Apple launches 0.71" thick next-generation MacBook Pro with 15" Retina display - Page 7

You talking about this specific SSD or all from Apple? The SSD in my MBA only gets around 140 write and 180 read, I wouldn't call that top notch at all.

 

I love Monoprice, but no, they don't. I cannot think of a single thing sold at Monoprice which is higher quality than the original Apple part. In addition to the quality difference, there's usually also a usability difference. For example, Monoprice sells some pretty sturdy sync cables, but the connector is so large that it doesn't even fit into an iPhone with one of the newer bumpers. As another example, Monoprice sells some fantastic chargers (including a 4-port USB charger with 2.1 amp support on one port; great for the new iPad) but it is nowhere near the quality of the charger that came with the iPad.

 

As far as I'm concerned, they're the only place to buy things like HDMI cables, but their products aren't premium quality like Apple's.

It depend. My hobby is photography. My plan next year is to visit , the great canyon, monument valley ... with my family. As we come from France by air plane, I do not plan to carry heavy stuff. So for me it's important to have more than 256 GB of storage. That's why I ordered the 512 GBytes model. 

Hmm, what happens for instance with running a Windows XP in Parallels? Windows XP will be unusable at retina resolution, so the app must double the pixels. How is that user experience? Is that worse than having the larger pixels in the first place? Same is true of course for other non-adapted apps. How is that pixel-doubling in practice? Worse than a low density screen? Better?

From what I can tell, it's going to be like using a pre-Retina iPad app on a Retina iPad. It will simply multiply the pixels to keep the app size the same as anything else. I don't think Apple is dumb enough to leave the apps tiny/unscaled.

It will probably look the same as before, though it will look relatively worse than a Retina enabled app.

Ram wouldn't be as important as disk space. Unless your running a lot of heavy apps you would never need the extra ram as SSD enabled computers don't rely on disk swapping. Generally, I find you can get away with about half as much ram if you have an SSD.

I checked all 6 RMBPs in my local Apple Store and they all used a Samsung SSD card. This covered two of the three capacity options. I have no idea if Apple Stores specifically choose machines with those SSD cards because they are faster than say Toshiba SSD cards or if it's luck or if they all use the same SSD cards.

It also doesn't say what controller it uses but I assume it's Samsung since the card is Samsung and that is what AnandTech discovered.

That said, what you say still holds water because Apple makes absolutely no promises about what SSD NAND or controllers will be used so they can change it at any time. All they promise is a capacity.


I think what he might be getting at is that the RAM is soldered, the SSD is not. And since the additional 8GB RAM is only $200 you might as well invest in that to extend the lifetime of the machine, which also means a higher return when you go to sell it.
Edited by SolipsismX - 6/15/12 at 8:38pm

SSD has a limited number of write cycles, relying on it so heavily as swap is risky, given that people are finding through the drive's diagnostics say that their estimated drive life goes down quicker than they had expected. Also, flash is still nowhere nearly as fast as RAM. Given both factors, you're best off trying to minimize swapping. At the time of this post, I don't even have any pro apps running on my Mac Pro, and I'm finding I have just a tick over 8GB in use.

SolipsismX is right on his assumption of why I advocated my position. The fact that RAM is soldered means you really want to get it if you think there's a chance of needing it. You don't know what you'll be running next year. I think it's relatively certain that SSD can be upgradable later through first and third party upgrades. But if you do need the storage now, then by all means, get it too.

They did bundle several things at the starting price point. Given that they're included, you don't really pay the hidden configuration charge that every oem charges for making custom changes. Adding in a second thunderbolt port and ssd standard + providing the bumped vram configuration makes it compare well, and they can shoehorn it reasonably well into a standard configuration. It also means that when refurbs start to appear, they'll be under the $2k mark. While it's still an expensive machine, this does overcome a psychological price barrier. I agree with your concerns though. I'm not buying one unless they prove to hold up remarkably well over long periods of use. (even then not anytime soon as I don't need a new laptop)

 

I thought Samsung was known for top quality controllers there? I don't mean strictly in terms of performance, but performance, reliability, lack of firmware problems.

SSD enabled computers should not be using any swap at all unless your loading something huge. When you have an SSD you should not see any disk swapping. Your mac will also expand its memory usage to utilize as much ram as possible, even keeping applications in ram when they are not running so you should always see a high memory utilization regardless of how much ram you have.

 

On my iMac I only have 4GB ram, however the OS only appears to use about half of that since I installed an SSD and I keep a lot of apps open. Unless your using some heavy professional applications, like DAW apps or heavy video editing you would never use that ram.

The RAM caching scenario you described happens with HDD based systems too. I don't think the tendency to avoid swapping changes when an SSD is installed.