Late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro worth it?

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ChaosNightWolf

Limp Gawd
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I'm in need of a laptop and I've been considering the latest MacBook Pro (Baseline model). Is there anyone in here that can share their experiences switching to a Mac from PC (or Windows I should say).

Also, if I do decide to get the Mac. Is it worth it to shell out $100 for the 8gb of ram vs 4?
 
Depends on what you do with a laptop.

What programs do you use currently? Is this mainly a personal or business machine?
 
Sorry SubZero.

450 - It's a personal machine I'll be using 3 days a week for basic usage, but who knows what I'll want to do in the future. The hardest part is deciding to make the jump to an Mac in general.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Sorry SubZero.

450 - It's a personal machine I'll be using 3 days a week for basic usage, but who knows what I'll want to do in the future. The hardest part is deciding to make the jump to an Mac in general.
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What do you mean basic usage? Browsing, listening to music, watching movies?

In any case, get 8GB RAM. $100 isn't too much considering the overall price of the machine and furthermore the machine doesn't have upgradable RAM, so whatever you buy - you are stuck with! Also, make sure you get AppleCare - you'll need it!
 
OP, just to clarify SuperSubZero's post further, he is saying that your title mentions a Retina Macbook Pro, yet your post mentions "Macbook Pro" which is a different machine then the "Retina Macbook Pro"...Which in particular are you asking about?
 
Chaos,

I have the late 2012 13" rMBP (2.5/8/128) and my roommate has the late 2013 model (2.6/8/512). I think the late 2013 model is a fantastic machine and really was what the 2012 should have been (slightly thinner, slightly lighter, 3-4 hours more battery life, etc.). The retina screen is great and I don't regret buying my computer in the slightest. My roommates computer does seem slightly faster (probably do to Iris and Pci-e SSD).

Still, the Macbook Air is a bit cheaper and will give you ~6 hours more battery life for light usage, and the 15 rMBP has the option for dedicated graphics and has a quad core processor along with more screen real estate. I'm thinking (at least the rumors point to) a release of a retina Macbook air in 6-8 months, which would make sense as the 13" rMBP is sandwiched between the much more powerful 15" rMBP and the more portable and cheaper 13" Macbook air. I also previously owned a 2012 Macbook Air 13" and I do occasionally miss how light it was, and really the only benefit for the 13" rMBP is the screen and connectivity.

I'd look at the 2.4 / 8 / 256 model or possibly the 2.6 / 8 / 256 or 512 model. Bare minimum I would get would be a 2.4 / 8 / 128, but 128 is really not much to work with.
 
I'll drop my quick 2 cents.

If you understand PC hardware, you understand Mac hardware. There isn't a big difference. If you've needed 8GB in the past over 4GB then get the 8. If you expect you'll use it, buy it. If you are paranoid, get it, because as has been mentioned, it's soldered in. You won't be able to upgrade it later.

Item two, it's really up to you whether something is worth it or not. I realize this is counter to your question. However, I don't know your usage cases, I don't know how much time you expect to use this machine, I don't know what types of machines you prefer, and the list goes on. I also can't tell you whether or not a BMW or Mercedes is worth it either. Part of the answer to this question is your preference. You're in the Mac forums, everyone in here either will tell you that Mac's are great and they use them or they're the type to be in this forum because they hate Macs and want to bash. So you have to decide if this investment is worth it to you.

Is the 13" Retina an excellent machine? Absolutely, provided it fits your usage case. I would personally love to have a 13" Retina as I feel it's the sweet spot in a truly mobile device for people that need a machine to go everywhere. The 15" is still too big for anyone that isn't simply taking their laptop from home to work and back and nowhere else. There are some exceptions, like DJ's or on location photographers who tether or something like that. But for the majority 13" is much easier to take on the road, or in the coffee shop, to a friends house, up a hill, etc than the 15" model. It has plenty of power, an excellent screen, SSD, good battery life, and OSX.

