Macbook Pro owners both Retina and non - your opinions please! Also Cloud storage questions

Phate

Phate

Phate

Caporegime
Joined
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Hi all,

So my iMac etc goes up for sale on eBay shortly. I'll be looking to use the money from that to fund a MacBook Pro, currently undecided on a retina model or otherwise.

Pros for Retina

  • Dat screen with dem pixels. Duh
  • Weight
  • Portability
  • It's kick-ass

But obviously those pro's all come at a premium. I'm going to be using it for travelling so portability is an absolute must for me. However the normal 13.3" MBP is hardly big or heavy so I've no issue with that.

So what I'm focusing on is a couple of things, the main one is grunt. What spec is yours? Retina or Non. How do you find the image processing/general Lightroom usage. Do you find it slowing down? Do you wish your spec was better, and if so in what way?

Also, the Retina screen. The initial benefits are obvious with general usage. However, do you find this a genuine benefit when image processing? Does LR take advantage of the Retina displays? I dont find the 'standard' displays from Apple products to be bad by any standards so am considering going for a standard screen. But then it brings back to then carrying a heavier laptop around.

My minimum specs are 16GB RAM and 256gb storage. Processor wise I'd be happy with an i5 2.6ghz or upwards. An i7 would be amazing but it depends on what's available.

I'll be looking into Cloud storage for my 'keeper' photos from traveling and it'll be handy when on the move. If you use cloud storage, who do you use/recommend?

What say you, good sirs!
 
I have 15" RMBP, last years model base model with 16Gb RAM. Just bear in mind that the 'retina' resolution will give you quite low screen real estate, so I run mine at a slighter higher res to give me some more space but still retain that awesome look.
 
I've got the 15 RMBP its the 2.5 (3.7) with 16GB and 1TB flash storage - Mid 2014 edition.

I use it mainly for photoshop and lightroom and have been impressed by the performance, I think the flash storage helps as it's just crazy quick. I've not done much video editing on it but what I have was fine in performance terms.
 
Jase said:
I've got the 15 RMBP its the 2.5 (3.7) with 16GB and 1TB flash storage - Mid 2014 edition.

I use it mainly for photoshop and lightroom and have been impressed by the performance, I think the flash storage helps as it's just crazy quick. I've not done much video editing on it but what I have was fine in performance terms.
Click to expand...

OK Thanks. Is the 3.7 bit with 'turboboost' or whatever its called, how does that work? :)

Sounds like I dont need an overkill CPU though. It'll be mostly photo editing, some light gopro work.
 
Cloud storage is a bad idea if traveling, unless your travels happen to be in very modern cities staying at modern hotels. Otherwise you will likely be very restricted with the wifi available. I have found many hotels that offer wifi, give you flaky dial-up speeds and a cap of maybe 100MB. Fine for checking emails and news not much else. ISP's and infrastructure around the globe are not as generous as ours. Even 2Mbps 'crappy' rural adsl is amazing in comparison to what most of the world has.

I'd recommend at least the 500mb version. If you will be editing gopro vids, I'd resign myself to a external HDD also as you will use up the space.
13" is too small to be productive long term imo. It's a shame 17" MBPR are not available, the res+ screen real-estate would be a winning combination.

I have a 15"MBPR and a XPS 9530, both comparable in build quality, battery size and speed. However the XPS is around 1/2 the price and has a better more colour accurate touch screen. - also fully upgradeable. Both run OSX and WINOS to get the best of both worlds. The retina or real 4k screens are fantastic for photo work, however it pretty much ends there, and can lesson (WinOS) productivity of other tasks until windows 10 hits.
I'd say the MBPR is marginally better as a complete package, however at £2k+ vs £1k with accessories etc. I'm not sure if its worth the extra if you could then get a few extra flights instead.

The new CS versions of LR fully support The high res screens, so menu's are big enough to read and the images are fine in detail.

Turbo? The CPU runs approximately like this (numbers picked out of the air just for this example)
Quad core i7 cpu. 2.4ghz (3.7ghz turbo)
1 Core being used 3.7ghz
2 Cores being used 3.2ghz
4 Cores being used 2.4ghz

So 1 core being used will be playing a video, opening a application etc.
4 Cores being used will be rendering video or editing some high res images. Due to thermal limitations within the laptops the chips are set to either run 1 core fast or 4 cores slow. It wont let you run all 4 cores at 3.7 due to the power used/heat generated. So it varies the speed to the tasks at hand. All chips do this even on xeon workstations, just more intensively on mobile devices.
 
