Next Generation MacBook Pro

Ultra thin, but Pro.

Retina 15.4" 2880x1800 (5 Megapixel)
4.46 lbs

The 220 ppi is near-perfect for a laptop IMO, because if you can effectively run Lion at the equivalent of 110 ppi, which is great. Lion is not truly resolution independent, so in this context, 110 is great.

No mention of a 13" next generation Pro. That's what I want: 13.3" at 2560x1600.

Max SSD 768 GB.
USB 3 as expected, and 2 x Thunderbolt which is nice.

But it also gets an HDMI port. Sweet.

Looks a nice piece of kit. Awaits price...

Price is quite high - $2200 in the US. They're sucking the early adopters dry with this one. I'm sure the price will drop in the future though, like it did with the Air.

$2199, same as the new top model Pro 15". So do you want a retina screen or optical and hard drives?

Wow. That's pretty crazy.

It appears this model replaces the 17" MBP, which is now gone forever:
Apple Quietly Kills The 17-inch MacBook Pro | TechCrunch

So, if your MacBook Pro with Retina Display comes with a dead pixel, can you even notice it ?

Finally dumped Firewire, too bad they dropped Gigabit too (and didn't even add 801.ac). Dongle to carry.

Also you'll probably be carrying a Magsafe to Magsafe 2 adapter.

Probably; certainly if it's stuck instead of dead.

Bums me that they killed the 17" size. It is a superior size for real productivity in the field.

Not sure I like the idea of internal flash (not upgradable) for a pro machine. I agree, pretty expensive but nice overall though.

That machine is going to fly in comparison to my 17" model with 5,400 RPM drive. Amazingly thin, I'm glad they finally went and made a next-gen model. The screen looks phenomenal.

Still glad I bought this MacBook Pro 17" last year though… I'm sticking to my word and keeping this for the next 4 years.

I use the Gigabit Ethernet jack on my MacBook Pro relatively frequently. It makes a big difference for transferring large video files, and it comes in useful when I'm testing my own Ethernet jacks around the house.

However, I wouldn't really miss it on a new laptop, since I'd just spend the $30 for the Thunderbolt to Ethernet dongle.

It's disappointing the machine didn't get 802.11ac though. I thought Apple would keep the GigE port in place until 802.11ac landed.

BTW, someone gave me one of those existing USB to Ethernet dongles, but it's kind of superfluous as I don't have an Air, and it's only 100 BaseT, not GigE.

Just stick an SSD in your 17". And if a 256 GB SSD isn't big enough, and a 512 GB SSD is too expensive, then get a 750 GB hybrid drive. It has 8 GB of flash memory built-in, which is enough to store the most important files of the OS and installed software, so your machine in a lot of usage will feel nearly as fast as an SSD.

Stop waiting around for a 5400RPM drive in your 2011 performance laptop. Good 512GB SSDs run $400. You'll thank yourself every day.

The hybrid drives are shit and nowhere near as effective in the real world as they can appear in a benchmark. Pull up your Aperture library and waaaaaaaaaait. Fire up Final Cut and waaaaaaaaaaait.

I'll be interested to see what form factor those retina MBP SSDs are. Looks like the logic board might be the same as the old style ones.

Well, I don't use Aperture or Final Cut on my MacBook Pro, so that's irrelevant to me. We don't know if Kenna uses either. If budget is an issue, the hybrid drives can add a significant boost to OS type usage for two reasons:

1) 7200 rpm drive
2) 8 GB flash built-in

What you get is a 750 GB hard drive for half the price of a 256 GB SSD.

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/599...20PM_575px.png

The MBP: TNG defaults to 1440x900 as you can see, which IMO is the best ppi (110), and the only one that wouldn't be blurry. The resolutions are:

1024 x 640
1280 x 800
1440 x 900
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1200

Note that the 2880x1800 rez isn't actually available. (Text would be impossible to read, and it'd probably be tough on the GPU too.)

Absolutely. HDDs for boot drives are defunct, end of story.

And it is not just about FCP or whatever, every app and the OS have superior performance when an SSD is used for boot.

Hybrid drives work perfectly as boot drives. Boot speed and OS navigation is exactly what they're made for. Business applications would also usually be fine. What they suck at is stuff like Aperture.

I guess that depends on your use case. I bought one for my father to put in his old laptop, and he is very impressed.

Although we don't know for sure yet what processors are in each new Ivy Bridge MacBook, these would be my guesses:

MBP 15" (base) i7-3610QM
MBP 15" (upgrade) i7-3720QM
MBP 13" (base) i5-3210M
MBP 13" (upgrade) i5-3525M
Air 11" i5-3317U
Air 13" i5-3427U

Does this make sense? Does anyone know that any of these are not right. We don't know benchmarks on the new 13" processors but the two I've listed for the 15" are very fast. The 11" Air is very slow and the 13" Air, not too bad.

