New 15" MacBook Pro: Best Laptop Made?

Let's see...How do I say this without sounding like I'm bragging? I JUST BOUGHT THE BEST LAPTOP IN THE WORLD!

Well, I guess I couldn't. 

Enough of that silliness. I just received my new 15" MacBook Pro a few days ago and I can hardly keep the smile off my face. Of course, I checked the box on every available option. Partly because I really need the horsepower, but also because Apple has designed the new machines with no user-upgradeable parts, so changing things later is not a viable option. The RAM is soldered to the logic board and while the flash storage that serves as what used to be a hard disk or SSD can be changed, it is no easy task to replace. In fact, iFixit.com just gave the machine its lowest possible score for repairability. Little wonder. It's still hard for me to believe this thin, light machine is the most powerful laptop Apple has ever made. The new power-sipping Intel Haswell processor and PCIe flash storage both allow for a smaller battery enabling this new Pro machine's physical dimensions to more closely resemble the original MacBook Air. The first time I picked it up when unboxing, I thought for a moment Apple had sent the wrong machine. At just 4½ lbs., it's the lightest portable I've ever carried and quite an upgrade from my 2009 17" MBP that weighed in at just over 6 lbs.

While the elegant form factor is wonderful, what this laptop is really about is power. Like I said, I checked all the boxes at the Apple on-line store: The fastest processor (2.6 GHz quad Core i7), 16 gigs if 1600 MHz RAM, discreet graphics (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2 gigs VRAM) and 1 TB of flash storage. I haven't done much benchmarking, but I did run the Black Magic disk speed test and it was off-the-charts. The one word that best describes this computer's performance is "instantaneous". I know calling it "the best laptop in the world" will draw fire from the Alienware crowd, but a professional machine requires more than just a high framerate. Yes, there are laptops with more memory. Yes there are laptops with faster processors and yes, 1 TB of storage is getting pretty common these days. But nobody comes close to packing this much power in a 4½ pound package that's less than ¾" thick! When carrying a computer from customer to customer on a daily basis like I do, size devinitely matters.

Of course, what makes this machine the undisputed champ is who makes it. Like everything I've ever purchased from Apple (and believe me, the list is long), this new MacBook Pro is built like the precision instrument it is. Like every unibody Mac, this thing is as solid as the chunk of aluminum it was carved from. The only visible plastic is the hinge cover and the keys. The retina display is stunning with vivid color and deep blacks. I haven't experienced any of the reported image retention and even the new onboard Iris graphics pushes the pixels around with no discernable lag.

One feature you can't find on any other manufacturer's computer is OS X. Mavericks (OS X 10.9) came installed and so far I haven't experienced any of the reported glitches. My GMail works just fine with Apple Mail, thank you. And Mavericks is optimized to take advantage of the power saving features of the Haswell processor. I don't have any battery "run down" tests to report, but I can tell you the battery life is significantly better than my previous MBP and I run down long before the battery in this machine drains. I started writing this an hour ago and the battery is still 93% charged.

As you can tell, I'm pretty stoked about this new box. It's certainly the best computer I've ever owned. If I could go back in time I'd gladly spend the $3500 again. For that price I should get the best laptop in the world!

It Pays to Buy Quality

Well, my year-and-a-half wait is finally over...almost.  When I saw my first Retina MacBook Pro last year, I knew I had to have one, but just didn’t want to lay out the money at the time. I’ve been completely spoiled by the retina displays on my iPhone and iPad, so my 2009 17" MBP's 1920 X 1200 display just wasn't doing it for me any more. It's a bit like having Flounder Almandine for lunch then coming home to fish sticks for dinner. But it's more than just the display showing signs of age. In a little over four years, Apple (and the rest of to computer industry) has progressed light years beyond the Core2 Duo, USB 2, no Thunderbolt seventeen-incher that was top-of-the-line in July of '09. Like back then, as soon as Apple refreshed the MBPs last week, I ordered the most powerful model available with all the options.

The shiny, new 15.4" Retina MBP should arrive Wednesday with the fastest Intel Haswell CPU, discreet graphics, as much RAM (16 GB) as Apple will install and a full terabyte of flash storage. It's not because I'm spoiled. Well, maybe a little bit, but after 30 years in this business I've come to understand that the only way to get four years use out of a computer is to buy the latest model stuffed with as much speed, memory, graphics and storage as you can get. This strategy is even more important today given Apple's propensity to make fewer and fewer of their laptop's components user-upgradeable. This latest MBP model has no user-replaceable parts and iFixIt.com gives the new Retina MacBook Pros a score of 1 out of 10 for ease of repair (with 10 being easiest). In other words, don't buy what you need, buy what you think you may need four or five years from now. Another take-away from all this: Buy quality. It's worth it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my current MBP. It has served me well for 51 months, but it’s getting just a bit dated for my professional needs. I plan to give it to my wife who will likely be very happy with it for three of four more years given her more typical use demands. After all, it does have 8 gigs of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and I just updated it to Mavericks with all the new iLife and iWork apps and it runs them all great. You can never expect to do that with a "BestBuy special" PC. This example speaks volumes in favor of buying quality. Mr. Shawn Blanc codifies this philosophy quite succinctly.

Yes, I’m spending what some PC people would think is an eye-popping amount for my new MacBook Pro. A similarly-equipped Dell or HP would cost 15 - 20% less, but after adding Office, a good photo manager and movie maker (like what comes included with iWork and iLife) the savings are much less and you still end up with a Windows computer at the end of the day. In my opinion, that fact alone makes it inferior.

Tweet