This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC976LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I bought my first PC in 1987 and I had managed to avoid Apple products since then. I admit it, I’m biased. I never liked Apple’s OS’s or most of their hardware. I never cared for Steve Jobs either. However, despite my bias, I’m also rational. And the simple fact is that there is currently no better notebook for my needs than this one. I had to replace my Windows notebook and after a lot of research I found that there is simply nothing else on the market that matches this notebook’s power, weight, and silent/cool operation. And of course, we all know the screen is unmatched. So, in a moment of weakness I fell to the Dark Side and bought an Apple product. As you can see above, I actually bought this product here at Amazon. I’ve been using it for about 3 weeks now for 10+ hours per day.
I can’t say a thing about how this notebook performs on the Mac OS side of things because I run Windows 7 on it using Bootcamp (making sure I could do this was a key part of my research before buying). Fortunately, everything runs great on it using Windows 7. I’m a software developer and have been using Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Oracle without any problems. The screen is awesome. The notebook remains cool and I think I’ve heard the cooling fans running only a couple times. Since I travel quite a bit, what I love most about it is the light weight and thinness.
So, even if you’re a die-hard Windows user like me I can whole-heartedly recommend this notebook. The only caveat I’d add for Windows users is that the keyboard is less than optimal for us. Apple’s “delete” is our “backspace”. Our “delete” is “fn” + “delete”. Our PrintScreen is “shift” + “fn” + “f11″. And there are a few others I won’t bore you with, hopefully you get the idea. In the big scheme of things it’s a minor annoyance considering how great everything else works on this notebook.
The only thing I dislike about this notebook is that big Apple logo on the back. Anyone know where I can get nice big sticker with Bill Gates’ face to cover it up? In spite of that, I still have to give this notebook 5 stars. Again, I’m biased, but I’m also rational.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC976LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
UPDATED 9-21-12…Systems in use for 3 months.
Pros: A total powerhouse, best laptop display ever made, perfect for professionals, AppleCare, portability, quad core Ivy Bridge processors in a laptop, USB 3.
Cons: You pay for quality, expensive for casual use.
Who it’s for: Professionals, designers, media-heavy users, video and photo editors, travelers, students, performance-minded users, anyone needing both performance and portability.
Who it isn’t for: Casual or light users, those who think they’ll need to expand, people who hate Apple and just don’t like their products regardless.
Why 5 stars: It’s easy to criticize a device for its shortcomings, but in the end Apple has designed one of the best laptops ever sold. Its performance and value are off the charts, and it would be disingenuous to penalize it for the minor “wish list” we could draw up. It succeeds in the most important areas (like CPU power), sacrificing in relatively unimportant ones (no ethernet connection).
The new Macbook Pro Retina
This is a review from a real owner, not opinion…not discussion. I work in a design company (web, print, video, apps). What I look for in a system is reliable, efficient performance at the best value. The new MacBook scores off the charts in these areas – let’s look at why.
POWER: I had two designers who’d outgrown their iMac i7s, running 90% CPU capacity (three words: Adobe Master Suite). The new machine represents a massive performance boost with the new CPUs. It’s nice to see Apple include the quad core Ivy Bridge on these…at times they’ve been slow to update the CPUs on the MacBooks. And although the display gets all the press, it’s really the other hardware that makes the system. It SCREAMS, and can handle a massive amount of abuse (we tested editing video AND using Photoshop AND streaming Netflix AND running a dozen other programs in the background – try that with most machines and watch them curl up and die). If you’re animating the latest Pixar release you might want to look at alternatives, but for anything else this is a perfect business machine, and we really like the added “oomph” when editing video or running intense graphics.
DISPLAY: The display is amazing, but more importantly it’s useful. You can now edit video in full 1080p while leaving room on the desktop for any necessary toolbars, etc. And my designers tell me that this is the first MacBook they can design on in terms of display correctness – previous models didn’t really live up to their standards for that, and they’d have to double-check designs on their desktops. UPDATE NOTE: Over the summer, there were some reports of image retention on LG-produced screens. I researched this, and could find no major tech site reporting this issue as substantial. Our two units are LG and have been turned ‘on’ ten hours a day for the past three months. We have no image issues. The complaints I could find are generally posted in open forums, so I’m not sure how accurate the info is…but we’re not worried due to the awesomeness of AppleCare and the guys at our local Genius Bar.
