Apple rumored to pay at least $150 for MacBook Pro Retina Display panels - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by dagamer34 

If the display is less than $200, then it kind of confirms why we haven't seen these screens earlier or on Windows PCs, OS support.

Windows has a different way of handling it, but it doesn't necessarily scale well at all levels under Windows 7. You do have 1920x1080 options. I don't think those are bad, but I haven't seen them side by side.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


Really? Which Windows 7 machine do you have which supports the same DPI as the MBP Retina? (Hint - there isn't one). Or are you talking about running Windows 7 in Boot Camp? If so, you just negated your argument below.
Physical ethernet? A cheap adapter - which you leave connected to the Ethernet cable. When you come into the office, it doesn't matter whether you plug a cable into the Ethernet port or into the TB port - it's still one connection.
Removable storage? I think you're confused as to how modern business works. Very few businesses require this and many even forbid removable storage devices for security reasons. Even if you need it, it's a simple external connector.
Windows? Piece of cake. For $60 extra (plus the Windows site license which you probably already have), you can run it in Fusion or Parallels (or for free with other VMs or Boot Camp. The cost of being able to run both Windows and Mac apps is pretty small compared to the cost of the computer - and more importantly, compared to the cost of the people who are running the computer. If you add even incrementally to their capabilities or efficiencies, it pays for that difference many times over.

I'm not going to debate the dpi. Here's a 1080 IPS ultrabook Previously only a couple notebook oems used IPS displays. It is increasing, and 1920x1080 is quite common. Beyond that it's easy on the eyes. We can debate over which is better, but it looks good. I'm sure some of them will be a flop because high res + IPS doesn't guarantee a great implementation. It's just that sometimes this forum assumes the other brands are running in place every year. Your concerns over removable storage are misplaced. Businesses do not like usb thumb drives. If a drive fails, their IT people would have a method of disposal in place. In the case of these, it would need to return to Apple for a replacement given the soldered nature. Which is more secure? The DoD physically demagnetizes old hard drives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 


But desktops will completely replace laptops. Thanks to tablets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

I'm not surprised at all and would suggest that the actual cost is closer to $200. Combine that with a state of the art GPU and you have a good portion of this laptops price explained. I still believe this laptop to be one of the best bargains Apple has ever offered for sale.
It is interesting that lead times have already passed a month. It sounds like Apple underestimated the appeal of the machine, they could be back logged all year. This will be another home run in the same way iPad is.
The technical side of me can't wait for a teardown of this machine. I want to see all the design trade offs Then I want to see benchmarks and testing of the units under load to see how they do thermally. My only real concern is that the units will thermally throttle too Agressively.
Te only thing that really bothers me about WWDC and this debut is the lack of love for the desktop. Hopefully that is corrected before Mountain Lion debuts.

I'm not surprised that the displays are expensive. The problem on wait times could be an issue of display yields.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flaneur 


Has it never occurred to you that this small, focused, careful company has limitations on the engineering and design that can be carried on at any given time? It may not be "lack of love" but lack of qualified people and other resources, for all we know. They have been busy developing mobile computing as a new industrial category, and you are noisily kvetching as if you know that they're sitting on their hands in the desktop department.
Sorry, but it's getting tiresome, this sense of entitlement.

While it's likely that they're experiencing growing pains given the rate of growth, this is no longer a small company. The mac pro update was the really silly thing. Put in hardware from 2009-2010 and give it the "new" tag.

I doubt the retina MacBook Pro will achieve runaway success in its current iteration.  It's a beautiful machine, no doubt, but at over $2k entry level it's not a mainstream machine by any stretch of the imagination.

I think it will follow the trajectory of the Air-- introduced at a high price garnering respect if not stellar sales, followed by a much lower priced model that redefines the market and gets the competition cranking up their photo copiers.  At that point, we will be instructed that such machines (including aluminum unibody, keyboard style, trackpad layout, bezel design, etc.) are an inevitable "category" (let's call them "hyperbooks") and to imagine that Apple plays a leadership role is to be a deluded fanboy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flaneur 


Has it never occurred to you that this small, focused, careful company has limitations on the engineering and design that can be carried on at any given time? It may not be "lack of love" but lack of qualified people and other resources, for all we know. They have been busy developing mobile computing as a new industrial category, and you are noisily kvetching as if you know that they're sitting on their hands in the desktop department.
Sorry, but it's getting tiresome, this sense of entitlement.

First, check out Apple's profits, they have ample resources to develop all their products in parallel.  Second, WTF?  We're entitled because we want a decent desktop computer from Apple with features and technology commensurate with the price?

I can't speak for what others want, but all I want from Apple is a sub-$2000 desktop tower that offers expandability and the typical desktop performance found in the towers of every single other computer hardware manufacturer.  I don't mind paying an Apple premium, but Apple's desktop tower lineup is ridiculous for anyone who isn't buying one for a small business or larger.  And no, the Mini is a joke computer, I do not want a headless netbook, I want an i7 desktop computer with expandability.  Again, I don't expect Apple to give it to me for free, or even at a good deal, I just want one available.  Am I feeling entitled because of that?

