New MacBook Pro prices for SA

ok, so what are the now "old" generation ones going for?
 
Wow, those prices are a joke. R20k for a totally average Mac laptop - that money will get you a beastly PC desktop or laptop.
 
Bryn26 said:
Wow, those prices are a joke. R20k for a totally average Mac laptop - that money will get you a beastly PC desktop or laptop.
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Three weeks ago I might have agreed with you.

Now I can honestly say that Retina display is VERY far from average.


Besides people who use Macs don't give a damn about "beast" PC's.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Three weeks ago I might have agreed with you.

Now I can honestly say that Retina display is VERY far from average.


Besides people who use Macs don't give a damn about "beast" PC's.
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Yes, as a member of the PC Master Race, I still prefer my macbook and OSX.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Three weeks ago I might have agreed with you.

Now I can honestly say that Retina display is VERY far from average.


Besides people who use Macs don't give a damn about "beast" PC's.
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You could just buy a higher res PC monitor. I haven't checked, but I'd assume high res PC laptops exist?

Aqua_lung said:
Yes, as a member of the PC Master Race, I still prefer my macbook and OSX.
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Each to their own. I can't use OS X. Drives me up the wall, especially on a laptop. Even iOS annoys me.
 
Aqua_lung said:
Yes, as a member of the PC Master Race, I still prefer my macbook and OSX.
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Membership:
revoked-stamp.jpg


Madness, only if I had money to waste would I even consider buying a mackbook pro.
 
Xzib1t said:
Membership:
revoked-stamp.jpg


Madness, only if I had money to waste would I even consider buying a mackbook pro.
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Hahaha, fellow brethren...

To get work done in DTP, only OSX will do for me. For everything else my gaming rig wins hands down!

But in all honestly I wanna move away from apple and it's closed ecosytem to linux, but they are just really good at what they do for now.

IMO
 
The weak rand is making it tough to buy Apple at the moment.
 
Bryn26 said:
You could just buy a higher res PC monitor. I haven't checked, but I'd assume high res PC laptops exist?
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Like so many things in the Windows world, in theory: yes. In practice no, because Windows and associated software behaves like **** at 150%+ scaling which is often necessary to work comfortably at that high res for everyday work. The thing that made the Apple retina stuff interesting was that they "solved" the software side of high res work.

And you may go, well why do you get a high res screen if you want to run at 150%+ scaling? It makes everything look clearer and easier to read, you don't have to fight with tiny little icons but when you're working on an image for example, you can see smaller details without having to zoom in. With Windows there's an active trade off you're making when you buy a new laptop with a high res screen, it may turn out that the native size of the text or icons are too small and your only option then is to run at a badly scaled non-native res that looks worse than if you'd just bought the low res screen. Apple makes it so that there isn't that risk.
 
Whilst drinking no name brand tea out of a styrofoam cup will suffice for some, I do rather prefer a teacup with a nice tea from a teapot, and so too, will I skip the "beastly" laptop for my MBP.:)
 
km2 said:
Like so many things in the Windows world, in theory: yes. In practice no, because Windows and associated software behaves like **** at 150%+ scaling which is often necessary to work comfortably at that high res for everyday work. The thing that made the Apple retina stuff interesting was that they "solved" the software side of high res work.

And you may go, well why do you get a high res screen if you want to run at 150%+ scaling? It makes everything look clearer and easier to read, you don't have to fight with tiny little icons but when you're working on an image for example, you can see smaller details without having to zoom in. With Windows there's an active trade off you're making when you buy a new laptop with a high res screen, it may turn out that the native size of the text or icons are too small and your only option then is to run at a badly scaled non-native res that looks worse than if you'd just bought the low res screen. Apple makes it so that there isn't that risk.
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You said that so much more accurately than I would.

I wanted to say the primary different with Retina is that it's a higher resolution screen running at a lower "virtual resolution" something which I haven't experienced on Windows.
 
I thought 32K for that kind of spec laptop was way overpriced, until I saw what gaming laptops with similar spec CPU, RAM & SSD size costs!

