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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars2013 models have several hardware updates -- works great, May 12, 2013
By
Credo - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
The unit I bought from Amazon was built five weeks ago, in April 2013. If you check the web, you'll discover this model underwent significant hardware and software changes since the 2012 models. I first bought a unit built in June of 2012 from an online vender. The unit did have an LG monitor and did suffer from burn-in problems from the beginning. I sent the unit back as defective the same day I received it.
This new unit does have an LG monitor but does not have burn-in issues or any other issues related to the 2012 models. I've ran three burn-in tests, using Lightroom, CS6 and Preview, no burn-in. Then I transferred 200bg of files via thunderbolt, no issues. The unit did get pretty warm while warming a high definition netflix movie, even the keys were warm but I suspect that was normal.
Overall, the unit is flawless, and a true pleasure to use. I recommend a drop/extended warranty on these because of the cost and vast amount of problems the units first had. Looks like Apple has got this model up to par. Very pleased.
Thanks, we'll take a look at this review.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsThe best Mac I've ever owned., May 6, 2013
By
J. Riga (Columbus, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
It wouldn't be possible to love this machine any more than I do. In 20+ years of using Macs, this is the finest computer I've ever used. I use and take it with me more than my previous 13" MacBook Air... it's the perfect combination of speed, weight, screen size and quality, and battery life. Being able to take something this powerful with you is a revelation.
5.0 out of 5 starsSuperb Machine, May 5, 2013
By
Greg (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I have had my MacBook Pro with 256GM SSD drive for a few months and I love having more than 7 hours battery life. I can take this laptop with me and leave the charger at home! Owners of Lenovo X1 laptops with SSD drives brag about getting 4.5 to 6 hours battery life.
I have not had one bad experience with it. It is very light-weight but still sturdy. I have a work-issued Sony Vaio Windows 7 laptop and it feels as though it is made of paper mache. And, since the Vaio runs Windows, it is gets a lot of lengthy updates and then has to be rebooted.
I find that I enjoy reading books more on my MacBook Pro than I do on a kindle or an iPad. With the 15 inch screen, I can open Kindle books, epubs and PDFs in two-page mode which is very useful for technical books. I find the iPad to be too heavy to hold on in a good position of reading for any length of time. The problem with the kindle device is that books lose the original page format and show a reduced size page and that is sometimes a problem.
This MacBook Pro is a technological marvel. It is a machine that works and you don't have to pay for a lot of extra stuff. OS updates come once every two or three months. I didn't purchase any anti-virus software. I know lots of people with Macs and none own anti-virus software. I tried Safari, Chrome and Firefox browsers and I've stuck with Chrome but all are fine on the Mac. I use freeware OpenOffice to edit Word documents. It is nice not having to pay for annual McAfee or Norton renewals or the next version of MS Office.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 starsIt was good while it lasted, DIED AFTER ONE HOUR!, April 29, 2013
By
FS - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
Seriously, if you are thinking of buying this laptop, please keep reading till my advice below.
I've just unboxed this laptop yesterday, and I must admit I was impressed by the quality of the laptop, performance was good, everything seemed normal and working fine.
The operating system offered to update itself to the last patch, the laptop was already on release OS X 10.8.2 and the patch was for release 10.8.3 (780+ MB download), I downloaded it, installed it, and here comes the problem, I shut down the laptop and boot it again like a couple of times (i.e shutdown completely, then start... not restart), but the last time it wouldn't turn on, it was just DEAD! Just dead! although it was fully charged.
I tried all tricks, nothing worked, it turns out that several other people have faced the same problem with different Macbook models:
http://goo.gl/L5hZ9
And the most common recommendation was to take it back to Apple as it seemed to be a faulty unit. Well, how many faulty units are out there?!
After this wonderful experience, I am considering a Sony Vaio, and also while I am at it, why not get a Samsung S4 instead of iPhone 5.
My advice to you if you plan to purchase this laptop, don't do like me and buy it from a different country where it would be really a big hassle to return it, I recommend that you take a seat inside the store, try out the Macbook, update it to 10.8.3 via wifi or something, try shutting it down, and booting it again several times, if it works fine, take it home, good luck.
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is a wonderful machine., April 21, 2013
By
MadHatter - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I've never owned my own laptop (sure, I've been provided company laptops before but never actually had my own), and I'd just spent a lot of money on house repairs and I felt like I needed to get myself a little something. OK, a BIG something, but I'll be damned if it wasn't worth it. This is a marvelous device. Literally within two minutes of setting it up, I got an iMessage on the laptop which contained a video of my nephew which I clicked on and it started playing. I had to check around for cameras because I felt like I was in an Apple commercial. It just works. I really have nothing else I can say about it other than if you're in the market for a laptop and you can afford it, you might as well splurge. You won't be disappointed.