Item three, the conversion story. The short version is, I used Windows for over 10 years personally as a hobby and later for work. I moved to a Mac in 2008 and now I haven't looked back. I have zero interest in purchasing another PC, at least in the current state of the industry. I'm not foolish enough to say 'never', as 10 years in tech is a mind-boggling long time and entire companies can rise and fall, but I'm much more efficient in OSX, and it works better for me and my industry and what I want my computers to do. That is to say, be quick, efficient, and then get out of the way when I'm working. I spend a lot of time using Photoshop, Lightroom, browsing, watching video, and reading.

Did it take time to learn OSX? Yes. Were there new paradigms in the OS that I had to learn that were different than Windows? Yes. Did I ever feel it was hard? Not particularly. I will also admit however that as the brain wants to stick with the old ways, some Mac paradigms bothered me for a while until I got used to them. I often see people complain about these things in this forum so I know I wasn't the only one, but after I understood them and got used to them I realize that these things are fine. An example is the expand button on a window, the Windows paradigm is to take up the whole screen, the OSX paradigm is to only expand large enough to reveal all content. For some switchers that drives them nuts. That one actually didn't bother me, the one that did was actually a bit deeper, but I've said enough.
 
Unknown, thanks for the input. I should have written my original post to reflect that point a lot better - that I'm actually more concerned about the conversion from Windows to OSX, and that I used the words "worth it" really loosely. This is my first time considering a Mac, and I'm really just wondering if OSX is "worth" the premium Apple makes you pay vs. getting just a regular HP machine (quad core and dedicated graphics mind you) for about half the price.
 
I've owned a MacBook Pro since 2007 and can say categorically that the Retina models are the best ever. Easily the biggest upgrade since Apple adopted the aluminum unibody. I've got the late 2012 15" Retina with 2.6GHz, 512GB, 8GB, GT 650M.

I thought about upgrading to the 2013 Haswell, but there really was no need or appreciable improvement over what I already have. Plus, the only 15" model with dedicated graphics (GT 750M) costs $2600. No way in hell was I going to spend that much for incremental, at best, upgrades.

I suggest buying a late 2012 refurb or checking eBay for 2012 models. I found mine on eBay for $1500, in October. It also has over 2 years of extended AppleCare service left on it. I just got really lucky by finding a seller who needed the money and a quick sale. My Retina MBP looks brand new and was well cared for. Not saying you'll find as good a deal, but you never know.

As far as the transition from Windows to OS X, it's not as drastic as it might seem. You also still have the option of running Windows on your MBP through Boot Camp.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Unknown, thanks for the input. I should have written my original post to reflect that point a lot better - that I'm actually more concerned about the conversion from Windows to OSX, and that I used the words "worth it" really loosely. This is my first time considering a Mac, and I'm really just wondering if OSX is "worth" the premium Apple makes you pay vs. getting just a regular HP machine (quad core and dedicated graphics mind you) for about half the price.
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The first thing to recognize is that much of that premium doesn't exist, as such -- it's just a question of what you're prioritizing.

That HP system has a fast CPU and (possibly) fast graphics, but it probably doesn't have an SSD, a greater-than-1080p display and all-day battery life. It doesn't have those three elements together, anyway.

That's what I dig about the Retina MacBook Pro (I have a 13-inch late 2013 model). Everything loads almost instantly, and images look extra-sharp; I can use it on battery for 9-10 hours in real-world conditions that include lots of browser tabs, Twitter, iTunes, and periodic uses of Photoshop, iPhoto and iMovie. It's simply a very enjoyable laptop to use, and it may be faster in practice than that HP model because of the quicker storage and integrated graphics (Apple uses Intel's Iris and Iris Pro, which are equivalent to low-end dedicated GPUs).

