Should I get myself a MBPr 13 now?

I have been looking for a new PC laptop (ultrabook) to replace my Thinkpad since Haswell is announced. and I need one before Thanksgiving. but so far I can't find one I really want, i know there is no "perfect laptop", but the color problem with Yoga 2 Pro, the image retention problem on XPS 12, small SSD on ACER S7 and ATIV Book 9 Plus are all deal breakers to me. ASUS Zenbook UX301 has a model that meets all my requirements for a reasonable price of $1999, but no one have them in stock... and no one knows when they will have them in stock... long story short, there is no PC for me right now...

So the new MBPr really appears to be a sensible pick hardware wise. the problem is, I have never used a MAC on a regular basis before... I know I can install windows 8.1 with boot camp, but from what I have learnt on different forums, windows on a MBP have poor battery life, sloppy touchpad performance, bad scaling etc... so, if i'm going to get a MBPr, I plan to commit to OSX completely. I don't play games on laptop, only office work, RAW photo and video editing and other usual tasks...

the software i rely heavily are:
1. Office 2013 (pretty basic word, excel, powerpoint work, outlook for emails), what would I miss if I use Office 2011 for Mac? would it be a frustrating transition? i do love the new formatting functions only available in Office 2013 a lot (compare to Office 2010).
2. Adobe Lightroom & photoshop, i believe both are equally good on OSX if not better, i just need to buy them again...
3. ACDSee Pro 6, I love taking pictures with my DSLR, ACDSee Pro is the best photo organizing / fast viewing software i have tried, i know there is a MAC version called ACDSee pro 3 for MAC, I just dont know how good it is compare to its windows sibling.
4. Power Director 11, for editing videos, I'm sure there are good software on MAC for this, any sugguestions?
5. Sync and backup tools, i use an ancient software called Viceversa Pro, it's old but it gets the job done nicely, can I find a good backup software on MAC so I can manually backup all my files easily? any particular software I should look for?

so, i m seriously thinking about getting a MBPr, but should I?

 

1. Office 2011 on the Mac is a completely different beast. I would recommend you try it out.
5. Time Machine is part of the OS. It really does work well. It is a very mature solution at this point.

I had the first generation 15" Retina Macbook Pro and I loved it. Bootcamp was not that bad but it is not as good as running OSX. My observations:
* The touchpad worked fine in windows for me. Not as good as OSX but still better than 95% of the crappy touchpads on laptops out there.
* Yes, the battery life is not as good in Windows. This is well documented, but feel free to look around. I still found the battery life acceptable.
* Even running at non native resolution in Windows, I still loved the screen.
* If you need to run windows in OSX, Vmware fusion works like a champ.

Keep in mind that Apple often runs great deals in the refurb section. You often see the base Retina Macbook 15 2012 model for 1599. True it is Ivy Bridge and not Haswell but it is still a very capable mobile quad core. Once you jump to the Macbook line and get used to the build quality and the attention to detail it is hard to go back.

 

1) Like what Redbeard said, Office for Windows and Office for Mac are non-trivially different, at least in terms of user interface. Try them out if you can before buying. Or you could consider alternative office software like iWork, LibreOffice, etc. LibreOffice keeps the same interface on different platforms, so moving between OSes won't mess with you as much as Office.

2) Perhaps you could talk to Adobe to try to convert your license to OSX?

3) Not familiar with that software...

4) Well, for very basic editing (mostly touch-ups), there's iMovie. There's also FCP, though Adobe offers better software imo.

5) Time Machine is native on OSX, though I'd personally recommend you use your own external HDD instead of a Time Machine HDD sold by Apple, since those tended to have reliability issues.

Definitely check out the refurbished MBPs since you can save a decent amount when compared to the brand-new prices on those machines. As to whether or not to get a rMBP, that ultimately depends on your wants/needs/tastes. I'm personally not a big fan of OSX or Apple's hardware (I just pop by this section every so often for fun), though if you're dead-set on running OSX, Apple's pretty much the best way to go.

 

Adobe will not convert licenses from windows to OSX, and PS / LR work better in win 7/8 now after the long running Adobe/Apple battle the last few years. ( to be honest all Adobe products seem to be minorly to significantly better since the last batch of updates ) Photoshop is still close to on par but Lightroom is a bit neutered in OSX

and Jarhead hit most points on the head, especially # 5


Sorry for my long absence guys and girls, but it was a busy summer

 

Thanks guys, i think i'll be ok if i can adjust to office 2011, but now seems the bootcamp problem and the freeze that affect all new MBP haven't been solved, i can wait for another 3 weeks.

