I love my new MacBook Pro Retina
just got my Mac Book Pro Retina and without a doubt it is the best computer I’ve every owned. My vision is pretty crappy, and I can’t make out heads or tails on a MacBook Air screen at the default resolution (glasses make no difference). But the MBP retina display is so crisp and sharp that I can even read the text from a few feet away. I had really thought I’d never be able to comfortably view a laptop screen again. I got the 2.6 GHz model with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. And it is a screamer. I ran geekbench on all of my current computers, and the numbers are impressive. All the older machines have a 256GB SSD in them.
| Model | Processor | Cores | Memory | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacBook Pro (15" Mid 2009) | Intel Core 2 Duo P8800 | 2 | 4GB | 4,088 |
| Mac mini (Mid 2011) | Intel Core i7-2620M | 2 | 8GB | 7,718 |
| iMac (27" Mid 2010) | Intel Core i7-870 | 4 | 8GB | 10,674 |
| MacBook Pro (Retina) | Intel Core i7-3720QM | 4 | 16GB | 13,098 |
The weight difference is very noticable, especially after carrying around the old laptop at CocoaConf last weekend. Carrying it home along with a backpack full of accessories and my iPad wasn’t much of a burden.
Unfortunately, I forgot to bring home a thunderbolt cable so I could migrate my files from the mini to the retina. I’ve been working on it with a USB 2 drive, which is painfully slow. I’m going to have to order a new backup drive, since most of my drives are Firewire and I don’t want to use up my thunderbolt ports with firewire and ethernet adaptors. I’m really looking forward to the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock.
A lot of my peripherals are useless until I get the express dock, but I think I’m going to have to switch my primary machine from the mini to the retina: I can’t pass up on almost a 2x speed improvement. I haven’t tried using my 27” display with it, but I’ll give it a go when I’m at my desk. I’ll try it both with the 28” external display and without and see what works best for me.