There's also the free OS upgrades, phone support from people who actually know the products and service/training at Apple retail stores. Those factors are harder to quantify than faster chips, but they do matter.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Unknown, thanks for the input. I should have written my original post to reflect that point a lot better - that I'm actually more concerned about the conversion from Windows to OSX, and that I used the words "worth it" really loosely. This is my first time considering a Mac, and I'm really just wondering if OSX is "worth" the premium Apple makes you pay vs. getting just a regular HP machine (quad core and dedicated graphics mind you) for about half the price.
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I agree for the most part with Aurelius that there isn't really a premium. It's definitely a 'get what you pay for' type of situation. Most often people looking at Mac's only see a very specific set of hardware specs while ignoring others and are unable to see why a Mac costs what it does... They usually miss things like: dimensions (that is to say the form factor), weight, battery life, materials, screen resolution, and quality of the screen. Mobile Macs for the most part are a balance between power and battery life while being stuffed into the sleekest, lightest form possible. PC manufacturers do not do this balance.

Macs also are the best at the intangibles. They excel in their presentation, and have "oohs" and "ahs" where as (most) PC's don't (there are a few PC competitors directly trying to compete with Apple, like Sony with VAIO or the HP Envy series with the Air, but overall that isn't the case). Some people really care about this stuff, some couldn't care less.

Cars generally are the easiest way to illustrate the difference. Can you buy a Camaro Z28 with 323HP for $24k? Why yes you can. Then why in the world would you choose to buy a BMW 428i for $40k when it 'only' has 240HP? If your only concern is straight line performance (much like people that only look at just the CPU speed/RAM/video card) then you'll miss the other stuff like weight, or handling, or things like build quality or luxury. Once again this illustration shows something. Some people will never understand why someone would buy a BMW over a less expensive car with more horsepower. Other people know the differences and appreciate those differences and would prefer where their dollars go into the car to go into different places and not just into HP into an engine.

This is very similar to the Mac/PC debate. I'm an advocate for buying what makes the most amount of sense for you. I can't say whether or not a Mac is going to be that or not. The only other thing I can add is just to tell you to go to an Apple store or Best Buy and play with one for a few hours. Most Best Buys that I've been to aren't particularly crowded in their Mac sections (unlike the Apple store) and you probably could just stand there and not really be disturbed too often, save for the BB salesman asking if you need help with anything every 15 minutes or so.
 
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my 15" MBP fits in the timbuk2 I used when I had my 13" MBP. It only fits without any kind of case. I would also suggest a 2012 15" rMBP. The newer chips are ridiculously faster, though. My partner's 2011 MBA had SSD speeds around 200-300 MB/s and she had the more desirable Samsung controller that was reputed to be faster than the Toshiba version within the same release cycle. Her 2013 has speeds exceeding 900 MB/s. My rMBP has speeds similar to her 2011 MBA so I suspect the 2013 Haswell has a similar ridiculous 2-3x SSD performance increase.

The base 15" rMBP has a number of upgrades to the MBP--8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and dedicated 650m. You have to pay about double the price of a 2012 to get the 2013 with a 750m. I don't feel the price is worth it to me to upgrade yet.

As soon as you touch an apple device you'll understand where a good portion of the cost is coming from. You'll have to decide whether those are important features but they will be apparent (if you value them). You can hang out in a store for as long as you want playing with everything Apple has. You can also buy something and take it home to play with it for longer. Apple has a generous return policy. Also, while Apple Care has been a great service well worth the cost, in my experience, you have a full year of Apple Care as part of your purchase. You can extend that Apple Care for another two years even if you wait until 364 days after your initial purchase date to do so.

I love OSX. I also thought Windows 7 was the best OS from MS in their whole history and I enjoy Windows 8.1. I have it on both my gaming PC and in a VM on my rMBP. I didn't do bootcamp. The macbook is powerful enough to do what I need to do in Windows inside of a VM and I use parallels so the programs running in Windows actually look like OS X Apps. I don't ever see myself going back to a PC for productivity.

I would also consider a Google retina Chromebook if the price was low enough for me. And if I wanted to go back to PC I would have to look at business class notebooks comparably priced to macbooks.
 
