New Macbook Pro! (2012, Retina Display) Review, Thoughts.

The new MacBook Pro announced during the Apple WWDC 2012 is a whole new breakthrough.

Here's a couple of reasons:

1. Retina display for a laptop
I don't know how many of you would appreciate the 'retina' display, but it certainly marks the point where the future of Retina Display begins. Also, this is very crucial to Photo and Video editing, with the big screen AND high resolution! If you're thinking, well I don't do any Photo or Video editing, you should be better off with other laptops at the moment as this is kind of the 'prototype' and only photo/video editors would buy a laptop with this steep price tag at this point. But again, it's going to change in the near future.

2. Double Thunderbolt port
Thunderbolt definitely beats USB 3.0 hands-down. The only problem it has is that the Thunderbolt hardwares seems to be expensive (due to its difficult software controls). But many are coming out and low priced Thunderbolt products are coming out (especially the external drives) such as Elgato Thunderbolt SSD. Again, this (at this point) is only useful for professional editors (especially video editors) because you normally won't need a dual 10Gbps connection for your everyday tasks. But for video creative editors, this is a godsend. Especially with the Double Thunderbolt ports since they don't need to buy extra hardware adapters of some sort to extend their Thunderbolt connection. These Thunderbolt ports turn this into a mobile Powerhouse!

3. Newly designed efficient fan
These so-called high-efficiency fans cools this mobile workplace. Not much to say about this one, but this definitely would help reducing the noise generated from the fan while increasing air flow efficiency (with the introduction of unbalanced fan gap - yep).

4. Long battery
Of course, it would last barely 1~2 hours when you're topping its max and the fan goes off to its max, but from the experience I get from Macbook Air, 7 hours roughly translates to 5 hours of normal work. Now, I recommend you to plug in the power when you are doing some heavy-duty tasks such as video-editing (it's always video editing, isn't it?) because the battery life will shorten by a bit. But other than that, with all that spec, 7 hours is amazing although I suspect that with switched graphics (to a more powerful one) and/or mid to mid-heavy workload would literally squeeze the juice out of the pack.

5. Thinness and portability
My god, you have no idea why having a thin laptop is important. Own a Macbook Air and you'll know right away. Or this laptop. Now I was able to get my hands on the new Macbook Pro and before I talk about its weight and its feelings, I want to describe my experience with the Macbook Air. My MBA (Macbook Air) is very, very light and I can carry it around with only 1 hand, completely balanced, and it feels like just a book. I wouldn't consider doing this with other hefty laptops, but this was lightweight and portable enough so that I carry this around everywhere, even to my bathroom. *cough. Macbook Pro 15" Retina Display have the weight of the 'normal' 13 inch laptop (something like 2 inch thick, just normal Dell or Samsung laptop) but have the size of 15 inch laptop. Now, the thickness of this laptop is great (although not perfect). But you do need to hold it with 2 hands (both by weight and by size) and the size will feel uncomfortable to carry it around. It is designed to be a powerhouse, so heck, why not just put it in one place and not move it? That's what it's designed to be anyway. Not really portable, I must say.

6. Flash storage
I'm going to say only one thing about flash: I've been using Macbook Air, and I have no idea how you could use a laptop without flash. It's so slow! Fortunately, this Macbook Pro comes with a Flash storage, so you can rest assured that you won't bore yourself right at the loading screen. In fact, it's even faster than the one in Macbook Air and is so fast that you don't even see the spinning wheel on booting (it's probably the same as Macbook Air, by experience). This IS the future. You can't live without it. Period.

That's about it! I would recommend this 'thin' laptop (I'm not too sure as to put this in the 'ultrabook' category or not. Of course, this IS an Ultrabook but since I've got so used to Macbook Air...) to anyone who needs some serious power and/or fast and powerful expansion. Mainly for professionals, I wouldn't recommend this for normal users due to 1. high price tag 2. its big size 3. its overly powerful computing power (it won't be in a couple of years).

If you are a normal user though, I would recommend waiting for a bit until Apple applies the same to the 13-inch Macbook Pro (because this IS the future) or they hugely bump the specs of Macbook Air (which is highly unlikely).

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Apple News - New Mac Pro 2012?

Now that Intel had released their newest line of Xeon processors, all of them designed with 23nm CPU, Ivy Bridge is now targeting the low-end server, also known as microservers, and some for the high and mid range processors.

What this means is that Apple is likely to renew their product line of Mac Pros (for professionals) that hadn't been updated since 2009. Ever since 2009, Mac Pros were using the Intel Xeon 3000 family or the Intel Xeon 5000 family - which is adequate enough and still packs some punch today, but getting behind the technology improvements and breakthroughs.

This might be it. After a long time, Apple might release the new Mac Pro, working closely with Intel behind the scenes, ready to launch as soon as Intel updates their processor line and broadcast it to the world. This has been Apple Inc's strategy and it's just how they roll. This allows for maximum profit, partly by the buzz of Intel Ivy Bridge 23nm architecture.

This would be awesome. After being anticipated for a long time, they are really likely to refresh their Mac Pros. I am definitely looking forward that, and it would mean to the other video/graphic professionals that they could get back to Mac, being ensured the highest performance and lowest electricity consumption, with the connectors designed for future, more long-term improvements and enhancements that would allow for long time use of these Mac Pros. Maybe even a motherboard that could house the next generation CPUs. That would be awesome.

Some of the features expected/wanted:
Even more fully customizable interior
Updated software (OpenCL, OpenGL, etc) that would allow maximum use of the newest CPU and GPU
Intel Ivy Bridge CPU line from variety of ranges (high end to low end)
A Nvidia GPU - this is LARGELY needed due to release of Adobe CS6 and all their applications taking advantage in hardware and software acceleration with the implementation of Adobe Mercury Engine or stuffs like that in basically all of their Master Collection CS6 application suite. Also the newest AutoCAD and Maya would benefit hugely from faster hardware and updated software and firmware to support it!
A Thunderbolt port - this one's a bit too obvious!
Hopefully an addition of Blu-ray disk reader!
Everything else should be the same - similar prices, similar specs of other parts (maybe even more efficient power regulation), same disks, same RAM, and all those other factory parts that comes with the Mac Pro.

Hopefully you get an idea of what the new Mac Pro will be capable of along with its expected specs and features, and when it's going to be released/announced! (hopefully soon)

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