HARDWARE
If you're familiar with the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina
display that Apple shipped this past June, you're already ahead of the learning
curve on this model. With the exception of size, these two are nigh identical,
starting with the port configuration. On the left side you'll find a new
MagSafe 2 connector, dual Thunderbolt ports, a USB 3.0 port and the headphone
jack -- just like the 15-inch model. On the right it's the same again, with
another USB 3.0 port joined by a full-size HDMI output and built-in SDXC
reader.
So, when it comes to physical connectivity, you're giving up
exactly nothing compared to its big brother -- but you're not gaining anything,
either. There's still no Ethernet jack (an optional $29.99 Thunderbolt adapter
is available). Also absent is an optical drive, left in the dust as progress
motors ever onward. There's also still no option for cellular connectivity of
any kind, so go ahead and re-up that contract on your MiFi. You're going to
need it.
So what's different? The first is that display, now a
13.3-inch unit lined up in a 2,560 x 1,600 grid. While this doesn't quite match
the 2,880 x 1,800 of its 15.4-inch elder, it comprehensively trounces the 1,280
x 800 panel in the older, chubbier, optical-endowed Pro. Also, what powers that
panel has changed, with the 13-inch Pro with Retina relying exclusively on
integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics. The 15-inch Retina Pro gets a much healthier
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Kepler assembly with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.
Other hardware configurations differ, too, which we'll
detail a little later in the review. But it's safe to say that overall the
13-inch Retina Pro makes do with components that mark this as a slightly
lower-rent machine than the 15-inch. Dual-core chips are found rather than
quad-core beasts, and of course there's the reliance on integrated graphics
that some power users will find simply distasteful.
Taken on its own, what you have is a comprehensively
powerful little machine, a beautifully engineered one to boot.
Taken on its own, what you have is a comprehensively
powerful little machine, a beautifully engineered one to boot. The aluminum
MacBook Pros have always impressed us with their seemingly bulletproof unibody
construction and this latest member of the family certainly inherited healthy
DNA. Try to twist and turn the machine with all your might and you'll get no
sign of weakness. Barely a hint of flex is evident.
Of course, the new Pro 13 is slimmer than the old one and,
like the 15-inch Retina vs. its predecessor, it's slightly smaller on all the
other dimensions, too. It's 12.35 inches wide and 8.62 inches deep (314 x 219
mm), compared to 12.78 x 8.94 inches for the one with the optical drive. Of
course, the big talking point is thickness, and the new model is about 20
percent thinner than the old one: 0.75 of an inch compared to 0.95 for the
previous model. Curiously, and somewhat unfortunately, that's actually thicker than
the 15-inch Retina Pro, at just 0.71 inches.
It is, at least, comprehensively lighter than either of
those two, tipping the scales at 3.57 pounds (1.62kg). That's nearly a full
notch lighter than the 4.5-pound non-Retina 13-incher and the 4.46-pound
15-inch Retina. It's actually closer in heft to the new Air, which weighs 2.96
pounds (1.35kg). The Air is thinner, though, at 0.68 inches.
Still, the design is quite familiar. The wide, black plastic
hinge is present, as you'd expect, still offering just the right amount of
tension. The four hard rubber feet still protrude from the corners on the
bottom of the machine, working equally well at keeping this from sliding across
your desk or your lap. The keyboard backlight is as effective as it is
dimmable, and the island layout itself has the same great feel we've come to
expect from the entire MacBook line. As this is a Pro model, the keys are slightly
deeper and more responsive than those on the Air. Users of any MacBook model
will be typing at maximum WPM right out of the box.
Speakers now reside beneath the keyboard and offer plenty of
volume and decent tone for your occasional usage. You can play music through
them in a pinch, like when you need to step out of headphone range to iron a
shirt or rummage through the mini bar in your hotel room, but we'd recommend
sticking to other means of audio delivery if you're concerned with accurate
sound reproduction. The sound quality is decent, but lacks a bit when it comes
to lower-frequency reproduction.
DISPLAY
We were guilty of gushing a little bit about the new Retina
display in the 15-inch Pro, but frankly we'd never seen a laptop panel anywhere
near that good before. Now, we've seen another.
We were guilty of gushing a little bit about the new Retina
display in the 15-inch Pro, but frankly we'd never seen a laptop panel anywhere
near that good before. Now, we've seen another, and it's here in the 13-inch
model. The native resolution of the panel is necessarily reduced, falling to
2,560 x 1,600 from the 2,880 x 1,800 on the 15.4-inch unit that we called
"gorgeous." This 13.3-inch version is no less a looker.
Brightness is rated at 300 nits, not world-record territory
more than adequate, especially with outdoor viewing augmented by the
glare-busting reduction of layers in the panel. Contrast and viewing angles are
about as good as they get and the color temperature looks mighty close to
natural out of the box. But, should you need to make things warmer or cooler
you have a comprehensive calibration tool built into Mountain Lion that will
let you tweak your machine's white point to your little heart's content.
What you still can't do, though, is force apps to run at the
panel's native resolution. There's a lot of scaling going on here, the default
setting in Mountain Lion blowing apps up so that they take the same amount of
space on the screen. This is great for pixel-perfect app compatibility, but not
so great if you were hoping to get a boost in screen real estate.
As on the 15-inch Retina, you can go in and manually tweak
that scaling to some degree by dragging a little slider about. Here, the
"More Space" option, where things are smallest, is said to look like
1,680 x 1,050. This effectively slots the 13-inch Pro with Retina between the
amount of workspace you'd have at your disposal on the 15-inch non-Retina Pro
and the now dearly departed tall 1080p 17-incher.
As before, apps need to be optimized to take advantage of
the Retina display. There are, we're happy to report, a whole lot more now than
there were in June when the 15-inch model dropped.
by Tim Stevens