There was one little annoyance, though, which I thought was a problem at first but now that I know it's normal I guess I'm OK with it, and that is when the laptop wakes up from hibernation, sometimes it takes several seconds until it will let you enter your password and start using it. For that time period it looks as if it's just locked up. After some research it turns out this is because it saves everything in memory to the hard drive and the transfer of that information back to memory when waking up can take several seconds depending on what all it has to transfer. So, no big deal, I guess.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsApple Mac Pro - 15.4 inch Laptop - Awesome, April 16, 2013
By
Julie Rose (Nevada United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I bought the MacBook Pro - specifically because my husband is an mac person and were really impressed by the retina display, easy use and Apple service.
We bought it thru Amazon because they have prompt delivery (2 days after placing the regular order!!) and I know Amazon always responds if I have any concerns. Great computer and great Amazon service.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsOverall wonderful computer, but Apple is starting to skimp on features, April 13, 2013
By
Jonathan Birge (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
Executive summary: This is a solid computer with a gorgeous display. The integrated solid state memory is incredibly fast, and so far I haven't had a single crash or hang after about a month of usage. If you know you want a Mac laptop, this is the one to get, I think. It's a nice balance of size and power and utility. It's not some tiny toy like the airs, only good for doing Facebook at Starbucks, but is a solid desktop replacement with four cores and enough screen real estate (especially in scaled mode) to really get work done. On the other hand, it's not a behemoth like the 17 inch MacBook that you will have to lug around.
What's Great (and a few tips):
* High resolution screen. In normal mode, you get crisp letters and pictures, and adequate screen real estate for most tasks. When in scaled mode, you get the equivalent of a 1900x1200 display, great for doing certain tasks like programming or using applications not yet written for the retina display.
* Solid state drive. The integrated solid state drive is amazingly fast, and uses a 6 GB/s SATA connection right on the motherboard. It also allows for the incredibly thin form factor. I'm not sure, but it seems faster than normal solid state drives. The lack of a cabled connection shouldn't matter noticeably, so maybe it's just my imagination. Either way, it's really nice to not have a spinning drive, and liberating to use a laptop without having to constantly worry about how much you're moving the computer and wondering if you're going to damage the drive.
By the way HERE IS HOW TO PICK OUT THE RIGHT SIZE DRIVE: Spend a lot of time figuring out what kinds of things you're going to do, and how much disk space your media will take up, and how those needs are going to grow in the three to four years you own the computer. And then just order the largest drive available. Trust me, you'll thank me later. And even if you never come all that close to filling it, you'll have a faster computer than can do a better job keeping the drive defragmented and you won't ever have to worry about wearing out the solid state drive (they have only so many erase cycles they can handle and this gets exacerbated if you keep the drive close to full).
* The OS. This isn't going to matter if you're already a Mac user, but OS X is really starting to hit its stride. I'll be the first to say it was not a great OS for a long time, and was slower and less reliable than Windows. However, it's really come into its own with 10.7 and 10.8. The full screen mode is a great way to reduce screen clutter and the tyranny of resizing and arranging windows, and yet is evolutionary and fits in with existing applications well, unlike the revolutionary and ill-fitting "start screen" of Windows 8. As much as I like what they are trying to do with Windows 8, right now it's a very messy OS that feels like two operating systems competing with each other. The Mac just seems more elegant and well-designed, Windows 8 feels like the middle of an awkward transition.
* It's light. Ridiculously light. If it were any lighter, it would start to feel "cheap".
What's Bad (and a few rants):
* No power or battery indicators! What the heck is Apple thinking? This is supposed to be a "professional" level computer and they screw us out of a battery or power indicator! These used to be on all MacBook Pros. Is there a level above Pro I don't know about? Sometimes it's nice to know if your computer is off or just asleep, and it's ALWAYS nice to be able to see how much charge the computer has without having to turn it on or wake it up. This is just post-Steve-Jobs Apple trying to make Wall Street happy (keeping margins high to make up for lower growth) instead of doing the right thing.
* The screen isn't terribly bright. It's generally not a problem, but in a room with bright sunlight, the screen can be hard to see. Evidently the retina MacBooks suffer from the same problem the retina iPads initially did, which was that the pixel density resulted in a screen that transmits much less of the backlight than a standard resolution screen.
* The iSight camera is terrible. They call it upgraded, but I'm not sure what camera is worse than this. It's noisy, has terrible low-light performance, and if it's HD, I'm not sure where they are getting the pixels from. The driver also isn't smart enough to figure out how to expose for a central subject, so if you try to do a video chat near a window, the person on the other end will get a great picture of what's outside of your window, with your pitch black silhouette just there to just add drama, I suppose. Again, what is wrong with Apple that my iPhone has a better camera than my $3000 computer?
All in all, though, I'm very happy with the machine and very glad I purchased it. If they didn't cheese off on some of the components above, it would be an easy five stars.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 starsmore looks, no substance, April 10, 2013
By
LSA (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
The good: 1- Looks good with retina, if you sit 5" from the display, that is. 2- Shiny and slippery (almost dropped it a couple of times). 3- SSD is always good. 4- Can't complain the CPU power... even with the terrible OS X 5- I'm happy with OS X user interface; it crashes gracefully... even though it crashes much more frequently than any windows PC I ever had, but when it does, it just goes dark, not like Windows and the annoying blue screen. 6- When apps crash, they simply disappear, no annoying dialog box with only "ok" button telling me all the jargon on why it crashed (Windows). 7- It has USB ports, other than that, it's all ports that only Apply junk can fit in. Good thing I can still use most of my PC hardware... well, except for external HDD (can't read windows HDD, and visa versa) You don't have an anti-virus, so no more background scan overhead (until you catch a virus, last the one last year). Luckily, I didn't have this bad boy back then...