In Anand's testing, 2880*1800 is available to games. Also, when selecting 1920*1200, the GPU is actually rendering it at a stunning 3860*2400 and then scaling that to 2880*1800. I think Apple hid it in System Preferences for text size reasons only.

I don't think the 11" Air is very slow. With turbo, it's a 300 MHz boost from the last generation, and the BTO model turbos all the way up to 3.2 GHz.

Are the Air CPUs still low power ULV versions or full fat? I don't know what i5-3317U and i5-3427U means in Intel-speak.

They are low-power ULV versions. The "U" in the model number gives it away, but more generally anything where the model number ends in 7 is supposed to be ULV. It doesn't mean a lot, though - in general the ULV chips have a lower base clock and a higher turbo than other dualcores, but that's about it.

Yeah, I just saw his update about games. However, judging by his numbers, 2880x1800 is effectively unusable with modern games, because the frame rates are so low.

So it seems Apple won't expose the OS to regular 2880x1800 usage in terms of the OS interface, but will for specific apps. So, I wonder how that's done, say in Final Cut Pro X.

No IR remote sensor on the New MBP - Retina Display MacBook Pro lacks IR sensor, is Apple offing the remote? -- Engadget
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget....1339496452.jpg
So its iPhone app or get up and press the button now

I don't think I've ever used a remote on my MBP, except for testing purposes. Given there's other solutions, I'm surprised they've kept the IR sensor this long.

Looking at that picture now, it's also missing out on a sleep light.

I have no idea how to accomplish this…??? I would opt for the 512 GB SSD, but I'd really like to have 1024GB SSD when that finally arrives at an affordable price and make do with the 5,400RPM drive for now… the space is important to me as I have a huge iTunes library…(120GB), I'm obsessed with housing as much music in my Notebook as it's my 'Desktop' replacement and much of my music was burnt at 320kbps. When you add my iPad and iPhone apps that amount up to 100GB or so, that's already 240GB and we've not even started on video/photos. My hard drive currently uses 400GB of the 750GB (or less in real-world usage).

After buying Final Cut Pro X this week though (I've just ventured into video editing more 'professionally' after buying a camcorder recently for the first time), I've realised the urgent need for an external drive with fast i/o (if that's the correct term). I really want a SSD external with Thunderbolt… but for 256GB it's like £600. :hmm: So I'm tempted with an SSD with FireWire 800… but then I don't know how many of these there are to choose from… if any. I was going to make a thread asking for an external for Final Cut Pro X. I want a blazingly fast solution as I've invested a lot into having a 17" MacBook Pro - took a lot of saving. Also, an SSD will be reusable for years and much more reliable than a 7,200RPM with Firewire - so that's why an SSD external is my preference. I don't want to invest for a failed drive.

I know… it's really tempting after the persuasion I'm receiving here… I have a MacBook Air 2011 and that boots so much faster than my 17" Pro… it puts it to shame.

See my reply to Eug above though. I would like to wait… if I can. I currently have 400GBs stored on my Pro.

By the way, I use both Aperture (I’ve been into photography for two years or so as an amateur with DSLR), Photoshop (less so, but for some work purposes (teacher)) and I’ve just started with Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 (going to Canada in the summer and want to cut a great video with footage from new camcorder).

Don’t want to de-rail the thread though.

This sucks. I use a remote every time I do an assembly with Keynote to my school or when being observed in class. It was my biggest disappointment with the Air as no iPhone app is as good as the physical remote, in real-world usage, from my perspective. When teaching, it's nigh on impossible to look at another screen to sort out the presentation, swiping just isn't as reliable and when you're concentrating on controlling 30 pupils (in class) or over 200 (assembly), this just isn't the solution for me and many others who would have similar issues.

Bluetooth Remote to follow???

The instructions for the drive replacement are right on Apple's website. Or you can go to iFixit as they likely have a video for it too. It's really quite easy.

Sleep light might be carved in a way that's unnoticeable, like the one on the BT keyboard.

Why yes !!, so I could actually have a remote for my Mac Pro. :thumbsup:

I'll take a look, thanks :thumbsup:

I've been searching, but as someone who has never messed with computer components before, I have no idea whether what I'm reading is worthwhile. Also, do you know if.. ahh I'm going to de-rail this thread. I'm going to make a new one.

It would certainly improve the effectiveness of the remote and the possibility to click pointing anywhere. I could also use my MacBook Air in school more and that'd finally mean it would be fulfilling its true purpose.

*Stupidly didn't realise the remote wouldn't work with MacBook Air*

Or Bluetooth. Personally I like the Magic Trackpad for maneuvering from the couch, but of course you should be using AirPlay now.

Look up your model on ifixit.com. From the rest of this post, I think you would do best to install the SSD in the optical slot and use an external optical drive, boot from the SSD and keep your data on the HDD.

