Hi,
I've always thought of Apple as an overpriced company and didn't see past that. But this time with this retina display on their Macbook, the laptop just looks so tempting to get. What do you guys think of the new Macbook pro? Also, do you think other Manufacturers (DELL, HP..) will pick up on the retina display trend in the laptop market?

Review Here:

http://www.notebookr... Retina Display

Also, the main image blew me away (looked all over interfacelift.com.. but no luck) Does anyone know where I can get the original?

http://www.notebookr...ure.asp?f=65695

Have a great weekend guys!

There's an ongoing discussion about the Macbook Retina Display in the College Programming Computer thread. Somebody even posted some screenshots.

The "Retina Display" used by Apple (Which is just apples brand name for a "high" resolution display) is actually developed by LG (Who has allready showcased a 5 inch 440ppi display (Apples retina displays have between 220ppi(MBP) and 326ppi(iPhone4)) and really is just a fairly normal (in the case of the MBP) 2880x1800 display (Nothing special about it). (The ipad uses a 2048x1536(QXGA) resolution, something i had on my PC 12 years ago)

The primary reason most PC laptops (and desktop monitors these days aswell) have been using 1920x1080 is because that is the resolution used by Bluray HD movies, the next resolution at which they look flawless (no filtering needed to scale the images) would be 3840x2160, Apples MBP with "Retina" displays actually give you a lower image quality for movies and is really unsuitable for an entertainment(movie, not gaming) device). Thus the cost of the displays go up dramatically as there is no market for large scale massproduction of them., on cellphones its a bit different as they've been using sub-hd resolutions in the past, LGs new 440ppi 5" display hits exactly 1920x1080 making it a very good fit for portable mediaplayers)

Basically, the high but a bit "odd" resolution is a far better fit for a professional laptop (such as the MBP) than a consumer laptop and even for professional laptops you'd generally be better off going with a high quality external display, (I don't know anyone who actually uses the laptop display for professional work except in emergencies so if i'm buying a laptop for work the monitor is the last thing i want to spend money on(Allthough the MPB is quite reasonably priced considering the monitor quality) )

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Your post was super informative. Since I cannot +1 you here, I left a reply.

I'm typing on a retina MBP now and the screen is good. It didn't feel as impressive as when I initially got my Clevo with the 95% color gamut screen upgrade, but that's likely due to the MBP's more accurate color scheme as I believe the Clevo was over saturated which made it look very vibrant at the cost of accuracy.

There is an argument going on in the other thread about what effective resolution means, but to sum it up you have what I consider to be a false choice between large screen real-estate and "sharper" text. I say it's false, because when you are using a higher effective resolution (1920x1200) the text is already going to be sharper and you don't need the extra pixels to smooth it out. I see it as a similar choice between playing a game in a lower resolution, but cranking AA up to smooth out the jaggies, or playing it at a higher resolution without AA because it's not needed.

When it comes down to human perception and the physics of the device, the "retina display" is a waste of money for what most people would use it for, especially at standard viewing distances. Any benefit it may have also -completely- disappears when anything on the screen moves as your eye will never be able to make out the difference. It is a technology specifically aimed at the "more must mean better" crowd. Don't buy into it.

When it comes down to human perception and the physics of the device, the "retina display" is a waste of money for what most people would use it for, especially at standard viewing distances. Any benefit it may have also -completely- disappears when anything on the screen moves as your eye will never be able to make out the difference. It is a technology specifically aimed at the "more must mean better" crowd. Don't buy into it.

That's basically where I'm at. I'm not convinced it's better than the 1080p screen I had on my XPS or Clevo, but the size / weight / battery life under light load are all much better. Just a matter of whether that's worth the extra $1000 to you or not.

Oh, and the touchpad is simply amazing. It's one of those things that PC laptop manufacturers simply cannot get right.

Oh, and the touchpad is simply amazing. It's one of those things that PC laptop manufacturers simply cannot get right.

As good as the mac touchpad is (much better than any PC laptop I tried) I still find it an immensly frustrating input device. Wireless mouse all the way for me (prefereably with 2 buttons!)

as it does not have a touchscreen, it will more and more be a device that will not allow you to focus on development targets directly that could be of interest. be it phone stuff without having to load the app always onto the phone to test (and have all those phones), be it win8 apps, etc..

there's just no way i will buy a non touchscreen display that i plan to use for the next some years. especially not for that money.

I agree with SimonForsman - "retina" display is just Apple's brandname, so no other phone or PC manufacturer will have "retina" displays, because it's an Apple trademark. In terms of resolution, my Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a higher resolution than Apple's Iphone 4S with "retina" display. Though to be honest, I feel anything above 640x360 is good enough on a phone - whilst in theory a larger resolution means you can view a whole webpage, I find I still have to zoom in to actually read the text, or click links - the bigger problem is the very low resolutions still available on some low end Android phones, or the older Iphones still on sale. "Retina" reeks of "let's pick a useless statistic that we can slap a brandname on, and use it for marketing".

On a laptop/desktop, I find 1680x1050 okay - with the ever-increasing wide-screen trend, that now means 1920x1080 to get the same kind of vertical depth. When I went from 1680x1050 to my current 1920x1080 Clevo laptop, I didn't notice much of a benefit. Even on my 1024x600 Samsung netbook, I never find myself saying "Oh I can see the pixels, how low quality", the problem is more a lack of vertical space to fit the GUIs of applications in, but 1920x1080 is more than adequate. At larger resolutions, you just end up increasing the size of icons and text etc, so it ends up pointless. I'd only want that extra resolution when you're talking about massive monitors or multi-monitor displays, but then PCs/laptops already do that. I don't need that resolution on a built-in laptop screen.

Apple seem to have got stuck on this fallacy that pixel density is the only thing that matters, and that it should scale perfectly linearly, which isn't at all true.

As well as the problem of scaling HD content, there's also the question of how well the GPU can drive these resolutions - do they come with GPUs with four times the fill rate?

There's also the issue of matte versus glossy on screens. Glossy is okay for indoor use (I didn't bother with the Matte option on my Clevo), but Matte is superior if you're worried about reflections (and hence also a benefit for outdoor use). I would certainly opt for Matte for any laptop intended to be portable, and even more so for graphics work - so I find it odd that many of the Apple PCs have Glossy (do the laptops have Matte?)

I'm not convinced it's better than the 1080p screen I had on my XPS or Clevo, but the size / weight / battery life under light load are all much better. Just a matter of whether that's worth the extra $1000 to you or not.[/quote]Clevos aren't intended to be portable, so it's not a question of cost, and doesn't make sense to compare like that (Clevos are also more powerful). There are plenty of other manufacturers producing portable laptops.

Oh, and the touchpad is simply amazing. It's one of those things that PC laptop manufacturers simply cannot get right. [/quote]Apple are a PC laptop manufacturer. You might like Apple more than other PC manufacturers when it comes to touchpads, but unless you've tried them all, we can't say that no other PC manufacturer gets them right. I've had no trouble with the touchpads I've used, e.g., from Samsung. What problem does your Clevo touchpad have, out of interest?