Anyway, i tried to google it but can't find the answer, just how bad the battery life would be running windows 8 compare to running osx on a rMBP? 60%?

 

Since you're looking at the 13" rMBP which doesn't have a dedicated GPU, the battery life won't be that much different. My experience with a couple of MacBook Airs is that the battery life in Windows 7 is about 90% of the battery life in OS X.

I think you would be better off running Windows in WMWare Fusion like Redbeard mentioned, or in Parallels, and gradually weaning yourself off of Windows.

 

Dmk2, this is good to know. Unless the top spec Zenbook ux301LA become available in 2 weeks time, or Apple can't fix the freeze problem / boot camp problem soon, i'll buy a rMBP.

 

after some more time on the forum, i think I should simply run windows in Parallels Desktop 9, or maybe install windows with bootcamp but load it from Parallels Desktop 9, so i can have best of both world, if I convenience is what I need, I can run Parallels, if i do need performance, I can reboot to windows with bootcamp.

if I'm doing it this way, will changes made in Parallels reflected in bootcamp partition and vice versa? or is it a one time thing? meaning after I load bootcamp partition by Parallels then these are separate windows systems?

and another question: if I rely on Parallels Desktop only to create and edit my office 2013 files (usually not too big), no games, no video/RAW photo editing, then do I need to buy a rMBP with 16G RAM rMBP? or 8G should be sufficient?

 

The answer to your first question is yes, it's the same Windows installation, so anything you do in Parallels is reflected in Boot Camp and vice versa. This is how I have mine set up. I run my boot camp Windows partition in a Parallels virtual machine for most of the things I need Windows for, and only boot natively into the Boot Camp partition to play an occasional game when I'm traveling. The main caveats with using a Boot Camp installation in Parallels is that you can't suspend the VM and the Boot Camp partition is fixed in size. But it's really nice to be able to use Windows both ways.

For MS Office use in a Parallels VM, even 4GB is sufficient. Even my old 2010 MBA 11 with 4GB and Core 2 Duo ULV ran Windows in a VM with no trouble at all.

 

You should be able to do all of that on your mac using Parallels. I run all my Windows apps using parallels with little problem (except decreased battery life).

 

Running both bootcamp and parallels could give you all that you want. Obviously, this is gonna hit your speed and battery life but this way you can choose what you want to do (bootcamp for speed and performance, parallels for ease of use)

 

im exactly on the same position with the threadstarter now.Been a thinkpad user for quite some time wonder if he finally getting his rMBP 13. all this freezing not responding issue makes me think twice before pulling trigger

 

Personally I didn't get a macbook as 1. I can't get over not being able snap windows like it was in Windows(16:10 vs 16:9). 2. Office 2011 for mac gave me a far inferior experience compared to that from Office 2013 on windows. 3. There is no dedicated home, end and del keys. I can't accept shortcuts.

Macbooks are great machines and I just wish they have windows keyboards so I can run windows on them without any issue. Grew up under windows and I just can't switch.. I don't see a more promising platform.

 

I grew up on Windows too, but I was definitely open to learning a new OS when I got my Macbook. It's actually really interseting learning a new operating system. Maybe some helpful advice would be to stop trying to make everything about Windows but accept the differences and try to adapt and use it to add to your computer savvy.

 

If youre sensitive to keyboard layouts but you still want something like OSX, you could get some Wintel laptop and install some form of Linux or BSD over it (OSX is nothing more than a reskinned BSD in essence). You can even change up the UI to make it look just like OSX.

Or you could install OSX on a Wintel, though that's a little bit more work.

 

If you are used to ThinkPads , a Mac would be a downgrade.

 

Eh, there's something to be said about the aesthetic and presentation of the Macbook. To each their own..

 

Aesthetic is purely a subjective thing. Figure what he meant by that was the lack of TrackPoint, lower durability, objective things you can measure.

 

not really, 2 different classes, if you compare a mb to a ideapad, then it would be fair, honestly wish apple came out with a business class notebook just so they could put lenovo to shame, but it goes against their business model

 

Going from a business class laptop to a consumer class laptop is generally considered a downgrade.
I know I'm not going to buy a Mac since it's not as impressive as my W530 in many areas.

All my laptops are business class models. I have a 5 year old Fujitsu Lifebook T5010 , a ~1.5 year old W530 and 1.5 year old X230t.

