As soon as the second generation of macbooks is out I will be upgrading!
I waited for second generation for the iPhone and iPad, both far more radical steps than this little Macbook, but the first gen products were spectacular.
(edit: My most disappointing Apple product in the past 15 years has been my iPhone 6. Jobs wouldn't let them make it wider due to handling issues. Without his restraint, they made it wider. Now I have to have a case and drop the darn thing all the time. Never had that problem with other iPhones.)
The first generation retina macbooks had screens that ghosted, and it took several months before lots of kinks were worked out
The Macbook for example was $1800, with a $1300 additional cost if you wanted a 64gb SSD. It had a few hours of battery life and very weak performance.
Was it spectacular? Absolutely. But not necessarily amazing value. It eventually turned into a damn powerful little laptop that people bought instead of a MBP for dev work and even lightweight photo/video editing, with 12+ hours of battery life and still really thin.
The rMB kind of feels like that. It's not necessarily the best value right now. A rMBP or MBA is fine, and if you're OS agnostic, the Dell XPS or Asus Zenbook are interesting choices, too. In a few years the MBA won't have gotten any updates and the rMB gets sourced with a faster chip, drops $100 in price and adds some battery life, and probably comes out with a beefier 14" version. Then it'll be an interesting buy.
As an example, Apple had been making white iBooks for a long time before their Intel transition. But the 1st gen MacBook used a different white plastic that could absorb oils from your hands and turn a nice shade of orange/brown. http://appleinsider.com/articles/06/07/26/apple_recognizes_w...
With a brand new design, you risk problems like that slipping through the cracks. Maybe it turns out that the new keyboard mechanism starts missing presses once the usual crud falls in between the keys, or maybe the USB-C connector isn't durable enough and stops charging reliably a few months in. If the new models have any issues like that, waiting for the second version would save you some headaches.
Increasing the resolution actually helped with this a little bit, I found. The non-integer scaling is pretty unnoticeable, thanks to the ridiculous panel resolution, so you can select the fake 1680x1050 without fear of everything turning into a blotchy funny-pixelled mess.
Though the ergonomics overall still aren't all that great, because you need to be pretty close to the screen if you want to actually use the keyboard...
The comment is nothing to do with scaling and all to do with viewing angle. Ideally the monitor should be placed with its center at the same height as your head. This is impossible on laptops and worst on the smallest.
And is it really that different than the MacBook Air 13" - which has a huge screen - large enough that I haven't bothered plugging a monitor into in the last 3+ years (even though I have a perfectly serviceable 24" monitor sitting on my desk).
And whenever anything is sent to the service depot, they wipe the goddamn hard drive. No matter what. And you guys know the pain of re-downloading XCode, re-installing everything with homebrew, re-cloning all of your git repos, re-configuring all of your git-remotes, re-installing virtual machines for IE8, etc. It takes like 2-3 days. And it's not an issue that employers with deadlines are sympathetic about.
The stupid thing is that every time I get it back I think, "everything will be different this time". It's like a sick abusive relationship.
I just got it back like 4 days ago from the latest trip to the depot, and now there's a harsh buzzing sound that I've never heard before. So now I have to weigh the severity of this stupid issue against the headache of re-installing everything again and rolling the dice with another trip to the depot.
I guess what I'm saying is that you really should beware of 1st gen apple hardware.
My experience hasn't been very positive with the MacBook. It doesn't support non-Apple hardware well. The software quality is not that great, there are various bugs and issues. I'll sometimes do a bit lightweight gaming, and to my surprise wine works better on Linux than native games on the Mac OS X I've played. There are "known issues" that many MacBook owners have with various games but these are seemingly ignored.
With Arch there were issues, but almost always they could be manually fixed with a bit of command line magic. With Apple the usual solution is to either pay around 20 to 30 dollars to buy some random software which should fix the issue or just deal with the problem. Just as an example, even basic stuff like an external mouse with scroll wheel doesn't work well due to inadjustable scrolling acceleration.