I love my rMBP. I NEVER thought I would buy a Mac, but honestly OSX is a damn good OS. Learning the differences between Windows and OSX doesn't take too long, except for if you're a "power user" and like to tweak things.. then there's definitely a learning curve. But that's all part of the fun :)

Also, running Windows on a separate partition (using Bootcamp) is a very viable option with the new rMBPs. I have 8.1 running on mine and other than some quirks stemming from the slightly different Apple keyboard design and the retina screen, it's exactly the same as running a regular Windows notebook, and I still have OSX for my productivity stuff. The 15" model with the GT 750m even games pretty well with 8.1. I love it.
 
I got one with 16GB Ram and a 256GB SSD. Consider maxing out the RAM, it would suck to spend so much money on a machine to realize it's not adequate and you cant upgrade it.
 
Short answer is yes. I am personally a bit tired of Windows so I went with a 13"MBP, stock CPU (honestly think anything more than stock is a waste of money for marginal speed boost), 8gb, 240gb SSD. Put windows 7 on it in bootcamp in case I need to use some software in the future.
Mac is amazing, and its trackpad is the best.
 
First of all, as others pointed out, the RAM is soldered on, so it is best to just bump it up now.

My rMBP is actually my first personal one since the supremely heavy Toshiba one I had ten years ago but the it is noticeably better than other laptops that were assigned to me for work in terms of build quality and more importantly, the SSD has made everything better.

For me, Mac OS X isn't any more difficult than Windows or Linux to pick up - it helps that I have been using it at work for over a year now.

For me, it is definitely worth it.
 
I think it is.

On a desktop with a mechanical keyboard and a decent mouse, you can make a strong argument for Windows. That's less true with mobile. The best Windows touchpad is just decent. The MBP touchpad is a revelation, particularly once you start adding your own custom gestures. It's hard to describe how nice it is not to feel the constant urge to dock the thing into an external control setup.

It hurts me that I had to pay $1700 to get 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD on my rMBP 13, but I don't regret it. The system is perfectly built. The screen is the best available outside of an AdobeRGB panel in $3000 Precision machines, and it's 16:10. The fans are completely silent until you load the CPU for twenty minutes, and then it's still quiet. It gets 12 hours of battery life and resumes from sleep immediately. Everything about it is just the best mobile experience I've ever had.

The only thing I miss is the lack of a quad-core chip. The UI is quick, but not as blazingly instant as my 4 GHz i7 Windows desktop. The 15" rMBPs are pretty much there. When Apple does upgrade the CPUs, the system will be essentially perfect. I couldn't give a damn about touch in a non-convertible laptop.

So far, the only things I don't like are that I can't (as yet) control the animation speeds for some things (like making a window fullscreen) and I'm not used to having a title bar on top, so despite the tall aspect ratio, the screen still feels slightly confined. Not a big deal.

To directly answer your question: buy the middle-tier system with 256/8. It's a fair deal at $1500, or less if you can swing Education pricing. Mavericks has impressive memory management. It'll compress content up to a third, so you're really nearer to 10-11GB of performance. After a bunch of programs installs, I have about 175GB free on my SSD. I could see the 128 GB model becoming confining very quickly.
 
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I bought the middle tier 13 inch system and got education pricing on it. So far I'm loving it, and the screen is 2nd to none.
 
After almost 7 months with my non Retina MBP I'm really glad actually that I didn't get the retina.

1.) the stuff isn't soldered to the board so I was able to upgrade it to 16gb ram for almost nothing.
2.) I didn't want the optical drive anyway, so i used the extra space to install the original 500GB drive, and then i put a 240 SSD in the primary slot. It's like a macbook air with balls now.


Lastly, and i think this is the biggest thing, I knew going in what i WASN'T gonna use it for. I'm not a creative person so the display and graphics adapter were adequate for what I needed.

I think for most people this is the case.

If you're a serious pro, you may differ, and really want that retina.

NEw/Refurb MBP non retina can be had with 16GB for under $1k.
 