 

Funny this hasn't been mentioned more on these forums (did a quick search for lag, scroll lag, etc just now), but there is noticeable UI/screen/scroll lag on the rMBP 13's.

I was in your same boat, windows user all my life... with the recent price drop and hardware upgrade for the 13" retinas, I pulled the trigger on black friday. Mid-range model, 2.4ghz i5, 256 flash mem and 8gb ram. I get noticeable screen lag when using gmail, notebookcheck, and some other sites in chrome. Additionally, switching between desktops and going to full screen and whatnot is quite choppy. Note by lag, I mean animation FPS.

I really want to love this computer (design and attention to detail is amazing IMO) but this lag on something as basic as gmail is really leading me towards returning the laptop. Will give it another couple weeks, hopefully something changes my mind. Also, this is a very common problem that's been discussed pretty in depth over on some other forums, so it doesn't seem to be a unique problem to me. Just a heads up.

 

I'm a long time Thinkpad X series tablet user (ones with real digitizers), and I made a switch last month. As a engineering student, it's working great so far.

Awesome battery life whether using OSX or BootCamp-Windows7. Build quality is flawless, and it's dead silent and cold/lukewarm to the touch most of the times. I really care a lot about build quality, proper alignments and stuff. Not to show off or anything, and no I don't go sit at Starbucks with a laptop.
I think Apple really knows how to build a good quality machine. Apple and Nokia (I tried Lumia 920). My current phone is HTC One by the way, and it has mis-aligned screen and speaker grills which kind of sucks when HTC is advertising zero-gap build. My previous phone was Samsung Note, and it had cracking screen surrounding plastic parts. Wife's iPhone (4S/5S) has always been flawless build quality and performance-wise. My next phone will most likely be a high-end small size Nokia. This rMBP13 is the only Apple product I own.

I also play fps games (mostly TF2) on my desktop, and I am sensitive to lags and frame drops. I can sense the lag in Nokia 920 Windows Phone, and also my HTC One time by time. This rMBP13 does lag big time when switching between full screen apps. People saying they don't realize this lag is either lying or they are too dull to realize the frame rate drops. For me, it's tolerable though, and I don't think it'll be easily fixed. You might have to wait couple years for the CPU/GPU advancement and the OS optimization to resolve the stutter on such high resolution screen. It's not an impression-breaking lag like how it is with low-end Android phones. My first Android was Dell Streak 5, and I hated Android back then.

I have a 27" Samsung SA650 monitor, and now I'm torn between using the larger screen with big pixels vs 13" crisp but smaller screen which actually gives similar workspace. Now I wish even more that this 27" was also a higher resolution monitor. It's like once you taste the snappiness of the SSD you can't go back to HDD. Same for the screen, once you taste the sharpness of the screen, it'll itch going back to a low resolution screen. I tried using Sony Vaio Z long time ago which has 1080p screen on a 13" screen, and Windows dpi scaling sucks that I just used it at 100% dpi back then. I know it still sucks with Windows 7, but haven't tried in Windows 8.


Now, for the down side, I'm still trying to adjust to the keyboard layout. Command key, Option key, Control key, and their layout, and the backwards delete key, home/end/pageup/pagedown is killing me, but I'll get used to it sooner or later. Also, when using my Logitech mouse, the scroll is really weird. At first it scrolls slowly, but after couple lines it scrolls way too fast. Nowhere to change the settings on this I think. So I actually prefer the touchpad now, which is x10 better than any Windows laptop's touchpad.


I don't see a reason not to get a rMBP13 right now. If you have to use only Windows and are not willing to try OSX, then I would suggest Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook. Wife has previous gen XPS13 Ivy-bridge model from her work, but the touchpad on that thing is so-so, and it heats up pretty easily, battery life is meh. It's probably better with the Haswell models though.

 

Supposedly the rMBP 15 with Iris Pro doesn't suffer the same screen lag as the 13".

I'm also a Windows exclusive (Android phone) lifer who is finally being driven to seriously look at the rMBPs. I want a high resolution, top quality screen but I have to be able to scale up font sizes without sacrificing image quality. I mean, why bother paying for a top-level screen if the only usable output (at least for me) negates the quality. Would prefer matte to the rMBPs glossy; Would prefer not to patronize Apple at all, but Microsoft may finally drive me there.

 

Well, you could always get a high-res display (rMBP or some Wintel) and put a Linux distro on there. Some distros have decent QHD support, unlike 8/8.1.