As far as actual use, well that depends on who is using it. The role that this laptop fits really well IMO is use as a secondary device for consistently mid-level computing tasks (with some burst activity) in an environment where mobility is important. "webdev work while traveling" is exactly this role so as long as you are OK with the form factor then you will like this laptop. If the form factor is an issue, you should consider the Air. If power is an issue, you should consider the Pro. If price is an issue, look at other manufacturers (new Surface and new XPS are both great machines, for example, though neither are really that cheap).
The reviews on this device have been mixed but I think a lot of reviews are acting on the premise that it's a one-stop machine, but it's not. It's not perfect. It's a bit pricey. You aren't going to be running a new game at max settings on it. The one port thing is odd and you will need to wait for the adapter market to catch up for some of this oddness/clumsiness to disappear. 8 gig ram isn't quite enough if you are expecting to be running big VMs on it a lot. The CPU is relatively underpowered (though, honestly, I think this is overrated and the 1.3 in particular is quite good... even with the 1.1 you will likely never even notice).
For me, this device is replacing a 13" 2011 Air and so far I consider it to be superior in just about every way and my experience has been great. If I need to sit down and do some "serious" computing for a decent stretch of time (new game at max settings for a couple hours, large data crunching, long programming stretch where I really need a desk and several monitors) then, well, that's what my desktop is for (or a powerful, bulky, docked laptop which amounts to the same thing).
In other words, what you are buying when you buy this machine over something else is this: the keyboard, the trackpad, the screen, the efficiency of the CPU, the battery form factor, the fanless design, and the entire form factor to bring this all together in such a tiny laptop. In return, the tradeoff is slightly less RAM, slightly less CPU power, and a lack of extension ports.
For the work that a Macbook is going to be doing, I would think that 8 GB is more than enough.
The thing that will kill me - lack of USB ports when I'm out in the field. I really need the two USB ports - and the MBair is a life saver their. Hopefully a cheap USB-C --> 2 USB port converter will come out soon.
My machine handles a Windows8.1 in VirtualBox easily. I use it for Visual Studio 2013 daily and it's fine although it's not perfect. It's slow at times but not enough to make me dualboot.
I hope that someone chimes in with Win VM on the real MacBook because I'm interested in it but I think it'll be just fine.
[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i3-2310M-Notebook-Pr... [2] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-M-5Y71-SoC.129324.0....
FYI the new version of Office for Mac will be out soon (preview is available now for free) if that's what you're referring to when you say "bad OSX experience."
Compared to my MBPR it feels just as fast if not occasionally faster. However, streaming video to the TV over airplay hasn't been as nice. If you do video heavy things like gaming or video production, its not for you. But as a programmer, I'm really, really happy.
Note: I would recommend the 1.2 GHz configuration or the 1.3 - I have the 1.2 and a lot the the reviews are saying that there is a noticeable difference between the 1.1 and 1.2 in terms of computing power.
Edit: fixed spelling and grammar.
it really depends on your needs though. I use it as my portable machine and it goes wherever I go when I'm on the go, which I previously had an 11 inch air for. Coming from that it's an enormous upgrade.
The battery lasted me 7 hours yesterday of constant use, and the screen is the best screen of any laptop I have personally used. it's not really a widescreen anymore which helps with my terminal experience greatly.
My normal workload includes 50% terminal.app, 30% Xcode and the rest is split up between instant messaging and emailing. so I don't desire or need to run things like video editing or VMware. I use an iMac for that stuff, infrequently.
so for an OS X based machine that is ultra portable and runs terminal well, I'm not sure why you would be better off waiting. it's a great product.
If this actually works, it's a pretty killer feature over the MBA/Pro.
Right now the 13" rMBP seems like the better purchase in every way right now. I wouldn't buy a current MBA either as they are really showing their age. Their screen is the worst in Apple's line up by a long shot.
I would love, also, to hear from people who have been using it. Thinking about purchasing it for my personal system to go along with my work computer which I travel with, so I can keep email, photos, all personal stuff off the corporate system. Portability is key - would love to know if anyone is using it in that fashion.
I ultimately didn't buy anything because I already have a 15-in Retina pro, and on further reflection, it didn't seem that much thicker than the Air...so I just replaced my stolen iPad instead.
