[Macworld]

Post your comments for Developers: Retina-optimized Mac apps will take time here

[JimRedfield]

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

[zarmanto]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

... Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. ...

The same is true of the iPhone, and always has been, but customers seemed to get over their ire over that issue pretty quickly. One important consideration here is that Apple has significantly reduced the number of failure prone moving parts with the exclusion of platter based hard drives and optical drives; as such, there are far fewer opportunities for hardware failure than with other laptops.

[mojo66]

In Europe, we have a 2 year warranty and a recent ruling found that this also applies for Apple products.

[zarmanto]

Macworld, on 13 June 2012 - 04:31 AM, said:

... third-party developers Adobe and Autodesk said they’ll need time to ship Retina-optimized apps to the public. ...

And this, in my opinion, is a fairly sizable contributing reason that Apple only updated a single product in their Mac lineup with Retina, at this time. Other Retina Macs (and displays) will no doubt follow... and when they're announced, you can bet that Apple will be happily crowing about how many third-party developers have produced Retina ready software.

I figure it's also a safe bet that Apple has completely tied up the production supply of Retina capable laptop displays, making it nigh impossible for other hardware vendors to come anywhere close to matching the quality of the Retina MacBook anytime soon.

Sounds like a winning set of strategies to me.

[ShameerMulji]

zarmanto, on 13 June 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

... Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. ...

The same is true of the iPhone, and always has been, but customers seemed to get over their ire over that issue pretty quickly. One important consideration here is that Apple has significantly reduced the number of failure prone moving parts with the exclusion of platter based hard drives and optical drives; as such, there are far fewer opportunities for hardware failure than with other laptops.

What about failure from heat due to the Ivy Bridge CPU and discreet GPU?

[AdamTucker]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer.

The apple limited warranty is 1 full year, but only 90 days of phone support. You can still bring it to a store or set up a ticket online to get warranty service if something goes wrong in the first year.

[bettercitizens]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

Or one could just warm up the soldering iron...

[zarmanto]

ShameerMulji, on 13 June 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

What about failure from heat due to the Ivy Bridge CPU and discreet GPU?

What about it? Do you know someone with a Retina MacBook Pro who has experienced this problem? No? Could that be because you don't know anyone with a Retina MacBook Pro, yet?

It seems unwise to me, to presume to know what problems a computer is going to have, when it's the first of its kind. Even if other vaguely similar computers have had the problems you've described, that is no more an indication of the likelihood of the Retina MBP having those problems, then past performance is an indication of future results in the stock market. You are welcome to place your bets against Apple succeeding if you prefer, but it might be wise to not phrase your wild speculations as though they are forgone conclusions.

[JScott]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

Yeah I bet they don't even sell one unit just like the Airs didn... oh wait.

[bastion]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

In the US, Apple's warranty on computers is a year and many (at least) major credit card issuers will extend that to two.

Additionally, the SSD is socketed. It's not a commodity part, but it's certainly viable for service beyond replacing the whole computer or motherboard in the rare case of failure during the machine's reasonable service life.

[mc4o1993]

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

Airs are the same.
iphones are the same.
ipads are the same.

and when my first 4S got a line of dead pixels 8 months after i bought it (no Apple Care) I walked up to the Genius bar (expecting to pay for a repair).. the Genius said - "oh my - that shouldn't happen".. and handed me a replacement no questions asked. no fee paid. backed up my broken phone, restored it to the new one. in and out in 30 mins. again - 8 months after the sale so outside 90 days, an NO Apple Care.

then there was the time my MBP died just outside of A/C. logic board problem. Genius quoted me $300 for the logic board and 10 day turnaround. he was poking at a few more things and writing down the things HE thought was wrong with it.. nasty scratch on the lid, mediocre battery life, "squishy" trackpad button and "sub par" keyboard.. (likely because of the orange juice I coughed up on it). Got it back (free overnight shipping) in FOUR days (not 10 as they stated)... new logic board, new battery, new top case, new keyboard, new trackpad. (I could tell because there were cosmetic blemishes on on the keyboard and trackpad, and the gouge in the lid was gone). also on the invoice was a new video cable harness ("showing signs of wear" was the comment for that item). total charge - $300. typing this on the same machine.. almost 3 years later.

the only incident I had while under A/C was a dead optical drive in my G5 tower. I called them. They didn't even TRY to troubleshoot - they took my word at face value. The first question they asked was "are you comfortable replacing it yourself, I'll send one out today". The NEXT DAY I got a brand new internal drive (and they sent me a 48x to replace a 24x!), with a shipping label and... get this.. 4 strips of tape so I didn't even have to use my own to re-seal the box and send the broken one back.

I'm sure anyone who's ever dealt with Apple Customer Service will report similar experiences.

Customer service like that? - "Back to Apple" indeed.

