WWDC 2012 Official Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Hey Steve,

I just came here to write a little something about my new MBP and
saw your message.

Just to give a quick recap, I purchased the 2.7GHz with 16GB of RAM.
It's the best built Laptop in the line minus the 768GB drive. I went with
512 based on advice given here (thank you, guys).

Off the bat, I do miss my 17" MBP. Moving down to a 15" required a
bit of adjustment. However, with each passing day, I am getting more
used to the smaller footprint and I certainly like the fact it feels lighter
in my bag and on my lap. It doesn't nearly get as hot underneath, either.

The most amazing thing about this laptop is the flash drive. This is my
first experience using one, and I still don't fail to get startled each time
I boot my Macbook and see how quickly it loads. I think the fastest load
I see is once you enter your password and see how instantaneously every
program loads (and I have quite a few in my startup already). I mean, BOOM!...
it's there and loaded.

This is a quick little baby here. Haven't really put it to the test with movie
editing yet, but just browsing the Internet I see how much faster page loads
are (with the added processing power) and the needle rarely moves on my
memory monitor no matter how many windows I have open at once.

It's nice to go into Parallels Desktop and give Windows 8GB of memory
while leaving 8GB for OS X.

The only problems I find with the Retina screen is that there is a slight
second of resizing going on when opening FINDER, as all the icons have
to quickly adjust to the new resolution. Also, one of my favorite screen
capture programs, SNAPZ PRO X will not work properly because of the
retina resizing -- however the company is working to fix that bug.

I think once Mountain Lion is released in less than a month, many of
the small bugs will be ironed out.

 

[Sam Posten]

Which video mode are you using?
I saw one in DE yesterday, loved it. If they had been in stock I might own one now.
But I'm holding off for a bit. I have a perfectly functioning 13" air and a 17" Alienware for gaming on long trips, so I don't NEED a Rmbp just WANT.
I NEED a new Mac Pro, that is not to be yet it seems. I can wait till early 2013 if I must but it will hurt.
I NEED a new desktop gaming box. As soon as the Alienware Auroras come with Ivy Bridge and Kepler GPUs one will be mine.
So, priorities win, for now. Will see how long I can resist selling the two lappies and combining to just the Retina

 

[Ronald Epstein]

My settings is one below BEST FOR RETINA
(there is one additional setting below that). I wanted
a little more space on my laptop and found the standard
recommended retina setting too large.

One thing I just tried out for the first time was playing
some music from YouTube. Breathtaking is a word that
best describes how these speakers sound. I have never
heard this level of audio clarity from an Apple laptop. I
heard there were improvements made, but my God, Apple
really went to town here in providing an exceptional listening
experience from such small speakers. You really have to
listen to appreciate them.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

I tinkered with the RMBP at the Apple Store today. They had a whole row of them on a display table, and one of the front windows had a huge mock-up with the actual unit in front revolving on a stand. iPhoto had crashed on the demo unit I tried, and the dialogue box asked if I wanted to restart it. I did. The photo I looked at was zoomed in which obscured the detail. Other than that, I did not play with it much. Like Sam, I am making due with a 13" 2011 MBA.
A friend of mine got a traditional 15-inch MBP. She custom ordered it early last week, and Apple was smart enough to hold the order and fulfill it from the spec-bump models. She is new to Macs, but the people she works with in a print/design shop are all Mac-heads, so the support system is there. She got the higher-resolution (non-retina) screen that is an option on the 15-inch model. She also got a discount and did not have to pay tax, so she spent that savings to max out the memory.
She says she really likes the trackpad and the gestures. I also swear by the trackpad on my MBA and the Magic Trackpad on my desktop.
Congrats on your new RMBP, Ron. I'm a tad jealous!

 

[Carlo_M]

So I spent $200 to tide me over until the 2013 Mac Pro refresh: new 2TB hard drive and Windows Home Premium SP1 64-bit OEM. Did a fresh install as a second drive on my four-year-old Windows box (as I wrote earlier Pro Tools doesn't like to play nice sometimes so it's always good to have it on its own drive) and am now installing all of the plugins and add-ons. Funny, every time I do a new Windows install it's so snappy in comparison to what it becomes later after all the patches and added programs start to weigh it down.
Hopefully this will satisfy my music creation needs until the new Mac Pro streets!