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Thanks for the input :)

I'll never buy another windows machine for personal working ever again, but thank you for the suggestion all the same :)

13" is perfect for travelling for me...15 would be nice (and also offers the possibilities of quad core CPU's) but its too big to carry around all the time for me.

Ah so thats the turbo boosting works!

Fair point about the cloud storage...hmm I'll need to look into additional storage. Don't fancy carrying around something extra which could be another point of failure. I'll ponder it...hmm
 
Blackbadger said:
Hater ;) Parallels is your friend!

A little pricey however a external ssd would be a good idea.

Either DIY with a regular SSD or even better the samsung T1 which is smaller than a business card.
Or the Trancend Jetdrive series, slower but tiny. (basically specially shaped high capacity SD cards)
Click to expand...

I've spent enough of my life supporting windows machines to not want them in my life! :p (not wanting to turn this into an osx vs windows thread, I just have my preference :D)

Ooh I've not heard of those, thanks very much :) - they seem ideal!
 
Just for comparison at the other end of the specification scale, I run a 2013 rMBP with a dual core i5, 128 gb SSD and just 4 gb RAM.

It runs Lightroom CC fine, although there's a noticeable yet manageable slight delay when loading previews. It would annoy me if it was my main machine, but as a travel companion allowing me to edit photos on the move, it is just fine.

After considerable debate running it side by side with a slightly higher specced MacBook Air I chose the rMBP because the screen is significantly better.

I run mine together with a WD 2 TB Passport - works fine and is certainly quick enough over USB 3. Portable photo and video editing on a budget, relatively speaking, but it works ok. If I could I would have upgraded the RAM (it is soldered in) and then I'm sure it would be even better.
 
Phate said:
Thanks 42zx. What sort of processing do you do? how well do you find it keeps up?
Click to expand...

Just smallish lightroom imports and editing individual files, the machine has never really blinked at anything I've tried tbh.

A high spec 13" can be had for the same price as the standard 15", it's probably the best size/power ratio for travelling. I have 2TB USB3 HDD for extra storage. I only went with a 15" because it was replacing my desktop PC.
 
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Thanks all for the valuble input. I'm beginning to think I might not actually not a powerhouse like I originally thought so that gives me more flexibility. Will know my budget in a couple of weeks and can go from there :)
 
The basic 13 MBP is not much cheaper than the basic 13 rMBP... but it comes with an epic screen and a spinning platter hard drive -> SSD upgraded included.

It's a no-brainer really... the 13 MBP is a waste of money



Considering the photography and lightroom work you plan to do however, the 15" with quad-core will be a worthy expense... BIG performance boost over the 13 with dual core.

Figure out your budget and get the best you can... storage can be expanded later and/or separately... CPU, RAM and screen you're stuck with... although the "old" spec standard resolution screens are still good in colour reproduction and enough for what you need.

Compromise in ultimate resolution, sure... focus on CPU, RAM, SSD & battery life
 
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Cheers Crinkles :)

What I've found from this thread is to not worry 'too much' about Storage is it's expandable. I'd also be annoyed if I didn't get the RMBP because I've wanted one since they existed :p

Not getting the 15" as I don't want to make things heavier when on the move :) - I know the performance boost will be great from the 15, however I'll be shooting mainly on my Olympus, the RAW files are half the size of the 5D so it's not too much of a worry, I'm sure it'll be fine.

So I'm going to focus on getting the best CPU & RAM and not too much on the storage due to the expandability. Excellent stuff.

Still going to see about going into an Apple store on Saturday with an SD card, some raws etc and see if I can give one of them a beating to see how they stand up to get a better idea.
 
Contacted Apple Chat and asked them if its possible to do some extended testing in the store. They said it would need managerial store approval and the guy gave me a number for the lakeside store so I could contact them to get this.

Excellent! :)
 
For the 13" the i7 is pointless since it doesn't give you any more cores, you gain a small increase in CPU speed and more L3 cache which isn't worth the price premium.
 
Yup... the only real upgrade in these CPUs is moving from dual core -> quad core.

Certainly don't worry about volume of storage... as, like you said, it's expandable... just make sure you get an SSD over a spinning hard drive, as there is a massive difference there.