Some nerdy talk about the display: Mostly for pros, here are some features of the display as reported by independent sources. This unit diplays 99% of the sRGB color space, a significant spike from earlier MacBooks (71%). It also incorporates a new LCD surface, doing away with the cover glass and substantially decreasing glare while preserving contrast. Users will want to be extra-careful since damage to the display surface is now to the LCD directly, but the tradeoff is that this system is massively anti-reflective (something we noted right away). And Apple has left the viewing angle very wide – most other brands use a narrow angle on their laptops to save battery. Imagine a ‘cone of brightness’…the wider this is, the more power is consumed by the display. If you make this narrower the battery lasts longer, but the display is less reliable for design since the image distorts as you move to the side, even by a couple of inches. The designers here at my company confirm that you can rely on the display – they report that you have to move pretty far to the side before it changes. Overall…for a designer…the new display is a bar above anything else, even the high-end monitors we have here (including Apple and other brands).
DESKTOP/LAPTOP HYBRID: We were also sold on the portability. We liked that these have the power of a desktop (and we needed that power), but we also love the portability. My designers like the ability to easily move workstations, and I like being able to send their work home with them (don’t tell them I said that, ha.)
UPGRADABILITY: Some will gripe that you can’t easily open this machine. They’ll moan that you’ll want to expand and upgrade. I don’t presume I can build a better system than Apple’s design team, and the iPad has…
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC976LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
Customer Video Review Length:: 2:24 Mins
Screen/Diplay: The colors, blacks, whites, crispness of the display is simply incredible. Here is a short video I made with my 15″ MacBook Pro Retina, the video however, does not do the beauty of this screen justice. Note: the screen is “glossy” which was a concern for me as I always went with matte screens, glossy screens in the past were almost unusable outside or in rooms with direct sunlight. Apple claims to have reduced glare with the retina screen by 70%, and I have to say first hand I believe them, which is a huge plus because the glossy screen always looked better, but if you had any bright lights or sunlight around your laptop it was nearly unreadable. So I am happy to report, the new retina screen even though “glossy” is nearly as non reflective as my previous matte screens, so much so, that I would say it is a non-issue for me. It is that good.
Battery: The battery time is excellent. Battery times are tricky in general because it completely depends on what you are doing and screen brightness, however I have found that in general use (I.E Websurfing,Email,IM listening to music.) and with screen brightness set around 50% the battery actually last longer than the rated time of 7 hours.)
Form Factor: The MacBook Pro Retina is smaller & lighter than the standard MacBook Pro. With the Retina model weighing in just under 4.5 lbs and its under 3/4 inches thick (If you want to get technical its .71 inches thick). This laptop is a joy to carry around, it is so elegant looking and lightweight. I had a previous generation 15″ MacBook Pro and honestly didn’t think pre-delivery I would notice that much of a difference but I was wrong, you definitely can and the best part is the laptop doesn’t feel flimsy as you might expect with it being so much lighter and thinner.
Heat: Just a short note on the heat the MacBook Pro Retina emits, granted if you are encoding video it is going to get very warm as any laptop will. But one of the most pleasant surprises for me was is how cool the laptop runs under normal usage such as web surfing, email, office apps, it runs much cooler than my previous generation 15″ MacBook Pro, also the fans on this machine are dead quiet even in a quiet room. In fact I had to stick my ear up to the laptop to make sure that were even working when I first got it. Considerably less noisy than any laptop I have ever heard.
Ports: The machine has 2 Thunderbolt , 2 USB 3.0, 1 HDMI (out), SDXC (SD Card) Slot, Headphone jack.
Thunderbolt ports: I did purchase the Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter which worked great, I purchased it mainly to initially backup my SSD faster than using WiFI, not necessary I am just impatient. Plus I like having add-ons that I may never use, not sure it’s a guy thing. Thunderbolt is in its infancy and truthfully there just isn’t a lot of Thunderbolt devices. However, I am happy Apple was looking toward the future with this laptop and opted to put 2 ports on this machine.
USB 3.0: No problems at all with any of my standard USB devices (I.E mouse, printer, etc.) what was extremely impressive was my Lexar JumpDrive Triton 32 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive LJDNV32GCRBNA which was about 7X faster than on my old laptop with USB 2.0 ports. I was blown away how fast it was.
HDMI: Thank you Apple, you finally came around and added this. Plug in an HDMI cable to your HDTV and have your laptop screen on your TV as fast as you can plug the cord in. It just works, and you are able to send 1080P right to your TV. Not a lot more than I can say other that it works, and it works easily and flawlessly.
SDXC/Headphone: Like above they just work easily and flawlessly. The SD reader was improved over the previous version as I had some troubles with SD cards reading in the past on previous models namely cards not reading the 1st time. This model has read all my cards the 1st time inserted and read every card I have put into it.
Other notes: WiFi receiver seems to be improved it reads a stronger signal than my previous generation MacBook Pro. The dual built in microphones are a major improvement they do a superb job in reduction of background noise.
The biggest con of this laptop: You will cringe every time you have to use any other laptop again. It’s like going from regular TV to HDTV, once you see it you get spoiled and everything else just looks bad.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Authors bio is coming up shortly. 
