Anybody buying a new Mac?

[andrewr]

The new MacBook Pros look pretty amazing, and I'm definitely overdue for an upgrade. Anybody else going shopping soon?

Cheers,

Andrew

[Alastair]

Nope. Not yet. My MacBook Pro is only about a year old. And my digital back is Firewire800, and we'll have to see if the Thunderbolt-FW800 adapter is any good. If not then my $18,000 golden sandbag (because that's about as much as I use it these days, although it did see the light of day today) is going to be worth even less.

They look great, though. The Retina display means that you'll have to start delivering larger files - 800-pixels-wide for web use is now going to be a thing of the past.

And those HUGE (relatively-speaking) SSDs are very interesting...

[andrewr]

I just read that the Thunderbolt-FW800 adapter won't even be available until later this summer. My external hard drives are FW800, so I think that would rule out the use of these new retina MBP's for me as well.

I would imagine that a large portion of the target market for these computers use firewire devices, so it seems like incredibly poor planning to not have these adapters available now.

[Alastair]

I may have been a bit hasty - it looks like they do have it. I didn't see it listed in the specs and jumped to conclusions...

[andrewr]

I don't know if there are third party adapters, but according the the page below the apple version won't be available until July.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

[Alastair]

Apparently the Retina display macs (the ones you want) have:

No Firewire - the regular ones still have FW.

Also, apparently they have soldered-in RAM. So don't be thinking you'll upgrade the RAM later. Buy it maxed out.

[andrewr]

That's interesting. The more I learn about it, the less I want it. In addition to soldered RAM, it has a proprietary SSD, and the battery is glued in place, making it very difficult to replace. iFixIt.com has rated it as the least repairable laptop they've ever seen and give it a Repairability Score of 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair). You definitely want to get AppleCare with this one.

I'm starting to think that I may just get an older version, perhaps a refurb, and install my own SSD and RAM. I can live without the retina display anyway, since I normally work with an external monitor.

[Alastair]

I usually buy from the factory refurb store. I've bought my last couple of computers that way and they're usually really well priced and have always worked well for me. I get aftermarket RAM and Hard Drives anyway...