT'S GREAT (and a few tips):
* High resolution screen. In normal mode, you get crisp letters and pictures, and adequate screen real estate for most tasks. When in scaled mode, you get the equivalent of a 1900x1200 display, great for doing certain tasks like programming or using applications not yet written for the retina display.
* Solid state drive. The integrated solid state drive is amazingly fast, and uses a 6 GB/s SATA connection right on the motherboard. It also allows for the incredibly thin form factor. I'm not sure, but it seems faster than normal solid state drives. The lack of a cabled connection shouldn't matter noticeably, so maybe it's just my imagination. Either way, it's really nice to not have a spinning drive, and liberating to use a laptop without having to constantly worry about how much you're moving the computer and wondering if you're going to damage the drive.
By the way HERE IS HOW TO PICK OUT THE RIGHT SIZE DRIVE: Spend a lot of time figuring out what kinds of things you're going to do, and how much disk space your media will take up, and how those needs are going to grow in the three to four years you own the computer. And then just order the largest drive available. Trust me, you'll thank me later. The integrated solid state drives on these Retina MacBooks can NOT be upgraded later, so it's better to have too much and not need it then have too little and regret it. Even if you never come all that close to filling it, you'll have a faster computer than can do a better job keeping the drive defragmented and you won't ever have to worry about wearing out the solid state drive (they have only so many erase cycles they can handle and this gets exacerbated if you keep the drive close to full and things fragment).
* The OS. This isn't going to matter if you're already a Mac user, but OS X is really starting to hit its stride. I'll be the first to say it was not a great OS for a long time, and was slower and less reliable than Windows. However, it's really come into its own with 10.7 and 10.8. The full screen mode is a great way to reduce screen clutter and the tyranny of resizing and arranging windows, and yet is evolutionary and fits in with existing applications well, unlike the revolutionary and ill-fitting "start screen" of Windows 8. As much as I like what they are trying to do with Windows 8, right now it's a very messy OS that feels like two operating systems competing with each other. The Mac just seems more elegant and well-designed, Windows 8 feels like the middle of an awkward transition.
* It's light. Ridiculously light. If it were any lighter, it would start to feel "cheap".
WHAT'S BAD (and a few rants):
* No power or battery indicators! What the heck is Apple thinking? This is supposed to be a "professional" level computer and they screw us out of a battery or power indicator! These used to be on all MacBook Pros. Is there a level above Pro I don't know about? Sometimes it's nice to know if your computer is off or just asleep, and it's ALWAYS nice to be able to see how much charge the computer has without having to turn it on or wake it up.
* The screen isn't terribly bright. It's generally not a problem, but in a room with bright sunlight, the screen can be hard to see. Evidently the retina MacBooks suffer from the same problem the retina iPads initially did, which was that the pixel density resulted in a screen that transmits much less of the backlight than a standard resolution screen.
* The iSight camera is terrible. They call it upgraded, but I'm not sure what camera is worse than this. It's noisy, has terrible low-light performance, and if it's HD, I'm not sure where they are getting the pixels from. The driver also isn't smart enough to figure out how to expose for a central subject, so if you try to do a video chat near a window, the person on the other end will get a great picture of what's outside of your window, with your pitch black silhouette just there to just add drama, I suppose. Again, what is wrong with Apple that my iPhone has a better camera than my $3000 computer?
All in all, though, I'm very happy with the machine and very glad I purchased it. If they didn't cheese off on some of the components above, it would be an easy five stars.
Buy Apple MacBook Pro ME664LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) Now
Purchased through Apple directly to get the corporate discount, since my state charges tax on Amazon purchases anyway. I've had a number of Apple laptops over the years, and (not surprisingly) this one is the best. It is slim, speedy and well constructed. No image retention problems that I've seen. Resolutions at 1440x900, 1680X1050 and 1920X1080 all look fantastic, allowing you to choose between more display space (with a little interface lag) and a standard amount of display space (with no lag). Text is crisp at all resolutions. I noticed at first that the fans were spinning up with some regularity, but since a recent firmware update I haven't noticed them once. To be honest, I just haven't seen the variety of problems mentioned in another review.I can absolutely recommend this machine to anyone who wants or needs a prosumer level laptop. For home use, a Macbook Air is probably a better bet...its lighter and substantially less expensive. Just don't look at the retina MBP's display, because you WILL want it!I am a first time Mac user and I must say this machine kicks ass. I mean literally this Mac just leaves even the most flashy ultra books far far behind in the rear view. I have always had a love hate relationship with Apple products. Something like an Average looking guy would feel towards a handsome hunk in school, just wondering how and why females drool over him, what does he have other than a face like a Greek god and hair like strands of gold. But the biggest irony follows when you find out that the hunk is a really nice, fun guy to be with and u become best friends the first time you get to know each other. That is exactly what happened within the first 10 mins after I put this machine on. This mac is my new best friend. And also this is a gift from my wife so this makes it even more special. To the ones who are still trying to make a decision between This model and the one with a 5400 rpm hard drive, I would recommend just spend an extra $300 and get this one with an SSD. This one is an entirely different animal. The transfer speeds are phenomenal and multitasking is just a breeze.
Want Apple MacBook Pro ME664LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) Discount?
I replace my MacBooks roughly every three years and it has been apparent for a few months now that it needed to be done. This was a big upgrade from my last Mac with a bigger screen and hugely improved functionality.I spend quite a lot of time on my laptop each day doing various tasks which include reading articles, books and blogs as well as photo editing for my shop and watching movies. I do play a bit of one video game as well. This laptop is amazing. The reduced eyestrain was evident after only a few hours. I find myself wanting to use the laptop over my mini ipad (but once the retina screen is available on that I will get it!).
The detail in watching a very vivid TV show such as Defiance is brilliant. You can see so much more of the background action and it actually made me pause several times to marvel at the surroundings to the plot.
Reading books on this screen is easy and reading articles an being able to click links back and forth without eye strain from changing visuals is fabulous.
The one game that I do play, World of Warcraft, runs smoothly and there is quite a bit more detail in the background. I actually think I might have to turn the graphics down a bit because there seems almost to be too much information for my brain to handle.
The various programs I use are running very smoothly and it was a matter of an hour or so to finalize the update process once I received the laptop and get everything running.
I was a bit surprised to find no DVD drive (didn't actually even think to check this when I purchased) but honestly I watch a DVD movie only rarely and it will be easy enough to purchase a separate drive. The world seems to be moving towards digital download anyway so I'll probably replace most of my DVD collection in time.
Overall I am extremely pleased with my purchase and only wish I had done it sooner.
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