The Bad: 1- Terrible ergonomics, this is serious, they make the keyboard so small, and most actions require the touchpad, now I have to wear a splint for carpal tunnel syndrome. Seriously. 2- Too slippery, can't say that enough. 3- Boots in 20 seconds (2-second wakeup from sleep), but you can only use it after 2 mins from loggin in (20 sec from sleep).
The Ugly: It's very unreliable: 1- Many times the wifi drops connections, and not much help you can find online. It's happening more frequent...
2- Many times, youtube videos get stuck at the beginning, and i have to retry many times, I got 35MBps cable modem, and PCs have no problems... other websites have no problems either. looks like Apple doesn't like Youtube.
3- You're vulnerable without an anti-virus... when someone strikes, your helpless.
4- You're charging me ~$2700 for aluminum unibody?!?
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsA dream come true, April 10, 2013
By
Luis G. Vargas P - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
Before I was using a PC, now decided to change habits and introducing me to the world of MAC. This equipment is very expensive, however I like to buy equipment for at least 5 years. Spend like crazy investigating whether LG or Samsung screen had, I'm already three weeks and all is well, not really complain.
Probe with multiple test on the display, and the situation of HD sandisk, but so far without incident. I am happy to have this machine I am learning to use correctly, and I'm sure I will not disappoint.
37 of 55 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 starsMuch Less for Much More Money!, March 21, 2013
By
T.S. (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro ME665LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I'm a software professional and code day-in and day-out. I need lots of screen space (in pixels!) to view lots of windows at the same time. Having an easy-to-view high-pixel-resolution display to work with is the single most important requirement for me. Having lots of RAM and CPU-performance is the second important requirement, as I run multiple daemons, e.g. DB servers in the background.
When I ordered my new 15" MacBook Pro Retina, I wanted to upgrade from my dual-core MacBook Pro 17". I ordered a fully spec'ed out version with 2.8GHz CPU, max RAM, max flash drive. Not exactly a cheap purchase. I was very much looking forward to use the 2880x1800 pixel resolution on it, because I do need the screen space in pixels sometimes (e.g. for coding, viewing SQL data, spreadsheets, or viewing/editing photos).
First impressions:
- the MBP Retina weights about 2.0 kg, vs the 2.9 kg of the 17" MacBook Pro) -the MBP Retina's display is extremely glossy - the System Preferences do not allow to change the resolution to more than 1920x1200 - there is no wired ethernet port on the MacBook Pro
My take on this:
The retina display is extremely glossy - which becomes even more obvious when compared side-by-side with my old 17" MacBook. I will try to include pictures. In office neon-lighting or with windows next to you, you will always see very prominent reflections on the glass of the display. This is super-annoying!
The system preferences do not allow to switch to more than 1920x1200 pixel resolution -- so as far as I'm concerned, the display is effectively 1920x1200 pixels and saying it is higher resolution is simply false advertisement on behalf of Apple!
If you have use-cases where you need the real display resolution (like photo-editing or viewing, or like my use case), Apple's "scaled" resolution of 1920x1200 just does not cut it! "scaled" means "scaled down", e.g. not true resolution.
It was my mistake that I did not catch the important detail in the technical specs that the new MBP Retina does not have a wired ethernet connector. For a high-end laptop which people probably use to do actual work, and perhaps want to quickly transfer data in and out, a wired ethernet is a must. Apple's lack of including a wired ethernet is really annoying me, because now I'd have to use an external USB3-to-gigabit adapter, which is bulky, and which I have to carry around with me all the time. (Note: I do not want to use the Thunderbolt port for this, because I need to drive to external 2550x1440 displays).
The new MacBook Pro Retina is about 30% / 1kg lighter than the 17" MacBook Pro and it is also thinner. But frankly, I could not care less if the computer does not have the technical specs that I need (e.g. anti-glare, high-res display and gigabit ethernet).
IMHO Apple's obsession with slimming down the physical footprint of the MacBooks is completely mis-guided, and typical of Apple's disregard for what the customer wants. They always seem to think they know everything and can make choices for the customer. Sorry for the ranting. But more importantly, this obsession of slimming everything down also leads to non-replaceable parts: no replaceable battery, no replaceable/upgradable RAM, no replaceable /upgradable flash drive. This is a trend which is directly against the consumer's interest, and this should not be supported by the consumer. To make things worse: if something breaks, you will have to send your computer with all data on it to Apple..
Conclusion:
I will return the MBP Retina! I'd rather have an old, dual-core 17" MacBook (also 1920x1200 resolution). seriously! Maybe I can find a used last-generation 17" MBP with quad-core cpu.
I wish somebody at Apple would come to their senses, but they seem deeply occupied with their obsession to shrink the MBP.
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