This is the best Windows notebook you can buy,
I bought my first PC in 1987 and I had managed to avoid Apple products since then. I admit it, I’m biased. I never liked Apple’s OS’s or most of their hardware. I never cared for Steve Jobs either. However, despite my bias, I’m also rational. And the simple fact is that there is currently no better notebook for my needs than this one. I had to replace my Windows notebook and after a lot of research I found that there is simply nothing else on the market that matches this notebook’s power, weight, and silent/cool operation. And of course, we all know the screen is unmatched. So, in a moment of weakness I fell to the Dark Side and bought an Apple product. As you can see above, I actually bought this product here at Amazon. I’ve been using it for about 3 weeks now for 10+ hours per day.
I can’t say a thing about how this notebook performs on the Mac OS side of things because I run Windows 7 on it using Bootcamp (making sure I could do this was a key part of my research before buying). Fortunately, everything runs great on it using Windows 7. I’m a software developer and have been using Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Oracle without any problems. The screen is awesome. The notebook remains cool and I think I’ve heard the cooling fans running only a couple times. Since I travel quite a bit, what I love most about it is the light weight and thinness.
So, even if you’re a die-hard Windows user like me I can whole-heartedly recommend this notebook. The only caveat I’d add for Windows users is that the keyboard is less than optimal for us. Apple’s “delete” is our “backspace”. Our “delete” is “fn” + “delete”. Our PrintScreen is “shift” + “fn” + “f11″. And there are a few others I won’t bore you with, hopefully you get the idea. In the big scheme of things it’s a minor annoyance considering how great everything else works on this notebook.
The only thing I dislike about this notebook is that big Apple logo on the back. Anyone know where I can get nice big sticker with Bill Gates’ face to cover it up? In spite of that, I still have to give this notebook 5 stars. Again, I’m biased, but I’m also rational.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Total power, total performance, best ever…but not for all.,
UPDATED 9-21-12…Systems in use for 3 months.
Pros: A total powerhouse, best laptop display ever made, perfect for professionals, AppleCare, portability, quad core Ivy Bridge processors in a laptop, USB 3.
Cons: You pay for quality, expensive for casual use.
Who it’s for: Professionals, designers, media-heavy users, video and photo editors, travelers, students, performance-minded users, anyone needing both performance and portability.
Who it isn’t for: Casual or light users, those who think they’ll need to expand, people who hate Apple and just don’t like their products regardless.
Why 5 stars: It’s easy to criticize a device for its shortcomings, but in the end Apple has designed one of the best laptops ever sold. Its performance and value are off the charts, and it would be disingenuous to penalize it for the minor “wish list” we could draw up. It succeeds in the most important areas (like CPU power), sacrificing in relatively unimportant ones (no ethernet connection).
The new Macbook Pro Retina
This is a review from a real owner, not opinion…not discussion. I work in a design company (web, print, video, apps). What I look for in a system is reliable, efficient performance at the best value. The new MacBook scores off the charts in these areas – let’s look at why.
POWER: I had two designers who’d outgrown their iMac i7s, running 90% CPU capacity (three words: Adobe Master Suite). The new machine represents a massive performance boost with the new CPUs. It’s nice to see Apple include the quad core Ivy Bridge on these…at times they’ve been slow to update the CPUs on the MacBooks. And although the display gets all the press, it’s really the other hardware that makes the system. It SCREAMS, and can handle a massive amount of abuse (we tested editing video AND using Photoshop AND streaming Netflix AND running a dozen other programs in the background – try that with most machines and watch them curl up and die). If you’re animating the latest Pixar release you might want to look at alternatives, but for anything else this is a perfect business machine, and we really like the added “oomph” when editing video or running intense graphics.
DISPLAY: The display is amazing, but more importantly it’s useful. You can now edit video in full 1080p while leaving room on the desktop for any necessary toolbars, etc. And my designers tell me that this is the first MacBook they can design on in terms of display correctness – previous models didn’t really live up to their standards for that, and they’d have to double-check designs on their desktops. UPDATE NOTE: Over the summer, there were some reports of image retention on LG-produced screens. I researched this, and could find no major tech site reporting this issue as substantial. Our two units are LG and have been turned ‘on’ ten hours a day for the past three months. We have no image issues. The complaints I could find are generally posted in open forums, so I’m not sure how accurate the info is…but we’re not worried due to the awesomeness of AppleCare and the guys at our local Genius Bar.
