The MacBook Pro with Retina display is my next laptop – in a year
I was relatively happy with this year’s WWDC. Tim Cook and other Apple executives unveiled some great hardware and software that has let me decide that I’m going to stay with the Mac for my next laptop – particularly the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.
However, I will not be making any purchase this year: I’ll be waiting until the first update to the computer until I give Apple my money. There is only one reason I’m doing this, and you’ll have to keep reading to find out.
Basically, it just comes down to my experiences with first-generation Apple laptop hardware. Back in 2008, I bought a MacBook. It was just the stock 2.0GHz configuration – nothing special. I happily lived with that notebook for about five months; when those five months were up, a tiny piece of dust got trapped between the glass and the LCD panel. That was the first repair of many more. By the time the third repair was completed, the problem (incredibly sluggish performance) was left unsolved and Apple replaced it with the first generation 13-inch MacBook Pro.
This laptop was also the base model, but the processor was bumped up to 2.26GHz. I enjoyed this second MacBook Pro for another 10 months; after that, my supposed-to-be-perfect Mac experience went to hell once again. Three more long repairs went into that machine before I received a third replacement, which is the model that I currently own: the base 2010 model.
At this point, my faith in Apple’s Macs was starting to wane. But this model was technically a second-generation, 13-inch MacBook Pro model. All of my problems seemed to have gone away, even if it is a C2D – and very slow because of it. But I accept its older architecture, so any slowdowns that I come across I blame on the old processor or my dying hard drive.
Anyway, this all relates to the new MacBook Pro: I simply refuse to buy a first-generation Apple product ever again. And believe me, I’m incredibly tempted to go out and buy a top-end model right now. But the completely maxed model comes in at $3,749.00, a price that I can’t justify when it’s bound to give me issues.
If I were absolutely sure that Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and the rest of the Apple crew put forth the utmost effort to make sure this laptop would never have any problems, I’d have no reservations about picking one up right now. Unfortunately, I can’t say that with certainty.
But this doesn’t mean I’m against buying one – quite the opposite. I will be purchasing a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with Retina display next year, when an update and fixes to any of the first-gen’s quirks have been issued. For now, I’m going to run around with my clunky and extremely outdated 13-inch model while I drool over the new model whenever I walk by an Apple store.
This is the laptop I was waiting for. It is expensive, but the money I will spend is well-warranted in my opinion: incredibly high-resolution 15-inch display, a body that’s less than 0.80-inches thick, and high-performance components were exactly what I was looking for in a new laptop. I can’t wait until the inevitable update so I can finally call one of these laptops my own.
Are any of you going to pick up a first-gen model, or will you wait like me and purchase a second-gen? Or, will you not buy one at all because Macs aren’t your thing?
