Tag: macbook air

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My Thoughts on the MacBook Pro Retina

About This Mac

So Ryan IMs me this morning letting me know that our MacBook Pros had arrived. I wasn’t even expecting them to arrive today and became super excited! I’m not going to post any photos of the MacBook Pro, as if you want to look at nice shiny photos of the laptop, there’s tons of good sources online, include Apple’s own website.

I was torn between getting the new MacBook Air or the new MacBook Pro Retina. I really liked the 13″ MacBook Air that I currently have and ever since using my ThinkPad X31 in college, I’ve always been a fan of small light portable laptops. But the retina screen and the lowered 4.5lb weight finally sold me on the MacBook Pro Retina. I really wished they would’ve released a MacBook Air Retina. Next year maybe?

Retina Display

It’s so PRETTY!

At first I wasn’t very impressed. It was very pretty and very sharp, but it’s similar to seeing a movie in 720p and then upgrading to 1080p. I just wasn’t blown away. It wasn’t until I switched back to my cinema display that I realized how awesome the retina display is. The cinema display just wasn’t very pretty nor very sharp anymore. Hopefully they’ll release the Cinema Display Retina soon!

What you’ll realize soon with the Retina display is any app that doesn’t support HiDPI looks horrible. Using Firefox and Chrome on the retina screen literally hurts your eyes. I know Chrome nightly builds have already begun supporting HiDPI, but I was sad to find out that Firefox doesn’t have plans to support HiDPI any time soon. I might very well switch to Safari because of this. Maybe that was Apple’s plan all along. Those evil geniuses!

The screenshot above was taken from the retina screen and measures less than 3″ on the retina screen and almost 6″ on my cinema display.

Noise

The second most noticeable thing for me is the spinning fan or lack thereof. I don’t think my fan has turned on once ever since I finished my migration, and I’ve ran tests and watched HD trailers simultaneously. When the fan does spin on (I was listening to Ryan’s), it’s still very quiet. I can’t really tell you what the decibel measurement is, but let’s just say Ryan’s old laptop used to sound like a jet engine and now it sounds like a summer breeze.

Update: A quick clarification. Ryan’s old laptop was a last gen 15″ MacBook Pro. He was powering 3 displays (2x 27″ Cinema Displays + Retina display), so that may be why his fan was spinning up. Even when compared to my MacBook Air, the new MacBook Pro Retina’s fan noise is still a lot quieter.

Weight

Coming from a MacBook Air, I can’t really say I appreciate the extra 1.5lbs. However, I do have to say the 4.5lbs is rather manageable. The laptop is almost as thin as my MacBook Air and the screen is 2″ bigger.

Battery Life

At full charge, my battery indicator reports that I have 5.5hrs of usage left. I can’t really comment on battery life yet as I haven’t had a chance to run it on just batteries, but for comparisons sake, my old 13″ MacBook Air usually reported 2-3hrs of battery life at full charge.

Speed

Coming from a Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz with 8GB of RAM to Core i7 2.6GHz with 16GB of RAM, this machine is significantly faster. But it doesn’t really take much to beat my 2-generations-old MacBook Air. This would probably explain why my fan hasn’t really spun up yet.

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Some New Toys

It’s been awhile since my last post, but this post is going to be short and probably only a summary. I’ve recently obtained some rather new cool toys to play with.

First of all, I finally took the plunge and purchased an HDHR (HDHomeRun). For those who don’t know what this thing is, it’s a dual external QAM/ATSC tuner for your PC and is the easiest way to get QAM channels on your Media Center. I’ve had Media Center for awhile now, but I’ve really ever used it to watch videos and stuff. I finally wanted to play with the TV settings and like I said, took the plunge. I got it for a $160 shipped (deal is still available, inquire if you’re interested), only to find out a few days later a rumor of an employee discount. I’ll probably talk more about this later.

The next toy I got is my new Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet. I had actually ordered this back in mid-December, but due to a UPS fiasco and them delivering my package to some other address, Lenovo to build another one and that’s why it took so long for it to arrive. Then there was the fact I was no longer in Monterey Park, and had to change the shipping which was more complicated than I originally thought. Anyway, I had been holding out for a portable laptop for some time since my IBM Thinkpad X31. I really wanted a X-series Thinkpad with a better screen. They decided to put a better screen on the Tablet, but not the regular X-series, so I finally made up my mind to get it. I was also contemplating on waiting for Apple to release the MacBook Slim (or what I had called it), but finally gave up on waiting for it. When the MacBook Air was announced a few days ago, I justified to myself that most 1st generation Apple products have a lot of problems.

Anyway, this morning I was having some sort of dream. I can’t remember what exactly the dream was but it involved a doorbell ringing. Doorbell ringing?!?! I jumped out of bed, ran to the window and saw the UPS truck. I ran down the 2 flights of stairs as a kid would do on Christmas morning to greet my UPS guy and signed for my package. I’ve played with it for awhile really nice. I’m still not that accustomed to the tablet features, but it’ll probably come bit by bit. It comes with Vista Business and definitely needs more RAM. Fortunately, a 2GB stick is on its way. I’d go into the specs later with its official post.

Yep, life is good. 🙂