Apple Releases First MacBook Pro with ‘Retina’ Display

At its annual WWDC, Apple announced a MacBook Pro 15″ refresh that’s sure to turn heads. Let’s just get out with it: 2880×1800. Yes, that’s the resolution. As in, 5.184 megapixels. With that resolution, this 15″ notebook has more pixels than a 30″ monitor at 2560×1600. For an even better perspective, the previous “best” for 15″ notebooks has been 1920×1080. The latest MacBook Pro increased that by a factor of about 2.5x.

Components-wise, the new 15″ isn’t much different than the previous iteration. The CPU options are the same, as are the RAM options at a given price-point. However, while the previous 15″ model started at $1,799, this new one gets boosted to $2,199. Compared to the previous $2,199 model, the new one exchanges a 750GB hard drive with a 256GB SSD – a change I sure don’t disagree with.

In addition to the impressive Retina display, the new MacBook Pro features an aesthetic design similar to the MacBook Air. Apple shaved about 1/4th of the width off, compared to the previous 15″ model, and overall it looks great. A notebook at .71″ thick and 4.46lbs equipped with an i7 CPU, 650M GPU and up to 16GB of RAM is impressive to say the least.

In fact, this is the most impressive notebook release I’ve ever seen come out of Apple – and to think, it wasn’t even the major focal point of today’s WWDC. While I believe the resolution to be overkill, mostly useful to those equipped with a magnifying glass (Apple itself agrees), it’s hard to not be impressed at the feat nonetheless. I never expected to see a notebook surpass the 2560×1600 resolution on high-end desktop monitors quite this soon.