Bit the bullet on a 13" rMBP today

TheGardenTool

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Long story short: dog's tail+wife's drink=Mid '09 13" MBP instantly turned itself off. I only have had time to partially clean it, don't have a tri-wing screwdriver on hand to get the battery out, and my precision screwdrivers aren't getting some of the mainboard screws out either. I'm planning to go buy a cheap electronics kit from Harbor Freight later.

My wife's been using the MBP more and more, especially since she started a masters program. So she couldn't afford the downtime, I don't know how long it's going to take before I can really get it completely apart to clean and then test everything if it still even works. Plus I can't afford to share the desktop too much since I've got my own homework going on all the time too.

A local Best Buy had the recently replaced (Mid-2012?) 13" MBA on their clearance website yesterday for $600 but alas they didn't have it once I got there an hour after seeing it. I was in a rush so I didn't have time to look through the rest of their open box stuff online. Late last night saw a 13" rMBP for $1169.99 and decided to go take a look again today after class. Once again they didn't have it, but since they had other open boxes starting at $1259.99. They did price match it without questions but if they hadn't I probably would have ordered a refurbished straight from Apple. They were also a lot more helpful today since the store wasn't crowded like it was yesterday.

2 battery cycles and it's flawless without fingerprints or anything on it. Wish I could have waited to see the Haswell refreshes on them but I guess since I'm still on some promotion for Best Buy Silver program I have 45 days to return it...
 
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how are you and your wife liking it? i'm looking to get one for my wife and we keep waffling back and forth between the 13" rMBP and the more affordable 13" non-retina MBP. either way we're probably waiting until Haswell comes out and either getting a Haswell equipped MBP or taking advantage of the discounted prices of outgoing stock. also i never thought to check out BB's open-box/clearance. thanks for the idea.
 
Having gone from a '09 mbp to a rMBP there is NO WAY I could ever go back to non-retina. It is just that good.
 
Just as an FYI, if you take your old one in for repair at apple they will send it off for a flat rate repair for $755 or so. If you clean it up well enough that they cant find any liquid exposure they might be able to do it for $280
 
I'm holding out for a Haswell 13" rMPB, but have seen some really good prices on the current versions, lately. If the 5000 integrated graphics isn't a significant improvement over the 4000, I'll pass on Haswell and snag a closeout 13" rMBP.
 
I to am waiting on a 15" rMBP, but $2500+ on a laptop makes me wince. Let us know how you like it, OP!

On a similar note, I just joined the Mac family. Traded a monitor for a 2007 era MBP, new HD but only 2G of ram. Currently running Lion. Grabbed it up as a learning tool more than anything, and it's handy to sync my new iPhone to.
 
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I to am waiting on a 15" rMBP, but $2500+ on a laptop makes me wince. Let us know how you like it, OP!

On a similar note, I just joined the Mac family. Traded a monitor for a 2007 era MBP, new HD but only 2G of ram. Currently running Lion. Grabbed it up as a learning tool more than anything, and it's handy to sync my new iPhone to.

Same here. Took a class called "Mobile Device Programming" to finish up my CS degree, and it was actually an iOS development course. So everything has to be done on a Mac with Xcode. Instead of trying to find time to make use of a handful of Macs and three iPads they have on campus I just bought a Late-2011 MBP 13 and an iPad3. My poor XPS 17 is sitting on the end table collecting dust now.
 
I to am waiting on a 15" rMBP, but $2500+ on a laptop makes me wince.
I had a 15" rMBP for a few months earlier this year. It's an amazing laptop even with the high price tag. However, it's still a bit large for frequent travel. No sweat for couple days/week, but if you're on the road just about every day, the 13" rMBP is a better option, IMO.

I consider the 15" rMBP more of a desktop replacement and the 13" rMBP a great road warrior laptop.
 
I had a 15" rMBP for a few months earlier this year. It's an amazing laptop even with the high price tag. However, it's still a bit on the large size for frequent travel. No sweat for couple days/week, but if you're on the road just about every day, the 13" rMBP is a better option, IMO.

I consider the 15" rMBP more of a desktop replacement and the 13" rMBP a great road warrior laptop.

