The downgrade from 1440x900 UI/chrome resolution to 1280x800 is what kills it for me. This is the first review that I see addressing this issue; I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing this glaring issue.<p>(The 15" MBP retina display suffers from the same issue.)
I just made the same upgrade from a 2011 i7 MacBook Air to the 13" Retina MacBook Pro and I disagree with nearly every part of this review. Battery life seems on par with my Air. Performance is improved on the MacBook Pro. A good example is something like installing imagemagick from Homebrew. On the Air that resulted in max-fans, the MBP handled it without breaking a sweat. I haven't noticed any UI sluggishness. I loved my Air (like many have said, it's my favorite computer I've ever owned) but this machine is every bit as nice, feels more capable (CPU-wise) and has a gorgeous display. The only drawback is the extra weight and thickness.
Did you try scrolling using Safari instead of Chrome/Firefox? With the Retina display, scrolling is significantly smoother on Safari (aka it's not smooth on a 15" Retina on Chrome either).
Typing from a 13 rMBP purchased today. Hopefully its an upgrade from my 2010 mba 13" but from the sounds of this review I'll probably be returning mine too in a few weeks, as I have a similar workload as the author. Thanks for writing the review.
The reason why I bought it is because it's Apple's cheapest laptop with two monitor outputs. I can hook up three additional screens to do programming/Photoshop/whatever.<p>You can't do two/three (native) screens on an Air or even the non-Retina MBP. (You can with USB, but it's laggy and there's no USB 3 things for Mac.)
I'm not sure why he says the effective resolution is 1280x800. The resolution is 2560x1600. I just sold my 13" Air and bought a 13" rMBP; very happy with it so far.
Something is clearly wrong here. Have you updated everything to the latest version (OS X 10.8.2, latest firmware, etc)? If so and you're having the problems you described it sounds like a defective unit.<p>I have a 15" rMBP. It had a lot of graphical issues before upgrading to Mountain Lion. After the upgrade I only had 1 issue with bootcamp and resetting SMC solved that. I run at 1920x1200 and all natively rendered stuff (eg fonts) is crisp. Integrated video (same Intel 4000) works fine for all web browsing. I do notice low frame rates with some OS transitions but nothing on the web. I get 6+ hours of battery life <i>easily</i>.
<i>>The Retina MacBook Pro 13” has an Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset, which is rather underpowered.</i><p>Does anyone know of a 13" or smaller notebook with a good discrete GPU? The only one I know of is the Sager NP6110 [1] with a high end Nvdia GT650M.<p>If Sager can do it, why aren't there a lot more of these?<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np6110-clevo-w110er-p-4343.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np6110-clevo-w110er-p-4343.html</a>
The 13" Macbook Pro with retina display is proof enough that Apple will waste no time switching to ARM for Macs. They simply care about other laptop qualities a lot more than about total horsepower. If it's just "good enough" or even slightly underwhelming in terms of performance, it doesn't mean they will not do it.
I hurried to buy my 17inch Macbook Pro for exactly that reason a week before it vanished from the apple university store. My resolution is NATIVE 1920x1200, which is better than the 1920x1200 you get on a Retina 15inch.
Thank you so much for writing this. I've been on the fence (fences?) deciding on the right model for a laptop upgrade. The portability of the Air? Features of the "basic" 13" Pro? The screen of the 13" Retina? The much better performance of the 15" Retina? This is the first review I've read that adequately addresses the real-world performance issues of the newest member of the lineup.<p>I find the pricing of the current Mac laptop lineup to be out of whack with the feature steps between each level, which makes picking the best performance and value difficult.
Well, for some the display quality over performance trade off is worth it, while for others (like the author here), it's not.<p>Haswell will most likely handle the retina resolutions just fine. The iterative polish that Apple is known for will not be lost on the retina MacBooks.
I have the 15" and absolutely love it. When the machine isn't taxed, I've gotten more than 7 hours from the battery and I do quite a bit of coding and reading on it. YMMV.