2012 MacBook Pro 15-inch

The June 2012 15" MacBook Pro quad-core Intel Core i7 is an alternative to the MacBook Pro with Retina display, also a 15" model.

Both are the most compelling laptops for photographs and videographers ever produced by Apple. Following on the heels of Apple’s already-excellent quad-core 2011 Macbook Pro, they make further improvement with slightly faster CPUs and the very useful USB3 ports for fast external drives, a key feature for backup and storage expansion.

Price and features

The standard model appears to cost $700 less than the Retina model, but the actual price is more or less the same when configured similarly.

The Retina model offers several key advantages:

• The magnificent Retina display (but watch for burn-in problems, my replacement turned out fine).
• Two Thunderbolt ports (1 in the non-Retina model), but the FW800 and ethernet adapters eat up one or both of these ports unless an external expansion box is used.
• Firewire 800 and ethernet require external adapters via Thunderbolt.
• Two USB3 ports, one on the right hand side.
• 1.1 pounds lower weight.

On the other hand, the conventional 15" non-Retina MacBook Pro offers:

• Choice of hard drive or SSD in a wide variety of capacities, upgradeable with standard 2.5" hard drives or SSDs.
• One or two internal hard drives or SSDs (2nd one requires removal of the optical drive). Thus, RAID-0 striping or RAID-1 mirroring are possible internally, or an internal backup drive, etc.
• Built-in Firewire 800 and gigabit Ethernet.
• Anti-glare screen option.
• Upgradeable memory to 16GB.

The screen on the Retina model is appealing, but the dual-drive capability and built-in FW800 and ethernet are attractive for some field uses. That said, my choice for my own use is definitely the Retina model— I love the screen quality.