Has anyone tried installing Windows on one of these yet? I'm wondering how readable it is at 2880x1800 :)

Hey Apple, if you're reading this, I'd gladly pay another $200 more for a regular (non-retina display) 15" MBP if it had an option for a retina display... 

I don't like the idea of a glued-in battery, soldered ram, and a more expensive flash drive while giving up ethernet and an optical drive. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

I'm not surprised at all and would suggest that the actual cost is closer to $200. Combine that with a state of the art GPU and you have a good portion of this laptops price explained. I still believe this laptop to be one of the best bargains Apple has ever offered for sale.
It is interesting that lead times have already passed a month. It sounds like Apple underestimated the appeal of the machine, they could be back logged all year. This will be another home run in the same way iPad is.
The technical side of me can't wait for a teardown of this machine. I want to see all the design trade offs Then I want to see benchmarks and testing of the units under load to see how they do thermally. My only real concern is that the units will thermally throttle too Agressively.
Te only thing that really bothers me about WWDC and this debut is the lack of love for the desktop. Hopefully that is corrected before Mountain Lion debuts.

The gpu portion shouldn't be a big cost issue on a laptop in this price range. The same card is used in some less expensive (not cheap, but less expensive) laptops with more vram. The display is probably quite expensive, but I don't know that I lend a lot of credence to rumors over what Apple may or may not pay. It would be interesting to know whose design this is and if it's a generic panel or one available to other oems. It's a little disappointing to see that Apple kept the standard resolution low on the older design. The high res option should really be the norm at this point. I share your concerns over throttling, but I don't think anything will make me drop that much on a first generation product, especially with this design. Thin + soldered + expensive first generation design would make me too nervous. I wasn't sure they'd do something like this in the current year. It may have been to prop up the otherwise bleh ivy bridge refresh, but this gives them the ability to iron out the design by Haswell. Beyond that it seems like Intel is throwing their extra transistors into the gpu rather than opting for more and more cpu cores as their priorities have shifted. I wonder how long it will be before Apple migrates away from discrete graphics on these or if they will do so. I'm never 100% sure what Apple will decide constitutes acceptable performance. They're never the most or least powerful. Usually their decisions seem somewhat consistent, yet I feel they get a bit nitpicky at times trying to maintain the highest margins possible. The vram thing is a sticking point for me, because it limits long term stability with OpenCL programming. Keep in mind Adobe recommends at least 1GB of vram for CS6. A year from now we might see things begin to advocate more, and many laptop oems that ship this card do ship it with 2GB. The things that truly annoyed me were the early 2011 mbp with 256MB of vram and the mini with the same. A company with such excellent margins shouldn't have to cut corners just to shave a few dollars early in the production cycle.

Anyway I too would like to see some love given to the desktop line. The mac pro could use some sign of long term commitment if they're going to stick with it. Without that long term support comes into question, as I've seen support disappear from product lines before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ascii 

Has anyone tried installing Windows on one of these yet? I'm wondering how readable it is at 2880x1800 :)

I can only assume that Windows will shrink to miniature sizes on this laptop, rendering it useless without a magnifying glass.

You could lower the resolution to make Windows appear "normal" but then you lose the whole retina experience and are paying for nothing. I don't know if the bootcamp drivers are available yet but you will probably be able to scale naturally to 1440x900.

Basically the OS has to support the retina resolutions and know when to use 4 pixels for every single pixel in applications and images that aren't retina optimized.

This is something that I'm sure Apple has been working on for a long time and won't just work on a Windows machine with retina hardware. Dell and HP will have to wait for Microsoft to support it before they can offer retina displays. Maybe Windows 9.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaarrrgggh 


The technicians might not want it, but that is the CEO might push for lower TCO by not doing on-site repairs. At some point, complete spare devices are easier to support than parts.
I would say the price to entry is a little on the high side today, and the lack of a builtin Ethernet port means that many companies would need users to VPN into the network, which can have significant licensing costs as well.

No, actually many CEOs have some intelligence, and realize that while performing on-site repairs may not be cheaper than sending laptops out to get fixed, the time of their employees is worth FAR more than the value of their computers.  Executives want their computers fixed within a few hours.  At the minimum, this would mean the technicians would have to have identical machines to try and swap the SSD into.  At that point, you might as well take apart the machine and fix it yourself (replacing ram is trivial, motherboards aren't too difficult, etc).  Managers and engineers without their computers might as well go home and sleep these days (at least in many industries).  Don't give me this crap about sending a laptop away to get fixed being cheaper when it wastes countless days.  Of course, IT could just give these people a replacement laptop, but that also costs quite a bit.  You end up with a day or so wasted while they try to set the machine up like they had it before....  Oh, and even then as I said, they'd want to copy the data off the other machines hard drive.  Not to mention the value of the data stored on the hard drives... Often company security policies do not allow third parties to have access to their computers unless the hard drives (or SSDs) have been wiped or (in some cases) destroyed.  These are the same companies that would have no problem dropping $5k recovering data from a crashed hard drive if it would save a couple weeks of work, or get a product out to market faster.

Phil