I hate Macs — overpriced hardware, self-righteous users, and a company that neglects its core users.With the conclusion of Computex last week and the conclusion of Apple’s equivalent computer expo, Worldwide Developers Conference, on Monday, competition in the laptop market is fiercer than ever.
At the conclusion of WWDC, Apple announced the release of MacBook Pro with retina display.
Apple fans are giddy with excitement with a new MacBook Pro with retina display, the same high pixel density screen found in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. This announcement is quite honesty lackluster.
The new MacBook Pro packs an Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor — good for Apple for finally catching up with everyone else. An Nvidia GeForce 650M — wow, a mid-range graphics card. 16GB of RAM — that’s not special at all. A 2K resolution monitor (2880 by 1800) — overkill and useless on a 15-inch screen. This top of the line fully maxed out MacBook Pro will cost you … drum roll, please … $3,499, without tax of course.
So let’s say you pick up this brand new MacBook Pro fully loaded and shell out nearly four grand. What are you planning to do with it? Edit video? Edit photos? Play games? Is the “Pro” in the title aimed at professionals who work with videos and photos?
The short answer is no to all of the above. Editing video and photos on a 15-inch screen is a hassle — go get a nice dedicated monitor. Trying to take advantage of the 2K monitor by editing 2K video? Big mistake. The new MacBook Pro is not nearly beefy enough to edit computing-intense 2K video.
With the same amount of money spent on a new MacBook Pro, one can get a Mac Pro, a desktop tower aimed at professionals doing video and photo work. Speaking of the Mac Pro, Apple fell short when it came to updating its line of desktops. The Mac Pro was quietly updated on its website instead at WWDC with no fanfare at all. The update is just a minor processor spec bump, not much else. Apple just neglected a huge crowd of loyal professionals who have been eager waiting since 2010 for an update similar to the new MacBook Pro.
Furthermore, no new iMacs were announced at WWDC or any indications of new iMacs in the upcoming future. iMacs, all-in-one desktop computers, had been the bread and butter of Apple during the early 2000s. Nevertheless, they are still popular and relevant in today’s age of portable computing. For an example, The Battalion office exclusively uses iMacs to produce the paper you are reading.
It seems Apple only tailors to portable computing right now. If this is the current course Apple takes, it will neglect huge markets of desktop, professional and enterprise users.
Unless you are a run-and-gun photojournalist/videographer covering the upcoming Olympics with an unrealistic deadline, then maybe the new MacBook Pro is the right laptop for you. Otherwise, a four grand laptop to write your essay the day before it’s due or watching cat videos on YouTube is an utter waste of money.