I've always felt that "hi-speed external HDD" was a contradiction in terms, but yes, they exist.

That makes zero sense. SSDs are fast because they are low latency - that they also have a high max bandwidth is nice and all, but not really important. Any external interface will add latency. Thunderbolt is low latency in itself, and there are flash drives that use PCIe for maximum performance, but as you have noticed, such SSDs are not cheap. Better to turn it around - put an SSD internally and put your storage on an external HDD.

A Ferrari is faster than an 18-wheel articulated truck. Trucks are therefore defunct.

From reading Apple Discussion Boards with regards to slowness in Final Cut Pro X, people stated to use external storage for video editing as internal storage is a 'no-no'. Is this incorrect if you have sufficient internal storage on SSD?

Also, I read that external optical drives need special highly powered USB ports, so the optical externals only work on the MacBook Airs and now the new MacBook Pros.

I think you're right though, swapping the optical drive for an SSD would be a good move.

Out of interest, would a 512GB SSD be easily fitted into the slot where my 750GB sits currently?

I'll head over to iFixit and look up my model. Couldn't find my way around that site when I just tried, but I'll have another go.

*EDIT* Here's the guide, although it's not quite clear what I'd need to do. iFixIt.com - Hard Drive 17" Early 2011 MacBook Pro

Illogical analogy sarcasm. Try this, no sarcasm:

Fuel injection is a superior way to feed gasoline to gasoline-fired motor vehicles. Carburetors are therefore defunct.

SSDs are far superior for computer boot drives. HDDs for boot are therefore defunct.

Edit: At some point SSD/HDD combinations will probably work really well but IMO we are not there yet.

-Allen

Just watching the video of the keynote, the MBPTNG has soldered RAM and soldered flash storage. I am not impressed. This is a stupid, stupid idea. Its fine for disposable toys like the MacBook Air, but for a Pro machine?!

For shame Apple. There is no upgradability on this machine whatsoever and once its out of Applecare, bad RAM or irreparable disk corruption means you need a new logic board. This is not the way to go for a £2000 machine.

For the drive, it's removable apparently. However, if I understand it correctly, there's no housing and you'd have to get a MBP:TNG specific drive, something like this:

http://assets.vr-zone.net/10740/owc_...auto-18832.jpg

Note, that's for the Air. I'd expect the one for the MBP:TNG to be shaped differently.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5997/47290.png

I suspect for latency-bottlenecked apps USB 3 won't be as impressive, but it will still likely perform decently I'm guessing.

Give OWC a call. They are a superior vendor of retrofit parts and for a reasonable fee you can ship your box to them and they will do the retrofit work. Even if they do not do the work they will provide sound advice as to what works and what does not on any given box. I have used OWC for decades.

Performance Upgrades; FireWire USB SATA Storage; Memory, more at OWC

-Allen

Hard to say without knowing some context, but internal laptop HDDs are 2.5", which are indeed way slower than regular 3.5" drives. This does not apply to SSDs.

Most external opticals (ie, ones that do not have a fruit on the cover) come with a two-pronged USB cable so it can pull power from a second USB port if required. That is not possible on the Air, because the two USB ports are so far apart, so Apple's unit does not include the two-pronged cord. IME, however, that fallback is not required on any computer from the last several years. I would buy an external optical from some place where you can return it if it doesn't work.

Yes, but check the height of your current drive so you get the same height of the SSD. Some SSDs are narrower than the 9.5mm (I think?) that most 2.5" HDDs use.

If you put it in place of the optical, however, I'd recommend buying a specially designed bay for it.

Probably mSATA (or maybe mPCIe if we're lucky), probably with a larger PCB.

OWC is a scam and a cancer on the Mac community. The sooner they go out of business the better for all of us.

Soldered RAM actually makes a lot of sense, but have they really soldered the SSD in as well?

Thanks Allen. I'm in the U.K. though, will this matter?

Thanks for the advice!

I'll look more into this once I come back from Canada, as I haven't the cash as yet to buy one. Would be great though. I've seen some people online using the ExpressSlot as an easy fix too.

what optical drive? i don't see anything that says any of the new macbooks have an optical drive. maybe i'm just missing it though.

A bit of an annoyance since it adds bulk, but isn't a USB powered external optical drive an option or am I missing something.?

The Apple USB SuperDrive is not supported on previous MacBook Pros.

As for 3rd party USB optical drives with dual-USB connectors for additional power, I find they're hit and miss, even when plugged into dual USB ports. What works 100% of the time is if you get a higher powered AC to USB adapter. eg. 1.0 A, as opposed to a 0.5 A one.

Why do you say that? I have gotten great service from them for 20 years, including free presales advice as to workable retrofit choices.

Once they even took unopened RAM back after two months.

-Allen