In 2012 the Macbook Pro Retina was n’t so much the next leg of laptops as it was a fun oddity by Apple . It was a workstation , design to handle grueling video and photo editing task with aplomb , but it was missing some workstation must , like a videodisk drive or Ethernet interface . Instead it was thinner and lighter than a traditional Macbook Pro , had a gorgeous 1800p display , and was outfitted with a solid state drive .
While not perfect for all , the Macbook Pro Retina was arrant for me , and four year later on , it ’s still better than any other Apple computer I could buy — for the most part .
Not that it is n’t without problems . There ’s currently a serious issue with the OS that ’s going to expect a wipe and a reinstall , and when the warranty ended back in 2013 , flaw begin to appear in the display . numb pixels . brilliant splotches . When I ’d watch a movie and the scene would fade to black , it looked like the Milky Way . I chalked it up to first genesis jitters . Apple work out the wrick .
All images: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
I can assume that Apple has addessed those concerns . Complaints about the show do n’t seem to be too even an happening , but I will admit to wanting to buy a newfangled one almost as soon as those event arose . I waited for a refresh significant enough to justify sell it — it ’s resale value now ruin by the display problems — and drop $ 2,400 on an update .
The next refresh , in 2013 , was n’t good enough . Which is to be expected after just one class . Usually you ’ll see a nice improvement in speed , but nothing to warrant whipping out the course credit card .
In the Macbook Pro Retina ’s case it was a jump from an Ivy Bridge Intel processor to a Haswell Intel processor and a Nvidia 650 m video card to an Nvidia 750 video card . Back then my basal system of measurement for sweet speed improvements wasGeekbench 3 . The grudge hop from 13079 to 14262 . One thousand whole point ! One thousand whole negligible points for most consumer . Unless you require to shave a second off a video render it would definitely not be worth the Johnny Cash I ’d have to spend .
The 2014 refresh come like clockwork , and I rushed back to Geekbench to see the new grudge . for certain , the Macbook Pro Retina still had a Haswell chip — now over a twelvemonth old and an Nvidia 750 scorecard . Yet maybe Apple , with their engine room ingenuity , had reckon out a agency to improve the speed . It had . to 14539 . 277 whole head .
But instead of splurge on a new machine , I upgrade the size of it of the hard drive in my own Macbook Pro Retina . That did n’t fix the issues with the display , or my combustion desire for well speeds , or help my envy for friends with Lenovos and Dells run on work out computer architecture now two days onwards of what I had , but whatever .
Last yr , in 2015 , Apple quietly refreshed the Macbook Pro Retina again . We have one in a week ahead of the launch . I was task with benchmarking it at piece of work and I was excited . Yes , it was still a Haswell microprocessor chip — now three years onetime . But Apple had alternate from the Nvidia 750 m to the AMD Radeon R9M370X video visiting card . That had to meliorate stop number ! That was n’t a two year old video card . It was from 2015 ! It was in laptop made by actual current competitors ! That Geekbench musical score had to improve .
It actually went down.14,423 .
Geekbench 3 is hardly the only metric by which to benchmark a computer though . It ’s a synthetic benchmark , which means numbers are all theoretic and have no real world program . So I benchmarked my old Macbook Pro alongside the new one . And the results were so paltry I shut down both machine in disgust . If you ’re spending $ 2,400 on a laptop it should be more than 10 percent faster than your old laptop computer .
At least in my impression .
Which is why , four years after it ’s institution , the original Macbook Pro Retina is still the best workstation Apple has . Its not that much slower than the new one . Unless you game … on a Mac . In which fount you ’ll see some overnice improvements from the AMD Radeon card . Otherwise start hunting down older Macbook Pro Retinas on Amazon . They ’re cheaper than the brassy ones available in the Apple fund , or from its refurbished division ( there ’s a 2013 model pop off for$2,169 ! ) , and they ’re basically just as fast .
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