 

Have never done Linux, don't have a lot of tech expertise, so I really prefer something I can use stock delivered.

 

Are there any comparable Ultrabooks with a high resolution and Iris graphics?

 

Looking around some of the Mac-oriented forums it looks like the 15" rMBP also suffers lag issues. More alarming, on the Apple Macbook Pro discussion board is a 592 page (!) thread entitled " MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?", where evidently people are having image retention and calibration (yellow/pink) issues with the retina displays. Oh well...

 

Get a macbook air. I have a 2010 MBP and it runs perfectly. That's just me though.

 

The MBPr 13 is worth the price difference.

 

I love my MBP 13. It's a 2010 model and works great!

 

I get some scroll lag too but I've noticed that it's mainly due to the processing power that Chrome demands. On a clean Safari browser, I get very little scroll lag.

 

There's lag on the new 13" rMBP? I thought they would have fixed that when they updated the graphics from last year's model.... I'll have to check it out at the store but that would be a major turnoff.

 

I'm pretty sure the scrolling issues with the 13" MBPr are limited to units with Intel HD 4000 graphics. I messed with a display unit in the Apple Store yesterday under Safari, it didn't seem to have issues with scrolling or zooming smoothly. I also know that Mavericks helped older 13" MBPr models but I'm pretty sure the use of Intel Iris graphics, which were made with high resolution displays in mind, solved the graphical stuttering issues in the 13" MBPr. That is with using Apple software though. Chrome for OS X has issues even on my 15" MBP and that has 16GB of RAM, a quad-core Core i7 CPU, and the Nvidia 650M turned on (I'm using an external display so it's on most of the times when I'm at home).

 

That's strange because Chrome works fine in OS X for me, and I recently updated to Mavericks. Neither of us have Retina displays either.

 

It's mainly when zooming with the trackpad pinch-to-zoom gesture. It always seems to stutter as if I'm trying to zoom on a PC from 1998. Browsing is fine and scrolling is mostly fine though it can stutter here and there. Zooming just isn't smooth at all. I also don't like how Chrome handles zooming. Although it's not a big deal, especially since I have 16GB of RAM, but Chrome does consume more RAM than Safari when browsing the same sites for me. I'm not sure if that's due to the updates in Safari implemented through Mavericks or something else. I do remember, in OS X 10.8, Safari would normally consume more RAM than Chrome. Not by much, only 20-40MB depending on the site. It just seems to be reversed now. Lastly, the back/forward gestures on the trackpad don't always work for me with Chrome yet they always work with Safari.

That's mainly why I've stuck with Safari under OS X. I rely on Chrome through Windows, even my Windows VMs running on my MBP.

 

I'd use Safari if it had a proper Adblock Plus plugin, but the one that's there doesn't work at all on Flash videos. This is a limitation of Safari and not the plugin because the same one works fine with other webkit browsers (Opera, Chrome). I've used Firefox for the longest time, but it has some weird issue that where it writes a ton of data to my SSD for no reason whatsoever. Checking activity monitor, short browsing sessions with any browser but Firefox show writes of a few hundred MB, tops. A similar amount of time spent browsing with Firefox balloons it to a gigabyte and more. There's a thread in the Windows forum here that was posted recently about this issue, so it's something with Firefox and not the OS.

I actually like Opera the best from a functionality standpoint, but it does a horrific job of GPU management. It switches to my AMD dGPU for no reason on websites that run just fine on the iGPU in other browsers. I keep a fixed zoom 99.9% of the time, and if I do need to change it, I use keyboard shortcuts, so the pinch-to-zoom problem doesn't impact me, but I can see where that would be annoying. My biggest problem with Chrome is the fact that if I use two-finger gestures to move back and forward among previously visited web pages, there's an arrow overlay that pops up on the left and right hand sides of the page as it transitions. It's profoundly irritating and I've not found any way to turn it off.

 

I tested out a 13" rMBP and 13" Air at the store last night. At 'retina' resolution, the MBP didn't lag. However, when I scaled it up to the 1440x900 or 1680x1050 resolution I definitely noticed a good bit of lag. Doing mission control (or whatever that zoom-out thing is) with several programs open made it lag terribly everytime at 1680. The integrated graphics just don't have enough grunt to keep up with it because it's effectively rendering at 3360x2100 and then downsampling.

If I got a retina MBP I would definitely go for one with a strong GPU solution, as the effective 1280x800 retina resolution is too small for my uses.