The elephant in the room, though, is that huge (non-replaceable) lithium-ion battery that takes up almost half of the total volume of the MBP’s chassis. This is 25% thinner and lighter than the non-Retina MacBook Pro, but still quite a lot heavier than almost-comparable ultrabooks, such as the Asus Zenbook Prime. The complete caboodle comes in at a very thin 0.71 inches (1.8cm) and weighs just 4.46lbs (2kg). The dual-fan heatpipe assembly is one of the most elegant solutions I’ve ever seen - and apparently the fans have “asymmetrically spaced impeller blades” to reduce their volume. The Nvidia GT 650M is a Kepler (GK107) GPU with mid-range performance comparable to a Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTS 450 (even Apple struggles to get the high-end 28nm Kepler parts, it seems). There’s a choice of either 8 or 16GB of DDR3L (low-power) RAM. Apple’s keynote suggested there will be a 3820QM (2.7GHz) version, but it isn’t currently available. The RAM, GPU, CPU, and flash (solid state) storage are all soldered onto a custom-built motherboard. It is without doubt, it’s the very best computer we’ve ever built.” When Paul Schiller showed a cutaway photo of the new laptop, it was patently clear that Ive wasn’t being hyperbolic: The Retina display MBP really looks nothing we’ve ever seen before.įor a start, you can forget about replacing or upgrading any component in the new MacBook Pro. With great intent, you disconnect from the past. During the WWDC keynote presentation yesterday, Sir Jonathan Ive appeared on screen to say, “To create something that is genuinely new, you have to start again. The next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display, though, is an engineering wonder in the same league as the original MacBook Air or iPhone. The refreshed MBPs and MBAs don’t have anything surprising under the hood: Sandy Bridge has been upgraded to Ivy Bridge, there’s a new Nvidia 600-series graphics card in the 15-inch models, and USB 3.0 now comes as standard (which is unsurprising, given these are Ivy Bridge systems). The normal 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have also been updated, but the 17-inch MBP has been retired, in effect replaced by the new Retina display MBP. Late yesterday, Apple released a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. It seems the main thing they wanted to fix from the old MBP was the amount of reflected light and they did.This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Well that would be a valid point, but apparently Apple decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it this time around. Some people might still thing a larger diffuse reflection is better than a smaller specular reflection, due to the reflection being soft thus less distracting. More layers=inevitably more reflected light. It's just a different kind of reflection (diffuse vs specular) but the amount of reflected light is in fact lower on a rMBP than on those older matte MBPs.Īn anti-glare filter is not built into the display itself, it's an extra layer that sits on top of the panel. You may think "well it's still more reflective than a matte screen". Now the rMBP is a lot less reflective since the display is directly laminated to glass. Because the main reason the old MBP was reflective is because it had a plastic screen covered with glass with an air gap in between.