MacBook Pro with Retina Display: Unrepairable and tough to upgrade?

The New MacBook pro with Retina Display is being touted as Apple’s response to a wave of thin, Intel-powered Ultrabooks which run on the Windows 8 operating system. To a certain extent, it is. The Ultrabooks, in turn, were the industry’s response to Apple’s super thin MacBook Air which was a revolutionary device in terms of how thin it was. A typical Ultrabook uses Intel’s third generation Ivy-Bridge processor, a Solid State Disk (SSD) which allows for faster booting and is way thinner than your regular laptop. However, with the new MacBook Pro which is only 0.71 inch thick when closed, Apple has changed the name of the game once again. The Retina Display adds more lustre to Apple’s latest offering. They have also ditched the optical disk drive, the Ethernet port and the traditional Hard-drive in the new version of the Pro. But even as tech junkies and Apple fans are busy drooling over the new MacBook Pro which does have some impressive specs,  the hype is begin to fade as the harsh reality sinks in.  To begin with, the Pro is expensive. A high-end price tag of $2,199 or $2,799, depending on the configuration, means that people won’t be queuing up for it. In India, the Pro would approximately cost you Rs 1.5 lakh. [caption id=“attachment_343618” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The new MacBook Pro with Retina display. Reuters”]  [/caption] Then comes this rather disturbing report on how the new Pro’s are unrepairable and really tough to upgrade. According to ifixit, the MacBook Pro is virtually unrepairable and upgrading won’t be an easy option. The blog which dismantled Apple’s latest offering gave it a lowly 1 out 10 as repair score. The site rates this as the least repairable Apple computer ever. It also adds:

Laptops are expensive. It’s critical that consumers have the option to repair things that go wrong, as well as upgrade their own hardware to keep it relevant as new technologies roll out. On top of being glued together, the new MacBook Pro is virtually non-upgradeable — making it the first MacBook Pro that will be unable to adapt to future advances in memory and storage technology.

So clearly this $2200 worth device will mean trouble for the careless users. This verdict has not left many tech junkies happy. Their anger is justified since users who pay so much for a high-end device would also like to upgrade it. Clearly Apple is not giving them that option. As Richard Gaywood on TheUnofficialAppleBlog says in outraged tone, If this is the price you pay for a thin laptop, I want no part of it. Apple’s super-expensive laptop will be super-hard to maintain for everyone. The other big problem seems to the one feature that has vowed everyone – the Retina Display. While the apps that have been upgraded for retina display look beautiful everything else on the device looks terrible. The Verge points that the if you’re surfing the web with the new MacBook Pro, you may notice just how low-quality a lot of the images are. Wired’s Gadget lab says,

Like the Retina display on the third generation iPad, the gorgeous display, which is 2880 x 1800 resolution, is a bit of a double-edged sword. High-resolution images are jaw-droppingly stunning. The icons docked at the bottom of the screen are super sharp, as is onscreen text. Although glossy, it’s noticeably less reflective (75 percent, to be exact) than previous-gen MacBook displays. Unfortunately, that means it’s really noticeable when images, graphics, and apps aren’t so hi-res.

The point is clear. Not all apps are available in high-res and the new Retina display makes the World Wide Web look pretty damned ugly. Apple has updated Final Cut Pro X for Retina Display but the Photoshop update is still awaited.