That 15" MBP with the i7 4850HQ really has a beast of a CPU and SSD, which is terrific for software development, but I do find 16GB of RAM to be an issue :( besides that I dislike OSX too.

For now I'll just carry on with my i7 860, 128GB SSD + 32GB of RAM + 30" Dell IPS @ 2560x1600 for software dev work and then my Dell Inspiron C2D 2GHz laptop would have to do for portability.
 
Pada said:
I thought 32K for that kind of spec laptop was way overpriced, until I saw what gaming laptops with similar spec CPU, RAM & SSD size costs!

That 15" MBP with the i7 4850HQ really has a beast of a CPU and SSD, which is terrific for software development, but I do find 16GB of RAM to be an issue :( besides that I dislike OSX too.

For now I'll just carry on with my i7 860, 128GB SSD + 32GB of RAM + 30" Dell IPS @ 2560x1600 for software dev work and then my Dell Inspiron C2D 2GHz laptop would have to do for portability.
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Well if you take the new Gigabyte the apple is overpriced.

The apple's got more storage but the rest of the specs is on par or better on the gigabyte.
 

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Pada said:
I thought 32K for that kind of spec laptop was way overpriced, until I saw what gaming laptops with similar spec CPU, RAM & SSD size costs!

That 15" MBP with the i7 4850HQ really has a beast of a CPU and SSD, which is terrific for software development, but I do find 16GB of RAM to be an issue :( besides that I dislike OSX too.

For now I'll just carry on with my i7 860, 128GB SSD + 32GB of RAM + 30" Dell IPS @ 2560x1600 for software dev work and then my Dell Inspiron C2D 2GHz laptop would have to do for portability.
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The retina MBP is a very nice machine. The display is great as is my old Dell 30 inch Mac Pro connected display. And it's good that Apple has delivered a good display as their previous MBP displays were substandard for any prosumer work in photo editing or colour correction. They were 6bit displays which used dithering to give the illusion of more colours. They were also low res in the base models - even the 15 inch i7 2.66Ghz from 2010. The rMBP display has changed that, which is excellent. But the real pro video and photo work is done on 10 bit displays the likes of HP DreamColor or NEC MultiSync PA302W.

The rMBP is even a better machine because of its lighter weight. It's still quite heavy and Apple should move to either carbon fiber or lithium-magnesium alloy and deliver lighter machines. It can be done. The fact that RAM is not upgradable and the SSD cannot easily be swapped out is an insult to professionals and customers. It could have been done without adding much weight. In fact dropping the heavy aluminium body in favour of Li-Mg alloy would allow for a strong yet exceptionally light machine with user upgradability - the type of thing Apple had in its previous line of Mac Pros and Power Macs which were seen as "pro" machines and not "consumer" level all-in-ones like iMacs.

The new entry level MBP is also a bit of a dud because of the lack of dedicated GPU. The Intel Iris Pro is a nice GPU but it won't work with some effects which require a dedicated 3D GPU. Some AE functionality for example, will not exist. So for a "pro" who wants to be able to use everything, he will need the R32,000 machine. So that's an extra R8K spend. It's a pity. Although it's good news for previous entry level rMBP owners such as me because my cheaper when purchased machine overall is still capable of more than the more expensive rMBP entry level machine of today.
 
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Gah, here's hoping my late 2011 keeps ticking for the foreseeable future. I'm never gonna be able to justify buying a like for like replacement.

I'd actually be happy to downscale to a 13" for the size advantage as long as it had at least 16gb of RAM but neither Core or Digicape offer that. The most annoying bit about buying in SA is complete lack of configurability.
 
nexxus said:
Gah, here's hoping my late 2011 keeps ticking for the foreseeable future. I'm never gonna be able to justify buying a like for like replacement.

I'd actually be happy to downscale to a 13" for the size advantage as long as it had at least 16gb of RAM but neither Core or Digicape offer that. The most annoying bit about buying in SA is complete lack of configurability.
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Buy on Ebay.
 
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