So - here's my story. I had a 2007-era Macbook Pro 15" (Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz) that blew up last spring thanks to the defective Nvidia 8600 GTS GPU. I was a couple months out of the extended warranty for replacement so they wanted $600 for a new logic board (ha ha ha ha...).
Instead of buying a new laptop immediately, I decided to wait to see what the Retina Macbook Pro would do. It ended up being too expensive for the available storage capacity, and I skipped it. I've instead moved my stuff to my desktop computer and my portable computing has been on a Nexus 7 tablet. Unfortunately, the Nexus 7 doesn't quite cut it with regards to editing photos in Lightroom, so I wouldn't mind owning another laptop.
Since I've waited so long I can afford to wait a while longer for Haswell. I read that it will be showing up in quad-core laptops this June? I'm assuming these will be higher price-point devices like the rMBP and other top of the line systems.
I have no problem sticking with Apple if they produce a good product at a reasonable price but I'm also considering moving back to Windows since the hardware in that area seems to have advanced a huge amount compared to the crap that was available in 2007. My main reason for the MBP was the 5 hour battery life compared to the 3 hours on a typical Windows laptop of the era.
My main concern with the rMBP is the storage capacity problem - I can probably live with a 256 GB SSD but it would be annoying, and going beyond 256 GB allows Apple to charge whatever the hell they want for the upgrade. I'd much rather have a 256 GB SSD plus a nice 750+ GB hard drive for storing photos and music and the like.
I also absolutely LOVE the high-dpi screen on the rMBP but the graphics performance is a bit worrisome (low frame rates in OS X). Has this improved with OS updates or will I have to wait for better graphics hardware in newer rMBP revisions? Haswell is supposed to have better graphics, but are they good enough?
Does anyone have any thoughts for me - products to look out for, reasons to have a Windows vs Mac device?
Thanks!
Instead of buying a new laptop immediately, I decided to wait to see what the Retina Macbook Pro would do. It ended up being too expensive for the available storage capacity, and I skipped it. I've instead moved my stuff to my desktop computer and my portable computing has been on a Nexus 7 tablet. Unfortunately, the Nexus 7 doesn't quite cut it with regards to editing photos in Lightroom, so I wouldn't mind owning another laptop.
Since I've waited so long I can afford to wait a while longer for Haswell. I read that it will be showing up in quad-core laptops this June? I'm assuming these will be higher price-point devices like the rMBP and other top of the line systems.
I have no problem sticking with Apple if they produce a good product at a reasonable price but I'm also considering moving back to Windows since the hardware in that area seems to have advanced a huge amount compared to the crap that was available in 2007. My main reason for the MBP was the 5 hour battery life compared to the 3 hours on a typical Windows laptop of the era.
My main concern with the rMBP is the storage capacity problem - I can probably live with a 256 GB SSD but it would be annoying, and going beyond 256 GB allows Apple to charge whatever the hell they want for the upgrade. I'd much rather have a 256 GB SSD plus a nice 750+ GB hard drive for storing photos and music and the like.
I also absolutely LOVE the high-dpi screen on the rMBP but the graphics performance is a bit worrisome (low frame rates in OS X). Has this improved with OS updates or will I have to wait for better graphics hardware in newer rMBP revisions? Haswell is supposed to have better graphics, but are they good enough?
Does anyone have any thoughts for me - products to look out for, reasons to have a Windows vs Mac device?
Thanks!