Apple’s Retina-Equipped MacBook Pro Is a Sight to Behold

Apple’s Retina-Equipped MacBook Pro Is a Sight to Behold

The MacBook Pro with Retina display. Photo by Peter McCollough/Wired

When Apple introduced the MacBook Air in 2008, it shook up the entire PC industry. In just a few years, “the world’s thinnest notebook” evolved from a super-slim novelty into a viable computing solution, sending other manufacturers on a mad rush to issue their own supremely portable ultrabooks. We’re now surrounded by a bunch of PC notebooks that looks remarkably similar to Apple’s Air.
And now we get to watch that same game play out at the top end of the notebook space.
With its newest MacBook Pro, Apple has drafted another set of design standards and build philosophies for PC makers to follow, this time for high-performance machines. The next wave of portable computers will become even slimmer. They will lose their optical drives. Their serviceability will be limited. And the screens will get better — much better.

We’ve seen phones and tablets with screens this clear and sharp, but this display is the first of its kind in a notebook computer.

Whether you’re a fan of Apple hardware or not, it’s difficult to deny that the new Pro’s stunningly crisp, high-resolution Retina display is a significant jump forward in the notebook space. We’ve seen phones and tablets with screens this clear and sharp, but this display is the first of its kind in a notebook computer. Over the next few years, we’ll undoubtedly see the Asuses and Toshibas of the world scrambling to add competitive, high-resolution displays into their own thin, unibody machines.
Of course, frontline tech like this is costly: The base model starts at a whopping $2,200 — $400 more than the 15-inch, entry-level non-Retina MacBook Pro, and $1,000 more than a 13-inch Pro or MacBook Air.
It weighs in at 4.46 pounds, 1.1 pounds less than the previous MacBook Pro, and it’s light enough for me to confidently pick up and carry with only one hand. The machine measures 0.71 inches, only 0.03 inches thicker than the MacBook Air. Unlike the Air, which has a patented wedge-shaped design, the Pro is uniformly thick all the way from back to front, save for a small curved taper around the bottom edges of the base. For long-time users of the regular 15-inch MacBook Pro, the shaved frame and 20 percent weight loss on this new machine are pleasant and welcome upgrades. But anyone used to the MacBook Air may still find the larger 15.4-inch display and thicker body a bit unwieldy and, dare I say, chunky.

The new MacBook Pro has a 0.71-inch, uniformly thick frame. Photo by Peter McCollough/Wired

Still, fence-sitters will be swayed by the device’s extremely sharp and detailed display, which is truly jaw-dropping.
Before setting eyes on the new display, I thought, “Considering the distance I sit from my monitor, the current display must be close to Retina level, right?”
Wrong. The MacBook Pro’s Retina display has a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels. That’s four times as many pixels as its predecessor (5,184,000 total). And thanks to a new manufacturing method that builds the glossy display right into the unibody housing, it ditches the extra layer of cover glass. The pixels thus seem closer to you, like they’re sitting just ever-so-slightly beneath the surface instead of buried somewhere within the notebook’s lid.

Apple's 2880 x 1800 pixel Retina display is the centerpiece of its newest laptop, and serves as a roadmap the future of PC design. Photo by Peter McCollough/Wired

The Retina display provides the same rich colors you’re used to, but with a greater contrast ratio (29 percent higher than a standard Pro, according to Apple) and up to 75 percent less glare. Based on my experiences using a previous-generation MacBook Pro alongside the Retina-equipped machine for a week, I’d say these contrast and glare-reduction claims are accurate.

Apple has undoubtedly created the best notebook display on the market. Onscreen text looks impeccably sharp, as do any vector graphics.

Apple has undoubtedly created the best notebook display on the market. Onscreen text looks impeccably sharp, as do any vector graphics. High-resolution images are pixel-perfect. Watching 4K video on YouTube is brilliant — it’s a testament to the power of this machine that my Wi-Fi connection, and not the MacBook Pro’s display or processor, was the bottleneck when watching 4K video. If your job requires you to examine each and every pixel in a frame or photograph, this is the display you want to work on.
Inside the base model is a 2.3GHz quad-core Intel i7 processor with an integrated graphics card, plus a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics chip that supports up to 2560×1600 resolution on up to two external displays as well as the full 2880×1800 resolution of the built-in display. Memory-wise, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display comes standard with 8GB of solid-state onboard memory (upgradable to 16GB for $200, but only at the time of purchase — more on that later) and 256MB of SSD flash storage.
Compare that with the 2012 13-inch Air’s 1.8GHz i5 processor, 4GB of memory, and 128GB SSD, and it’s clear: The Retina display Pro is a significantly more powerful machine for only a fraction more of the footprint.
The device’s speed is apparent in every resource-intensive task: boot-up time is under 20 seconds from the chime to the login screen, launching apps and switching between them is remarkably swift, and scrolling on webpages is smooth and natural. During very high-intensity operations, like watching 4K video or multitasking between a multitude of open browser tabs and programs, the machine can get warm to the touch, but it doesn’t throw off more heat than the current MacBook Pro.
In Geekbench benchmarks, the new Pro scores comparably with the 15-inch 2011 model Macbook Pro and 2012 non-Retina display MacBook Pro, proving that paring down the size has done nothing to diminish performance.
The battery power hasn’t been reduced, either. Apple promises up to seven hours of battery life on the Retina display MacBook Pro, which you can achieve with casual usage with display brightness at half power. In a normal work day spent browsing the web, typing docs in a word processor, playing music, editing photos, and watching the occasional YouTube clip at about 80 percent brightness, I got just over four hours of battery life. Watching the HD download of Star Trek from iTunes at near full-brightness similarly drained the battery to just over 50 percent by the time the two-hour film finished.
Just like when the third-generation iPad was released earlier this year, there’s a dearth of Retina-ready apps available from the App Store at the moment. This is unfortunate, but hopefully it’s only a temporary issue. For now, Apple has the basics covered: built-in standbys like Mail, Calendar, Safari, iMovie, and iTunes, as well as professional options like Aperture and Final Cut Pro. Titles from Adobe and Autodesk are currently in the works, and we should be seeing Retina-ready Mac app updates trickling in over the next few weeks.