Chaos, when you're acclimated to the Mac interface after a few days or a week, install BetterTouchTool. It'll let you create your own touch shortcuts. It also includes Windows Snap functionality.

Eminence, coming from the graphics side, the non-Retina was never in contention for me. The high-res panel is great for other reasons though: text is beautiful, viewing angles are excellent, there are more usable scaling options, and, particularly if it's calibrated, colors are dead on. If you don't mind losing that, the slim chassis, and Haswell battery life, I also think the MBP13 is a pretty good deal. It becomes less of one when 1080p IPS systems like Dell's aluminum 14" are thrown into the mix, though.
 
Alexdi said:
Chaos, when you're acclimated to the Mac interface after a few days or a week, install BetterTouchTool. It'll let you create your own touch shortcuts. It also includes Windows Snap functionality.

Eminence, coming from the graphics side, the non-Retina was never in contention for me. The high-res panel is great for other reasons though: text is beautiful, viewing angles are excellent, there are more usable scaling options, and, particularly if it's calibrated, colors are dead on. If you don't mind losing that, the slim chassis, and Haswell battery life, I also think the MBP13 is a pretty good deal. It becomes less of one when 1080p IPS systems like Dell's aluminum 14" are thrown into the mix, though.
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i agree, tons of slim, light Win8 notebooks out there.

It's sad so many comparisons of Win vs. OSx ignore that most slim, light, magnesium or aluminum ultra books are within 10-15% cost of an i-product.


I dig the Yoga, and event the Asus product. I just happened to have a gift card I won as a SPIF in a sales contest with work, and really wanted "disposable" money to try out an ultraportable notebook. For me, the retina, with soldered on RAM, and a pricey display just didn't fit my budget of $1k.


It's a beautiful device however, and incredibly potent for 90% of most users tasks.
 
Alexdi said:
Chaos, when you're acclimated to the Mac interface after a few days or a week, install BetterTouchTool. It'll let you create your own touch shortcuts. It also includes Windows Snap functionality.

Eminence, coming from the graphics side, the non-Retina was never in contention for me. The high-res panel is great for other reasons though: text is beautiful, viewing angles are excellent, there are more usable scaling options, and, particularly if it's calibrated, colors are dead on. If you don't mind losing that, the slim chassis, and Haswell battery life, I also think the MBP13 is a pretty good deal. It becomes less of one when 1080p IPS systems like Dell's aluminum 14" are thrown into the mix, though.
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i agree, tons of slim, light Win8 notebooks out there.

It's sad so many comparisons of Win vs. OSx ignore that most slim, light, magnesium or aluminum ultra books are within 10-15% cost of an i-product.


I dig the Yoga, and even the Asus product. I just happened to have a gift card I won as a SPIF in a sales contest with work, and really wanted "disposable" money to try out an ultraportable notebook. For me, the retina, with soldered on RAM, and a pricey display just didn't fit my budget of $1k.


It's a beautiful device however, and incredibly potent for 90% of most users tasks.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Sorry SubZero.

450 - It's a personal machine I'll be using 3 days a week for basic usage, but who knows what I'll want to do in the future. The hardest part is deciding to make the jump to an Mac in general.
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I bought my wife a $137 Samsung chromebook because with things like google docs and web browsing are all she does. She needed a keyboard and the tablet/keyboard things aren't very good to sit down and type a paper on.
 
hardcore windows user since late 80's...now I absolutely love my late 2013 15" MacBook pro loaded up with the 4960HQ Crystalwell chipset-16GB ram-nividia 750GT 2GB-512 flash drive, external SuperDrive, 1TB Lacie external USB 3.0/Thunderbolt2 with 300GBs formatted for data backups and the other 70GBs for Apples Time Machine. And a matching 32GB Lacie ThumbDrive. Bothe Lacie dives are the protective ones with Orange Soft Material around all corners, even ThumbDrive has complete coverage with Orange Soft Material to protect against drops etc.

