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I am considering buying a laptop for my wife and was looking at the MacBook Pro 13". I do understand that the Retina Display also includes a smaller yet significantly faster hard drive, but is the 300-400 dollar difference worth it? Your opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

no

Depends.... You might find it worth it if you're not putting yourself into debt to get it. Also - it's not just the display you're getting but also a slimmer enclosure with SSD only. Personally I'm going to wait at least til the next update, which should bring better graphics performance and a better price point.

Is it better for porn?

If not, then no.

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Depends on the resolution of your porn...

Ahh...

So no then.

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There's two 13" Macbook Airs i5s in this house. The wife uses her mostly for browsing and iPhoto.

I use mine for browsing, xwindows and ssh.

The weight difference from a MBP to MBA is quite significant and I would never want to go back to a heavy laptop again,

Overrated. It might be a bit nice to have but not necessary at all. If you are familiar with the transition from iOS pre-retina display, to retina display support in iPhone4, there was a lot of pixelated looking icons and UI elements before developers updated their apps to support the retina display. The web experience is going to be somewhat similar, and I don't think many web developers are on board with developing ultra high resolution versions of their websites for a niche group of people using retina displays at desktop resolutions (at least not any time soon).

As a side note, Apple has fortunately packed in a lot of display settings, so you don't have to view everything at retina density (meaning: you could view content/websites at a normal resolution).



Anyways, not worth it IMO. I generally like Apple products, have a ton of them, but if there is one thing I won't do and that is being an early adaptor of their products. My wife is the opposite has encountered so many issues. I recall my wife returning 3 iMacs when she bought the first gen of the last design update.

So for the price of a second laptop you can get a slightly better display? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

It also includes the SDD in that price, but with an i5 processor instead of i7. Depending on what you intend to do, the SSD will deliver noticeable speed improvements over the difference in processors. Conventional HHD's can be a big bottle neck.

If you don't need retina display (sounds like you don't), consider going with the 13" i7 2.9 ghz option and order it from the apple.ca site where you can do a custom configuration and spend the extra $100 to upgrade it to an SSD (providing you don't need the onboard storage capacity).

I say it depends on what you value. I've seen it in person and like it. If its in the budget and you like what you see, get it. Its a personal preference.

I wouldn't recommend getting a MBP with an i7. There's really no value proposition in the MBP over the MBA today. The MBA is cheaper and lighter, but has plenty of horse power.

I believe most typical users would run just fine on the stock MBA 13" with 4GB of RAM. Some users might see a benefit in the upgraded RAM, as OSX's application management will background processes rather than terminating unless you specifically quit them. (red X does not quit).

I wasn't sure what 'Retina Display' was, so I had to look it up. Based on the definition, I would definitley say it's worth it

Retina Display
A magical and revolutionary display only found on iOS. The magic stems from the fact that not only is this display high res but its "Retina" too, meaning high res, in addition to already being high res. This means that the display is double high res!

So even if it does have mediocre contrast (800:1), poor gamut, and inferior viewing angles, you know its high quality. And because your eyes can't even see the pixels you wouldn't even know how washed out it looks!

merriam-websteronline.com/retinadisplay

Well done sir.