Yep, mine will be a desktop replacement. I'll take my work Dell ultrabook on the road trips.
 
So I haven't had too much time on it yet. Spent most of it restoring Mountain Lion just to make sure those best buy employees didn't do anything odd to it, which really is just me being a bit paranoid. I liked the Internet Restore option; is this available to all ML installs? I had a 7.2k HDD and the SSD really speeds things up but I'm wondering what the difference would be like if I had ever put an SSD in the 09. Other than that just charged it and installed Office 2012, which also seems much improved over 2008. Finally got around to buying that through Microsoft HUP today too.

It's definitely nice shaving off 2 lbs or so. The screen really does look nice and looking forward to using it more. I don't think the MagSafe 2 is an improvement over the old T or L connectors. I was really having to line it up perfectly for it to stay.

The wife hasn't had a chance to use it yet. She worked a 12 today and again tomorrow. Should get her feedback tomorrow night or Wednesday.

Ruoh, yes I have always preferred syncing iPhone to a Mac. iTunes works great on OSX but last time I tried on Windows it was still terrible. :(

Archer: Ouch! $775 is more than its worth. I'm not even sure I'd drop another $280 on it anytime soon to be honest.
 
Internet restore (Command-Option-R) works for all Lion and Mountain Lion systems. But you don't get the free iLife suite if it's already been redeemed for that device's serial number by someone else.


I found out the hard way that 10.8 is tied to your iTunes account and not the device it's installed on. So I'm stuck on 10.7 and don't want to put the money down to upgrade with 10.9 being so close to release (assuming you can even go straight from 10.7 to 10.9)
 
Congrats. I grabbed a 13 rMBP a few months ago and it is fantastic.

LOVE the screen and the form factor. It is small, fast, and powerful. Never have had much interest in Macs, but this was the best monitor and performance in a small package I could find with good build quality.
 
Congrats. I grabbed a 13 rMBP a few months ago and it is fantastic.

LOVE the screen and the form factor. It is small, fast, and powerful. Never have had much interest in Macs, but this was the best monitor and performance in a small package I could find with good build quality.
The only concern I have about the 13" rMBP is the ability of the integrated graphics (HD 4000) to run the 2560x1600 screen smoothly. Had any such problems with yours?
 
My work purchased a 13" rMBP for me and I love it.

The only issues I have really are some lag on sites using Chrome and Safari.
 
The only concern I have about the 13" rMBP is the ability of the integrated graphics (HD 4000) to run the 2560x1600 screen smoothly. Had any such problems with yours?

Nope, buttery smooth.

I use it with an external 1080p display as well and it works fine.
 
I'm on Mavericks

The stuttering from the website The Donut posted isn't the ui. there are about two dozen squares with flash running in them. there isn't any stutter otherwise
 
If I am correct, Apple scales the graphics in rMBP 15" via the CPU to ensure consistent performance. Though, I think a lot of highly designed UI websites can cause a bottleneck, especially with Safari.
 
If I am correct, Apple scales the graphics in rMBP 15" via the CPU to ensure consistent performance. Though, I think a lot of highly designed UI websites can cause a bottleneck, especially with Safari.

Shouldn't be a problem with the Haswell Irispros....
 
I'm on Mavericks

The stuttering from the website The Donut posted isn't the ui. there are about two dozen squares with flash running in them. there isn't any stutter otherwise

There is no flash on that site. it's all HTML5 and CSS3.

The fact that my £1,000+ laptop cannot render a modern website without choking is laughable. I understand why it can't, because it's rendering it at 3000x1800+.

I'm told Mavericks improves this somewhat, but I'm doubtful as it's simply a case of the hardware being underpowered.
 
There is no flash on that site. it's all HTML5 and CSS3.

The fact that my £1,000+ laptop cannot render a modern website without choking is laughable. I understand why it can't, because it's rendering it at 3000x1800+.

