Apple have merged the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro into a new design with an incredible display.
With 5.1 million pixels and a 2880 x 1800 screen resolution, it has over 3 million pixels than a HDTV. Not only this, Apple have included all Flash storage (up to 768GB!!) to allow you to not only store vast amounts of data but to also be able to access it in lightening fast time.
In terms of Ports, there were a few interesting additions. First of all, the new Macbook Pro has both USB 3.0 and HDMI connectivity, dual Thunderbolt and an SDXC card slot. The addition of USB 3.0 is a welcome step, due to the price and lack of products featuring Thunderbolt at this moment in time. The HDMI port will also assist in easily connecting your Mac to your TV or monitor, without additional adapters.
There is however, no optical drive and no ethernet port. For those interested, there is an external USB superdrive available to purchase and in the case of ethernet, we now have the option to buy a Thunderbolt to Gigabit ethernet adaptor. This is a great step up from the previous USB ethernet adapter, which only had the capability of 100BaseT.
While talking of adapters, it is also worth noting that Apple has redesigned it’s Magsafe adapter to make it smaller than before and has dubbed this technology “Magsafe 2”. The issue here is that older Magsafe adapters will not fit into the Magsafe 2 port. Again, there is an adapter that allows us to do this, which costs £9.00, that will be required if you attempt to connect your Thunderbolt display’s magsafe to the Retina Macbook Pro.
There are numerous other features, such as faster quad-core CPU’s, up to 16GB RAM, Dual microphones, advanced GPU’s with up to 1GB VRAM, longer lasting battery, and a reduced glare screen.
All in all, an amazing looking computer…..but one that comes with a price. Starting at £1799.00 for the basic model – It’s not going to come cheap but clearly that’s not putting anyone off. Already shipping estimates have slipped to 3 – 4 weeks as demand clearly outstrips supply.