[joevt]

Developers have had access to these Retina-type display modes for awhile. They just never knew when Apple would make a product that actually exposes them to the user.

I did some experiments on my Mac Pro with ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB and Apple 30" Cinema display (2560x1600 native) running Mac OS X 10.7.4.

I was able to use SwitchResX to create and use scaling resolutions up to 4096 wide or 4096 tall but the screen buffer was limited to under 32 MB which means the highest 16:10 resolution I could create was 3584 x 2240. I guess this is a limitation in the Radeon driver since the MacBook Pro with Retina display can go higher. I wonder if it can go higher than 3840 x 2400?

I was able to use the Mac Pro with a desktop that was 3584 x 2240 which is scaled down to the native resolution of 2560 x 1600. I was also able to play games at 3584 x 2240 (a cheap or expensive anti aliasing method but it makes the game cursor even tinier). Screen shots were also 3584 x 2240.

SwitchResX creates the resolutions by editing a file in /System/Library/Displays/Overrides corresponding to the display. It also adds contextual and menu bar menus for changing screen resolution.

I used Quartz Debug.app from Xcode 4 to enable HiDPI display modes. These HiDPI modes are one quarter (one half vertical and horizontal) of any resolution that is greater than 1600 wide. I believe these modes are what the MacBook Pro with Retina display uses. I wonder if these SwitchResX menus can be used on the MacBook Pro with Retina display to select modes that are not HiDPI?

I tried the various HiDPI modes including 1792 x 1120. The text does seem smoother than if I used a non-HiDPI version of the 1792 x 1120 resolution. Of course the best HiDPI mode for the 30" Cinema Display would be 1280 x 800 but it doesn't leave a lot of screen real-estate. 2560 does not divide by 1.5 evenly so you can't get a mode that would look exactly like the 1920 x 1200 HiDPI mode looks on the 2880 x 1800 Retina display without some extra work.

[Jasonmwa]

mc4o1993, on 14 June 2012 - 07:45 PM, said:

JimRedfield, on 13 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

The Retina Display Macbook Pros are bricks. Nothing is upgradable or replaceable. Memory fail, replace the mother board. SSD fail, replace the computer. Want to upgrade: Buy a new computer.

Better buy a 3 year warranty to cover your butt. Without that, failure after 90 days means buy a new computer. Back to 1984. Back to Apple.

Airs are the same.
iphones are the same.
ipads are the same.

and when my first 4S got a line of dead pixels 8 months after i bought it (no Apple Care) I walked up to the Genius bar (expecting to pay for a repair).. the Genius said - "oh my - that shouldn't happen".. and handed me a replacement no questions asked. no fee paid. backed up my broken phone, restored it to the new one. in and out in 30 mins. again - 8 months after the sale so outside 90 days, an NO Apple Care.

then there was the time my MBP died just outside of A/C. logic board problem. Genius quoted me $300 for the logic board and 10 day turnaround. he was poking at a few more things and writing down the things HE thought was wrong with it.. nasty scratch on the lid, mediocre battery life, "squishy" trackpad button and "sub par" keyboard.. (likely because of the orange juice I coughed up on it). Got it back (free overnight shipping) in FOUR days (not 10 as they stated)... new logic board, new battery, new top case, new keyboard, new trackpad. (I could tell because there were cosmetic blemishes on on the keyboard and trackpad, and the gouge in the lid was gone). also on the invoice was a new video cable harness ("showing signs of wear" was the comment for that item). total charge - $300. typing this on the same machine.. almost 3 years later.

the only incident I had while under A/C was a dead optical drive in my G5 tower. I called them. They didn't even TRY to troubleshoot - they took my word at face value. The first question they asked was "are you comfortable replacing it yourself, I'll send one out today". The NEXT DAY I got a brand new internal drive (and they sent me a 48x to replace a 24x!), with a shipping label and... get this.. 4 strips of tape so I didn't even have to use my own to re-seal the box and send the broken one back.

I'm sure anyone who's ever dealt with Apple Customer Service will report similar experiences.

Customer service like that? - "Back to Apple" indeed.

All true and Apple is amazing at Customer service but while they're willing to go above and beyond its not their official stance. That is what people are wary about. The extra service we get is arbitrary, from whether the Genius gets on with you, their perception of user neglect of their product and I'm guessing Apple's own arbitrary rules of dealing with products. I'm sure they will be overly accomodating for problems with the Retina MBP because they want people to invest in it. I think the entire line of MacBooks are heading this way so it Apple sets this model as easy and reliable that transition will be better accepted.

Besides a "squishy" button on my iPhone 4 I can't think of anything else Apple hasn't taken care of for me. My iPad had a scratch on it I couldn't explain, and obviously not a design flaw, yet they replaced it no questions asked. They are known for going the extra mile. The only thing is we can't rely on which mike they are willing to go. With new technology, itself fearful, that's always a worry for adopters.