Some nerdy talk about the display: Mostly for pros, here are some features of the display as reported by independent sources. This unit diplays 99% of the sRGB color space, a significant spike from earlier MacBooks (71%). It also incorporates a new LCD surface, doing away with the cover glass and substantially decreasing glare while preserving contrast. Users will want to be extra-careful since damage to the display surface is now to the LCD directly, but the tradeoff is that this system is massively anti-reflective (something we noted right away). And Apple has left the viewing angle very wide – most other brands use a narrow angle on their laptops to save battery. Imagine a ‘cone of brightness’…the wider this is, the more power is consumed by the display. If you make this narrower the battery lasts longer, but the display is less reliable for design since the image distorts as you move to the side, even by a couple of inches. The designers here at my company confirm that you can rely on the display – they report that you have to move pretty far to the side before it changes. Overall…for a designer…the new display is a bar above anything else, even the high-end monitors we have here (including Apple and other brands).
DESKTOP/LAPTOP HYBRID: We were also sold on the portability. We liked that these have the power of a desktop (and we needed that power), but we also love the portability. My designers like the ability to easily move workstations, and I like being able to send their work home with them (don’t tell them I said that, ha.)
UPGRADABILITY: Some will gripe that you can’t easily open this machine. They’ll moan that you’ll want to expand and upgrade. I don’t presume I can build a better system than Apple’s design team, and the iPad has…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|This Screen is Amazing !,
Customer Video Review Length:: 2:24 Mins
Screen/Diplay: The colors, blacks, whites, crispness of the display is simply incredible.
Here is a short video I made with my 15″ MacBook Pro Retina, the video however, does not do the beauty of this screen justice.
Note: the screen is “glossy” which was a concern for me as I always went with matte screens, glossy screens in the past were almost unusable outside or in rooms with direct sunlight. Apple claims to have reduced glare with the retina screen by 70%, and I have to say first hand I believe them, which is a huge plus because the glossy screen always looked better, but if you had any bright lights or sunlight around your laptop it was nearly unreadable. So I am happy to report, the new retina screen even though “glossy” is nearly as non reflective as my previous matte screens, so much so, that I would say it is a non-issue for me. It is that good.
Battery: The battery time is excellent.
Battery times are tricky in general because it completely depends on what you are doing and screen brightness, however I have found that in general use (I.E Websurfing,Email,IM listening to music.) and with screen brightness set around 50% the battery actually last longer than the rated time of 7 hours.)
Form Factor: The MacBook Pro Retina is smaller & lighter than the standard MacBook Pro. With the Retina model weighing in just under 4.5 lbs and its under 3/4 inches thick (If you want to get technical its .71 inches thick). This laptop is a joy to carry around, it is so elegant looking and lightweight. I had a previous generation 15″ MacBook Pro and honestly didn’t think pre-delivery I would notice that much of a difference but I was wrong, you definitely can and the best part is the laptop doesn’t feel flimsy as you might expect with it being so much lighter and thinner.
Heat: Just a short note on the heat the MacBook Pro Retina emits, granted if you are encoding video it is going to get very warm as any laptop will. But one of the most pleasant surprises for me was is how cool the laptop runs under normal usage such as web surfing, email, office apps, it runs much cooler than my previous generation 15″ MacBook Pro, also the fans on this machine are dead quiet even in a quiet room. In fact I had to stick my ear up to the laptop to make sure that were even working when I first got it. Considerably less noisy than any laptop I have ever heard.
Ports: The machine has 2 Thunderbolt , 2 USB 3.0, 1 HDMI (out), SDXC (SD Card) Slot, Headphone jack.
Thunderbolt ports: I did purchase the Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter which worked great, I purchased it mainly to initially backup my SSD faster than using WiFI, not necessary I am just impatient. Plus I like having add-ons that I may never use, not sure it’s a guy thing. Thunderbolt is in its infancy and truthfully there just isn’t a lot of Thunderbolt devices. However, I am happy Apple was looking toward the future with this laptop and opted to put 2 ports on this machine.
USB 3.0: No problems at all with any of my standard USB devices (I.E mouse, printer, etc.) what was extremely impressive was my Lexar JumpDrive Triton 32 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive LJDNV32GCRBNA which was about 7X faster than on my old laptop with USB 2.0 ports. I was blown away how fast it was.
HDMI: Thank you Apple, you finally came around and added this. Plug in an HDMI cable to your HDTV and have your laptop screen on your TV as fast as you can plug the cord in.
It just works, and you are able to send 1080P right to your TV. Not a lot more than I can say other that it works, and it works easily and flawlessly.
SDXC/Headphone: Like above they just work easily and flawlessly. The SD reader was improved over the previous version as I had some troubles with SD cards reading in the past on previous models namely cards not reading the 1st time. This model has read all my cards the 1st time inserted and read every card I have put into it.
Other notes: WiFi receiver seems to be improved it reads a stronger signal than my previous generation MacBook Pro.
The dual built in microphones are a major improvement they do a superb job in reduction of background noise.
The biggest con of this laptop: You will cringe every time you have to use any other laptop again. It’s like going from regular TV to HDTV, once you see it you get spoiled and everything else just looks bad.
Was this review helpful to you?
|