I have internal flash drive formatted with 65GBs to BootCamp (latest version) where I run Windows 7 pro 64 bit same as I have on my Puget Systems built Desktop. I wouldn't even run windows on it but need it for 2 programs we have to use working for GM/Chevrolet.

Absolutely love Apple and the build quality of laptop which I got the above with very protective shoulder bag which was list at like $3,700 with 3 years of AppleCare but with my daughters Teacher/Educational discount put me at $3,200. Worth every penny. Have had iPhones since 3G and am in awe of the Laptop in its aluminum with great fit and finish and nice screen. My Puget Desktop was purposely built to my specs for photography and audio work. Well this laptop does all that and quicker. I am not a gamer but choose BootCamp over Parallels 9 as I wanted a clean boot into windows 7 pro 64 bit which runs flawlessly. For Thunderbolt it must be plugged in BEFORE you boot into BootCamp or windows won't see it and MS has a white paper out on why they have to do this. I stayed with 7 as I like it better than 8.1.

I would recommend this MacBook pro with the nVidia card only whether I game or not as I like a dedicated video card. I also love the free software Apple puts in the package as I don't use Office at all anymore. Loving Pages, Keynote, Numbers and GarageBand so much more. Just my now biased opinion. You can get much cheaper of a system using windows but I see real numbers on resale and the laptops versus MacBook Pros are light years apart. Good Luck with which ever you choose.

I did go to Barnes and Noble and buy a huge book called "OSX Mavericks 10.9 The Missing Manual" and it did make the switch easier as I usually bought MS Books on big OS changes. Nice to have pictures to go with instructions. The Mac manual was a lifesaver as so many keys do different things and others do the same but with different names for them.... "aliases"....
 
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as of last week if you bought and registered parallels 9 they upgraded you to 10 for free. the offer might still be available.
 
I have the 13 retina early 2013 model and love it. It's fast enough for what I do and love the portability. No brainer over the Air. However, I will probably get a 15" retina in future for its graphics card.
 
I use a 15" macbook pro for school and I game on a win 8.1 desktop. I carry my mac to work and school with me everyday and I feel its definitely worth it.
 
I recently sold my mid-2012 15" rMBP and bought the late-2013 13" rMBP. I'm loving the portability of the smaller version and the screen is every bit as impressive as the 15" retina. For me, the 15" always was more machine than I really needed in a laptop. The 13" has plenty of power for my work/leisure needs and stays a helluva lot cooler than the 15". Were I using a laptop as my only computer, I'd go with the 15". As a secondary or road warrior machine, the 13" can't be beat, IMO.
 
Tyler-Durden said:
I recently sold my mid-2012 15" rMBP and bought the late-2013 13" rMBP. I'm loving the portability of the smaller version and the screen is every bit as impressive as the 15" retina. For me, the 15" always was more machine than I really needed in a laptop. The 13" has plenty of power for my work/leisure needs and stays a helluva lot cooler than the 15". Were I using a laptop as my only computer, I'd go with the 15". As a secondary or road warrior machine, the 13" can't be beat, IMO.
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100% exactly what I did, same exact models as well. It just made sense in my situation.
 
I've got a PC for gaming, and a 13" rMBP for everything else. I dont like dealing with computer issues anymore. Guess I'm old. I do everything important on my mac. The iCloud crap is great with my iphone and ipad.
 
Non-media production is fine without the 16g of ram, but I highly suggest 8g for everyone else.

I was holding on to my 17" mbp, but after it was stolen I had to replace with the late 2013 15" retina. And I'm glad I did. Don't underestimate the zip of these PCI-e flash SSDs from Samsung.

They are going to start showing up on ebay/OWC as aftermarket upgrade options (though not cheap, still less than Apple prices), but officially you buy your hd size when you buy the machine, like ram. If you skimp on size to save money, make a plan for USB 3/thunderbold slim external storage.

I don't think anyone would regret moving to these machines
 
Also, if you do get the 1 tb SSD option, these are 4 lane PCI-e drives. Read/Writes on those are over 1000 mb/s. Wow.
 
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