I'm told Mavericks improves this somewhat, but I'm doubtful as it's simply a case of the hardware being underpowered.
that's weird but when I click on one of the little boxes and open it at the top of the page it stops being jittery. I don't know enough about website design but something seems wrong with the page
 
that's weird but when I click on one of the little boxes and open it at the top of the page it stops being jittery. I don't know enough about website design but something seems wrong with the page

The reason its smoother on the other pages is because on the main page it has a full screen background that moves with the page (Parallax) where the other page does not.

For some reason, rMBP's seem to chug when attempting to deal with this - probably because they're moving a detailed/full screen 3200x1200+ image on every scroll.

It's a shame though as otherwise I love this machine.

I'm super eager to get onto Mavericks as I have a few things I need to test.
 
The reason its smoother on the other pages is because on the main page it has a full screen background that moves with the page (Parallax) where the other page does not.

For some reason, rMBP's seem to chug when attempting to deal with this - probably because they're moving a detailed/full screen 3200x1200+ image on every scroll.

It's a shame though as otherwise I love this machine.

I'm super eager to get onto Mavericks as I have a few things I need to test.
I rrrrrrreeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyyyyy hope the Haswell CPU/GPU upgrade makes this little problem go away.
 
Try this, tell me if it's buttery smooth on your 13" rMBP... don't use your external display.

http://themes.semicolonweb.com/html/offbeat/

I get 2-5fps scrolling in Safari and Chrome.

It causes my desktop to not scroll smoothly on IE10. I don't have any other browsers handy to test it because my school stuff only works well with IE so no reason to use anything else at the moment.

My wife is somewhat disappointed there's no SuperDrive. I thought Remote Disc would be a viable solution but after messing around with it I guess it won't burn. So I may look into buying an external SuperDrive, or another external DVD/RW, or find a cheap Mac Mini to leave running as a shared iTunes Media and just use it to burn things on occasion. It isn't too much of a pain to copy things over to the desktop but it would be nice to have all the music centralized.

Other than that we are both enjoying it very much.
 
Oh I know, it was just the best example I can find. There's quite a few sites I enounter that have similar issues.

A lot of developers are not doing a great job at optimizing code. Just cause something is not flash does not instantly mean it is good.

That site lags on my other machines with plenty beefy GPUs (HD5770 on one for example).

I have seen the issue you are describing, but it is in pretty limited cases that I encounter it.
 
I'm currently waiting on the haswell update. Saw the 13" rMBP at best buy for the first time last week. Really want to upgrade from my MBA now!
 
I'm currently waiting on the haswell update. Saw the 13" rMBP at best buy for the first time last week. Really want to upgrade from my MBA now!

I'm right there with you.

I almost bit on the Macbook Air after the Haswell update but I can't take the resolution after seeing the rMBP.
 
Just as an FYI, if you take your old one in for repair at apple they will send it off for a flat rate repair for $755 or so. If you clean it up well enough that they cant find any liquid exposure they might be able to do it for $280

OR you could try leaving it in a large ziplock bag filled with Rice to pull out any moisture before turning it back on.
My friend just lost his Iphone to the bottom of a lake for 40 minutes, and did this same trick with rice. After 24-36 hrs, its back to normal operation.

Worth a try as rice is much cheaper than $280.
 
OR you could try leaving it in a large ziplock bag filled with Rice to pull out any moisture before turning it back on.
My friend just lost his Iphone to the bottom of a lake for 40 minutes, and did this same trick with rice. After 24-36 hrs, its back to normal operation.

Worth a try as rice is much cheaper than $280.

If it had been water I would have done this but it was a diet coke so there will still be a residue that could be shorting out components. I'm hoping now that one of my classes is over I'll have time to completely clean it this weekend.
 
Went into the local Apple store this evening... asked if they had any Haswell MBPs in. She opened her mouth, then audibly shut it, and said no, just the iMacs... so something is afoot.
 
Went into the local Apple store this evening... asked if they had any Haswell MBPs in. She opened her mouth, then audibly shut it, and said no, just the iMacs... so something is afoot.

Yeah, you simply stumped/confused a saleswoman. :p
 
Yeah, you simply stumped/confused a saleswoman. :p

No, I'm pretty sure she knew what I was talking about. She didn't look confused... she actually said, "no but we have the Haswell iMacs".
 
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