 

[Ken Chan]

I should have looked for the control panel to resize the screen resolution to see how it looked all maxed out. It must have been set to a mid level setting which is probably why it didn't seem that eye popping impressive.

The higher 1920x1200 and 1680x1050 looked quite acceptable to me. The trick is that they still double everything (4X pixels) and then shrink down, instead of just scaling up. There are so many tiny pixels that the softness isn't that bad. Still, the middle optimal integral scaling 1440x900 is noticeably a bit sharper. Then the two lowest settings, 1280x800 and 1024x640, are doubled and scaled up.
Non-retina apps do look worse than on the old MBP with the same "native" res though. That's because for text, Retina does full-pixel antialiasing (when it does the 4X) instead of sub-pixel rendering. Images and icons look about the same, since they don't benefit from sub-pixel on the old machines. If you're comparing the new and old, the pixel structure on the old stands out like an ugly screen door.

 

[Nelson Au]

That's one thing I didn't look at Ken, the type faces.
I have all three iPads. When I got the iPad 3 with the retina display, it didn't really blow me away until I looked at emails and text. And colors too. So the biggest retina display change I've seen on the iPad is the text on iBooks and emails and such, plus the colors of the app icons are much more impressive. Though that doesn't mean it right.
The color of a Yahoo chat app on my iPad 2 looks nice, but the color of the same app is much more purple on the iPad 3. So I'll have to compare the new MacBook Pro retina display with the old MacBook Pro I have now.

 

[Sam Posten]

Retina FAQ posted:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[Sam Posten]

Potential PR disaster. Developing story.
http://9to5mac.com/2012/08/06/war-youtube-app-disappears-from-ios-6-beta-4/

 

[mattCR]

Apple confirms that YouTube has been removed from IOS6 and will not return.

Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/6/3223775/apple-youtube-ios6

 

[Carlo_M]

Crisis averted? Here's hoping. (and I don't even use it all that much, but I recognize its importance to the user base as a whole)

 

[Sam Posten]

Interesting. Perhaps it will open up better avenues to "Open with"? That seems very anti-Apple tho....

 

[mattCR]

NBCNews runs the story

Apple's new version of its iPhone and iPad software will not include a pre-packaged app for Google's popular video website, YouTube, Apple said on Monday.

The move marked the latest sign of the growing rivalry between the two technology companies, close on the heels of Apple's decision to dump Google's mapping software from its devices.
"Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended," Apple said in a statement on Monday. "Customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the app store."
Google was not immediately available for comment.

YouTube has been among a handful of apps that come pre-loaded onto the screens of Apple's mobile devices since the original iPhone was introduced in 2007.

 

[DaveF]

Thiisseems likes good thing. The app lags the website. But you can't really switch away from the app since its integrated, and is auto launched.
Removing the app, means we could get a better experience with updated google apps or direct web access.

 

[Carlo_M]

Good point Dave. If Google does have a dedicated team to the app who updates it regularly this could turn out to be a positive. Even if the Google/Apple rivalry is heated, not sure what Google would stand to gain by pissing off millions of iPhones users.

 

[Sam Posten]

guess we don't have a dedicated RMBP thread yet, so....
Word:

We’re obviously in the middle of two awkward transitions: toward all-Retina screens, and toward all-SSD storage. The difficult computer choices that many power users will struggle with will probably be much easier in 2–3 years, when even the most die-hard desktop users can probably get a MacBook Something with a priced-within-reach 2 TB SSD and an external 27” Retina Display for desktop use.

http://www.marco.org/2012/08/26/retina-mbp-review

 

[Carlo_M]

Good writeup of the current situation. I'm actually in the market for an Air, but am holding off until the make an RMBA. I know it's coming, so I'm not going to drop $1K on something that isn't retina display enabled (except perhaps for the 2013 Mac Pro).