I'm new to Apple products, and I'm looking into buying the non retina macbook pro. Apple told me that it can only support 8gb, is that true? If I can use 16gb, will it have any kind of negative impact on the laptop?
Do you know when someone would need 16gb over 8gb? I'm not sure if its something I need to upgrade.
It's mostly if you do heavier creative work. Like say you do print magazines, you might have Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Safari open where each Adobe app uses 3GB each, Safari uses 1-2GB, the OS is using 1GB, the integrated graphics has allocated 512MB-1GB for video memory and miscellaneous smaller apps (email, notes, iTunes etc) use another 1GB combined. That takes the amount needed to over 12GB. The newer systems compress inactive memory so they should give a bit more freedom. What happens if you run out is it offloads some of the memory to the disk drive to fill the physical memory with something else and this can be slow, especially if you use a platter hard drive instead of an SSD.
What is the main reason you want the old model? If it's storage, you can pick up a 13" Retina MBP with 512GB SSD for $1439:
The Retina display makes a big difference because it's also an IPS display so better colors. The old model has a TN panel so you don't get very good viewing angles. It has a faster GPU, is 25% lighter, has an SSD (5-10x faster than HDD) and has longer battery life too. It lacks a DVD drive, ethernet and Firewire but those can be added externally.
It's mostly if you do heavier creative work. Like say you do print magazines, you might have Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Safari open where each Adobe app uses 3GB each, Safari uses 1-2GB, the OS is using 1GB, the integrated graphics has allocated 512MB-1GB for video memory and miscellaneous smaller apps (email, notes, iTunes etc) use another 1GB combined. That takes the amount needed to over 12GB. The newer systems compress inactive memory so they should give a bit more freedom. What happens if you run out is it offloads some of the memory to the disk drive to fill the physical memory with something else and this can be slow, especially if you use a platter hard drive instead of an SSD.
What is the main reason you want the old model? If it's storage, you can pick up a 13" Retina MBP with 512GB SSD for $1439:
The Retina display makes a big difference because it's also an IPS display so better colors. The old model has a TN panel so you don't get very good viewing angles. It has a faster GPU, is 25% lighter, has an SSD (5-10x faster than HDD) and has longer battery life too. It lacks a DVD drive, ethernet and Firewire but those can be added externally.
Adding 16 GB to the Retina MBP makes it expensive. Besides the Retina MBP having a better screen + CPU/GPU, the non Retina MBP is still a great machine if you want upgradable insides and can deal with Ivy Bridge.
Comments
It's mostly if you do heavier creative work. Like say you do print magazines, you might have Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Safari open where each Adobe app uses 3GB each, Safari uses 1-2GB, the OS is using 1GB, the integrated graphics has allocated 512MB-1GB for video memory and miscellaneous smaller apps (email, notes, iTunes etc) use another 1GB combined. That takes the amount needed to over 12GB. The newer systems compress inactive memory so they should give a bit more freedom. What happens if you run out is it offloads some of the memory to the disk drive to fill the physical memory with something else and this can be slow, especially if you use a platter hard drive instead of an SSD.
What is the main reason you want the old model? If it's storage, you can pick up a 13" Retina MBP with 512GB SSD for $1439:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE866LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-air-13ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5
If you can get by with 256GB, that one's only $1189:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE865LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-24ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5
There's a few deals here:
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac
The Retina display makes a big difference because it's also an IPS display so better colors. The old model has a TN panel so you don't get very good viewing angles. It has a faster GPU, is 25% lighter, has an SSD (5-10x faster than HDD) and has longer battery life too. It lacks a DVD drive, ethernet and Firewire but those can be added externally.
It's mostly if you do heavier creative work. Like say you do print magazines, you might have Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Safari open where each Adobe app uses 3GB each, Safari uses 1-2GB, the OS is using 1GB, the integrated graphics has allocated 512MB-1GB for video memory and miscellaneous smaller apps (email, notes, iTunes etc) use another 1GB combined. That takes the amount needed to over 12GB. The newer systems compress inactive memory so they should give a bit more freedom. What happens if you run out is it offloads some of the memory to the disk drive to fill the physical memory with something else and this can be slow, especially if you use a platter hard drive instead of an SSD.
What is the main reason you want the old model? If it's storage, you can pick up a 13" Retina MBP with 512GB SSD for $1439:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE866LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-air-13ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5
If you can get by with 256GB, that one's only $1189:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE865LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-24ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5
There's a few deals here:
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac
The Retina display makes a big difference because it's also an IPS display so better colors. The old model has a TN panel so you don't get very good viewing angles. It has a faster GPU, is 25% lighter, has an SSD (5-10x faster than HDD) and has longer battery life too. It lacks a DVD drive, ethernet and Firewire but those can be added externally.
Adding 16 GB to the Retina MBP makes it expensive. Besides the Retina MBP having a better screen + CPU/GPU, the non Retina MBP is still a great machine if you want upgradable insides and can deal with Ivy Bridge.