[jtwrace]

"if the new hotness" is for all intents a rev. A model.  Revision B will have better retina support, larger SSD and a lower price point. 

Sorry Pez (thanks Tyson) but I must do it.   

[Pez]

Whatever, Tyson has jumped onto the Apple carousel of death. He was giving me a hard time the other day that his 13" MBA can work with airplay mirroring and my old ass computers can't.

[newzooreview]

Don't other companies come out with new models regularly? With new features, advantages? 
At the moment, other companies are finding it hard to build notebooks with the same specs as the MacBook Air/Retina MBP and keep the price competitive. The days of Macs being a luxury compared to comparable computers from others are long over.

[Mathew_M]

The big question is "Do you really need it?"  The new MBP comes across as a luxury device more than any other previous models.  The exception possibly being the original Titanium Powerbook G4, but at least that offered a new processor technology. Sure the retina display will be great for pixel peeping, but until programs like Photoshop can utilize it you'll still probably be running at 1440x900 (or whatever the "best" setting is).  You're also paying a premium in drive space with the stock model.  I don't know of too many professionals that can get by with a 256GB SSD.  And who wants to carry a bunch of adapters for external storage?

I do think the retina display is more handy for the iPad where viewing distance is typically closer.  For example, I'm near sighted and wear glasses.  I like to veg out with the iPad on the sofa with my glasses off.  The iPad 2 screen looks pretty grainy from a few inches away whereas the "new" iPad's screen is crystal clear. 

I can see getting excited about it, but I just feel they gave up too much in putting a premium on the display over on-board storage and non-upgradeability. 

[Mathew_M]

At less than 3/4" designing a case that is able to accommodate user replaceable components is just not practical.

See that's what the Macbook Air is for.  The Macbook Pro is a computer for professionals who require upgradeability.  No wonder they dropped the name from the screen bezel.  Apple's stock price may be through the roof but their accomodating professional users is rock bottom.

[nathanm]

There's always going to be growing pains when moving into higher resolutions.  Having pretty much imperceptible dot pitch on a computer display is going to be the future, and it will be friggin' awesome.  I really don't like the iPad and I'm not big on laptops, but those displays make me drool.  I will wait for a standalone monitor at 220ppi.

The Retina display helps with some current problems:
Digital cameras, even consumer models make files that are WAY larger than what normal displays can show at 1:1.  Now having all those megapixels doesn't go to waste so much in our screen-dominated world.

It opens up the potential for being able to deliver beautiful typography to users.  The web eschews most serif fonts for good reason; there's not enough pixels to render them properly.  Anti-aliasing helps, but at 220 you are talking about a much crispier, paper-like situation.

It will hopefully lead to scaleable, vector-based UIs rather than bitmaps

(I am also stoked that they actually fixed the glare problem.  Was not expecting that.  I thought it was all deep-blacks-'til-death and damn the side effects.  Very cool.)

[Mathew_M]

Nathan, I agree with most of what you said.  Unfortunately there is still some glare but it's about as good as it gets without going with a matte display.

Hopefully we'll see a trickle down effect into the iMac line.  I would personally like a 20" retina display iMac.  The current 1080p model is pretty lackluster.  A retina equiped model would boost sales I think.  The 27" model is just too big for my desk.

[nathanm]

Also, it opens the door to higher res movies at home as well.  Since everything is gonna be shot on Reds and other 4K and up these new finer pitch displays will support that.  I don't think the bandwidth problem will be easily solved, but the potential is there.  The side effects of this heightened image quality will be just like what happens when you get your awesome stereo system going; "hey, this recording isn't as good as I remember!"  But it will be more like wishing you didn't know every pore and hair on that actor's face and such.

When I first saw the display on my mom's iPad I said, "Damn, kids today are going to be soooo spoiled!" Ha!  I honestly did not expect to see high res displays in the forseeable future, I thought it was gonna remain a $10,000 tool reserved for hospitals and scientists.  Gotta love the computer industry.  I suspect we will have some sort of OLED display that rolls up into a tube someday.  Then we'll have gone full circle, going back to reading things from scrolls!  That might satisfy the transparent-display fetish that every Sci-Fi movie has, but maybe not considering that the early gee whiz transparency of OS X has been largely abandoned.

[TomS]

I ordered up a 2.6g CPU, 16GB RAM, 256gb SSD yesterday for my daughter. Hopefully it's not so tempting I can't live without one too, though I'd probably rather have a 13" MBA for my needs.

[jtwrace]

I ordered up a 2.6g CPU, 16GB RAM, 256gb SSD yesterday for my daughter. Hopefully it's not so tempting I can't live without one too, though I'd probably rather have a 13" MBA for my needs.

Hopefully you used the awesome SCAD educational discount.   

Nah, you'll want one too....

[newzooreview]

Sure the retina display will be great for pixel peeping, but until programs like Photoshop can utilize it you'll still probably be running at 1440x900 (or whatever the "best" setting is).

I can see getting excited about it, but I just feel they gave up too much in putting a premium on the display over on-board storage and non-upgradeability.

Right now I have three photo applications that run at full Retina resolution: iPhoto, Pixelmator, and Focus. Pixelmator provides all of the core functionality of Photoshop. I haven't upgraded Photoshop since CS3 because Adobe is perpetually lagging in development, charges vast sums just for upgrades, and doesn't improve on features that are useful to me.  Aperture is also available as a fully Retina ready photo app as well, but I don't use it. The Retina display allows more than just pixel peeping; it allows a much easier way to evaluate final sharpness and edit with a more realistic view of the final result on screen.

For video, the Retina display coupled with the dedicated graphics process is a godsend. I can edit a full HD movie in real time and still have room on screen for the editing controls and timeline in Final Cut Pro. It's night and day compared to a standard resolution display or the MacBook Air with no dedicated graphics card.

I think it's pretty closed minded to categorically label the Retina MBP a luxury. Depending on your needs and profession it's an essential tool to earn a living. It's certainly a luxury for many people, but here we are posting on an audiophile's forum: do we bother to add a comment to every post that we're talking about stuff that's a luxury in 99% of the cases? So why is that relevant here? It's a hackneyed old conceit that Macs are an elitist computer platform in any case. Macs are mainstream now; Apple is the largest corporation on the planet; and price/performance on Apple products is very very good across computers, smartphones, and tablets.

[TomS]

Hopefully you used the awesome SCAD educational discount.   

Nah, you'll want one too....

Yep, saved $200 smackers plus the AppleCare discount and $100 AppStore gift card

[tnargs]

....I think it's pretty closed minded to categorically label the Retina MBP a luxury. ...

Precisely. Anything is a luxury if you don't need it. If you do need it, well, it's not a luxury.