The weight difference between the 13 and 15 is surprisingly small... I find the 15 a slightly nicer size screen to work on... especially with photos, the extra real estate makes a difference... these retina screens use non-native resolutions, so make sure you have a poke around to see how much you can fit on screen.

IIRC, the standard resolution on the 13 is 1280x800 and is limited to 1600x900 or thereabouts.

Whereas the 15 defaults to 1440*900... but will let you go up to 1920x1200.

You can get the native res, but that requires a 3rd party app.

It still displays the images etc at full resolution, it only scales the screen real estate and app windows etc to the mentioned resolutions. So the 15 would display a 2880x1800 image as a full screen image, not only show a quarter of it at default res.
 
Broken Hope said:
For the 13" the i7 is pointless since it doesn't give you any more cores, you gain a small increase in CPU speed and more L3 cache which isn't worth the price premium.
Click to expand...

crinkleshoes said:
Yup... the only real upgrade in these CPUs is moving from dual core -> quad core.

Certainly don't worry about volume of storage... as, like you said, it's expandable... just make sure you get an SSD over a spinning hard drive, as there is a massive difference there.

The weight difference between the 13 and 15 is surprisingly small... I find the 15 a slightly nicer size screen to work on... especially with photos, the extra real estate makes a difference... these retina screens use non-native resolutions, so make sure you have a poke around to see how much you can fit on screen.

IIRC, the standard resolution on the 13 is 1280x800 and is limited to 1600x900 or thereabouts.

Whereas the 15 defaults to 1440*900... but will let you go up to 1920x1200.

You can get the native res, but that requires a 3rd party app.

It still displays the images etc at full resolution, it only scales the screen real estate and app windows etc to the mentioned resolutions. So the 15 would display a 2880x1800 image as a full screen image, not only show a quarter of it at default res.
Click to expand...

I think the i5/i7 side of things is a little more complex than just the amount of physical cores. The way I understand it is that it gives you 7 workable cores or something like that anyway. I don't know the specifics well enough to argue otherwise :)

Well I'd never have another spinning HDD again, so no problems there, SSD only. Leaning towards the RMBP at the moment.

Could be tempted by the 15, but just can't help but think it'll be annoying if I'm on the move the whole time. I know the real estate would be fantastic. Will compare them side by side on Saturday when in the store :)
 
Phate said:
I think the i5/i7 side of things is a little more complex than just the amount of physical cores. The way I understand it is that it gives you 7 workable cores or something like that anyway. I don't know the specifics well enough to argue otherwise :)

Well I'd never have another spinning HDD again, so no problems there, SSD only. Leaning towards the RMBP at the moment.

Could be tempted by the 15, but just can't help but think it'll be annoying if I'm on the move the whole time. I know the real estate would be fantastic. Will compare them side by side on Saturday when in the store :)
Click to expand...

For the desktop processors you're correct the i5 will give you a quad core CPU and the i7 will give you a quad core with hyperthreading, so 8 threads.

Mobile processors are different, at least the ones used in the 13" MBP, all the processors in the 13" MBP are dual cores with hyperthreading, so 4 threads, even the i7's.

Notice if you look at the specs here

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

The i7 is still listed as a dual core

dual-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz) with 4MB shared L3 cache.
Click to expand...

The difference between the i5 and the i7 is basically 1MB more of L3 cache and a 200MHz more base and 100MHz more boost clock.

Like I said, not worth the price increase. As it's £250 extra for the processor upgrade.

You'd be better off upgrading the RAM from 8GB to 16GB since it's soldered and can't be replaced by yourself.
 
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Broken Hope said:
For the desktop processors you're correct the i5 will give you a quad core CPU and the i7 will give you a quad core with hyperthreading, so 8 threads.

Mobile processors are different, at least the ones used in the 13" MBP, all the processors in the 13" MBP are dual cores with hyperthreading, so 4 threads, even the i7's.

Notice if you look at the specs here

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

The i7 is still listed as a dual core



The difference between the i5 and the i7 is basically 1MB more of L3 cache and a 200MHz more base and 100MHz more boost clock.

Like I said, not worth the price increase.
Click to expand...

Thanks for explaining :)

Right, not worried about the i7 then :)

Be interesting to see how the RMBP stock spec in the store handles what I throw at it tomorrow.
 
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