Why did they do without those features? I am aware of the power of thunderbolt, however many of us have devices that require firewire 800. What is the work around???
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)
Besides buying the adapter they also announced? Or do you just pay attention to what you want to hear?
No superdrive too? Hmmm - sometimes I just want to watch a DVD or...blu-ray (go figure). Also, just noticed there's not an ethernet port. Looks like I won't be upgrading for a little while 😟
Note that the non-Retina MBPs still have Firewire and Optical Drives, so all is not lost.
Ciao.
to me, the biggest loss is no internal hard drive. i was hoping for SSD slot AND a hard drive inside, while losing the internal optical. now you will have to hang an external drive to do any real photo or video work.
cannot find superdrive on the specs page... you sure, chief?
The superdrive for the non-Retina MacBook Pro's is there. It's just the Retina MacBook Pro that doesn't have it. I like the overall design of the new Retina Display MBP, but sometimes you just need stuff like firewire and a superdrive. I thought the Air was developed for those that want to go light.
what do you mean there is no internale hard drive? 250GB or 500GB using Flash which I thought was much faster?
Okay - so if my daughter wanted to get the non retina display Mac Book Pro, she still could get one with the superdrive and a 800 firewire?
"Hard drive" refers to a mechanical drive with spinning platters. The ones using flash memory are called "Solid State Drives" or SSD. Note they couldn't use the term "Soft Drive" because SD means "Secure Digital" and is trademarked.
markfromqc, greetings; Look at this link from the Apple store:
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD104LL/A
Ciao.
WiFi is nice, but hardwire LANs are going to be around for a long time. Loss of Ethernet Port is just another stupid choice by the "Designers" Maybe they think someone will come up with a THunderbolt to Ethernet adapter. Great, more stuff to attach to my computer. Maybe they need to develop a port replicator for when you want to dock with a hard LAN. I guess Apple must think that the rest of the world does not exist.
ArcProjector wrote:
Maybe they think someone will come up with a THunderbolt to Ethernet adapter.
Gee, like the one Apple announced today?
Maybe they need to develop a port replicator for when you want to dock with a hard LAN.
Like the Studio Display Apple already sells? Like several other manufacturers have already announced?
I guess Apple must think that the rest of the world does not exist.
Right, that's why they made sure to include 802.11N networking... they don't think you should talk to anything else.
Yes. For the non-retina's, they just upgraded the hardware. Better processor (ivy bridge), better graphics (nVidia 650), USB 3.0. That's the one I'd be going for, simply on the fact that the RAM and hard disk can be upgraded or replaced easily.
The "Retina-Mac" is locked in to whatever you purchase, and the hard disk/SSD is not a standard size. When your hard drive fails, you'll have to go to Apple and pay a handsome sum to have it fixed. It's somewhat along the same lines as the iMac, with it's custom-firmwared hard drives. If the upgrade cost of the 768GB SSD is $500, I'd hate to see their full asking price plus labor.
Pretty much every professional mac user I know, including myself, uses Firewire regularly. Plus, they also use gigabit ethernet to connect to their network NAS. None of them use Thunderbolt for anything. The new retina-mac has some cool design stuff, and an awesome screen, but it seems to be far from fully functional at this time compared to the non-retina pro's. The non-retina pro is where I'd put my money, for functionality alone.
Thanks for clearing these up for me. I did not know about these devices. I jsut saw that the TB to ETH adapter.
Still cheesy that they want you to pay for these adapters, but your point is well taken about the people who might actually use the hard LAN, Nonetheless, if I need to connect for some reason and I don't have the adapter, I would be SOL. I think they should just charge me $29 more for the laptop and include the adapters. Video connection adapters are one thing, but I/O and LAN adapters seem to be over the top.
Somehow they managed to add the long missing HDMI port, which is good.
OWC makes an external USB enclosure for Apple SSDs (At least for the 2011 Airs, the 2012 Retina Pro is sligtly different) I would expect them to come out with a new one for the new Retina Pro as well. You can also buy larger SSDs to replace them with later on.
As a Pro Mac user myself, I'd buy the Retina and spend the $60 on FireWire and Ethernet Adapters and enjoy the new Mac. Just leave the adapters on your FW and Ethernet cables and pretend they arent adapters.
To each their own, but I spend maybe 5% of my usage on ethernet, and maybe 30% of my time using FireWire drives. The adapter is a non-issue for me.
new Macbook Pro No Superdrive or Firewire 800???
