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Jim Lynch: 5 reasons why I love my 13-inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display

Monday, December 3, 2012 · 4:37 pm · 15 Comments

“Apple is a very smart retailer, the company knows how to set its stores up and it leaves absolutely nothing to chance. When I walked into the store, I made the mistake of looking to my right as I was going in. I noted the new “Retina’ 13-inch Macbook Pros,” Jim Lynch writes for Technology and Other Musings. “I thought to myself ‘Hmm. I wonder what those retina screens look like? It couldn’t hurt to peek at one.’ And that’s just what I did. I was quite impressed with the resolution and gorgeous looks of OS X in retina.”

“After a few more minutes, I decided that the retina Macbook Pros were neat but I needed to go get my Macbook Air. I walked over to the section that had the Airs and started looking at the 11-inch Macbook Air,” Lynch writes. “Damn, that screen was UGLY compared to the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro. I mean, it just looked pixelated and nasty compared to the high resolution icons on the Dock on the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro. I knew instantly that my quest for an 11-inch Macbook Air was doomed.”

5 reasons why I love my 13-inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display:
#5 Portability
#4 Form Factor
#3 Speed
#2 No Dedicated Graphics Card
#1 Retina Display

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Jim Lynch" for the heads up.]

Related articles:
PC Magazine reviews Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display: Editors’ Choice – October 26, 2012
Apple introduces 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display – October 23, 2012

Categories: News, Review

Tags: 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, hands on, mac, Retina display, review

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Comment Feed

15 Comments

thethirdshoe

Monday, December 3, 2012 - 4:58 pm · Reply

“2 No Dedicated Graphics Card”
I’m not so sure about that one.
- Necron99
  
  Monday, December 3, 2012 - 5:05 pm · Reply
  
  Reading this post, I just knew that the first comment would be from some spec-head whining about the lack of dedicated graphics card.
  - Bandit Bill
    
    Monday, December 3, 2012 - 5:14 pm · Reply
    
    He/she is not whining about the lack of…
    
    It’s just odd for someone to say they like the fact that they don’t have a dedicated graphics card. The author realizes this that’s why they prefaced the comment with…
    
    #2 No Dedicated Graphics Card
    No doubt it will surprise some people to see me mention this one. After all, isn’t it always better to have a dedicated graphics card…
    Well, No
  - bondr006
    
    Monday, December 3, 2012 - 5:41 pm · Reply
    
    Those ugly control issues flaring up today Necron?
- chrish1961
  
  Monday, December 3, 2012 - 5:13 pm · Reply
  
  The Intel GPU is more than capable enough. Sure, they have always lagged behind dedicated chips, but a long time ago floating point math was done by a separate chip, as was memory management. All of those functions have been integrated into the CPU and it makes sense that graphics should be too. I have a 13″ MacBook Pro driving my 27 inch Cinema Display and it handles everything perfectly.
- Lazy
  
  Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 7:12 am · Reply
  
  If you’re going to go to the trouble of commenting at least read the full article.
  Silly boy.
Ansel

Monday, December 3, 2012 - 6:01 pm · Reply

No card to suck down the battery ….. If you want to do full blown photo work, work on a desktop ….
Wun Dum Gai

Monday, December 3, 2012 - 6:15 pm · Reply

Try playing a graphics-intense game on a “non-dedicated” system and you’ll be hurtin’ in a major way.
- Steve81
  
  Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 1:29 am · Reply
  
  Chris H addressed this earlier: “The Intel GPU is more than capable enough …”
bkire

Monday, December 3, 2012 - 6:54 pm · Reply

A pity the author made no mention of OS X. The five reasons mentioned can all be done by competitor products.
- steveH
  
  Monday, December 3, 2012 - 7:54 pm · Reply
  
  Exactly how many competitors’ laptops offer retina displays?
mredofcourse

Monday, December 3, 2012 - 11:30 pm · Reply

#2… Sorry being even with the way the author qualifies the comment, it’s in no way something to be considered positive, especially in a Pro Mac.

What the author doesn’t realize is that the graphics card can not only be shut off, but it can turn on and off automatically.

I don’t play games with my Macs, they’re workstations, and some work, especially video and graphics work much better/faster with a graphics card. In fact, I’m often saving battery life with the graphcs card turned on because the job is getting done faster.

But that’s my use. Like the author, we all have individual usage, but it still, doesn’t make sense to call out the lack of a graphics card that can be turned off or run automatically a bonus.

That’s not to knock the 13″ MacBook Pro. It’s a damn fine machine, and I love mine too. But it would be even better with dedicated graphics.
- Grrrilla
  
  Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 9:44 am · Reply
  
  And bigger, warmer, louder, with lower battery life. It’s a laptop computer. Trade-offs. But the CPU technology continues to improve. Will there ever be a point where we’ll be satisfied with integrated graphics? Or is this just a concept that some people can’t ever let go of?
  - mredofcourse
    
    Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 2:08 pm · Reply
    
    “And bigger, warmer, louder, with lower battery life”
    
    It’s not significantly bigger, and only warmer, louder and lower battery life when turned on…and only in some situations. I often find it’s better to have it on and get the job done quicker with the acceleration, especially with video and graphic production.
    
    “Will there ever be a point where we’ll be satisfied with integrated graphics?”
    
    When the first integrated graphics came out, there were small numbers of people with low demands who were satisfied with it. As integrated graphics have improved the number of people have increased as higher demand levels have been met.
    
    For many people it’s perfectly fine to have integrated graphics.
    
    It’s possible for integrated graphics to be *faster* than discrete, but there’s a whole host of reasons why this isn’t done on consumer computers.
    
    So to answer your question, for the foreseeable future, there will be users with higher demands that will want the extra power discrete graphics provides. The number will dwindle with each new generation of integrated graphics, not so much that integrated graphics will catch up, but rather meet the needs of the consumer.
Bob A

Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 5:00 pm · Reply

One of the biggest things that impressed me most when starting out with Apple was that I could use a Mac without really knowing or caring what was under the hood. I have never cared what memory speed I had, how close I was to filling up my HD, given diddly-squat what graphics card may or may not have been involved displaying my graphics, all I knew was that the Mac delivered on performance and did not let me down.

Contrast this to my old Windows days when it was fairly vital that you knew what cpu speed you had or how much memory was plugged in since these factors could weigh heavily when it came to performance – you were always on the look out for something that could speed up the machine and getting metrics on what was inside the box was really important.

I always found with Windows that no matter what great piece of kit I now had any new release of Windows would always manage to add more and more background processes and make the cpu work harder – any extra performance I had shelled out for never amounted to a hill of beans – it was always a pointless waste of time.

The Mac just frees the average user from needing to care about this stuff and we just get great performance with negligible hassle – such is the world of the Mac user.