Well that time of year has come again where I get to buy myself  a new mac. My trusty 13 inch MBP has done me proud and despite a few scratches it’s in great condition. That was flogged for £650 with 6 months applecare still left.

Enter the new toy

I opted for the 15 inch retina. That’s a full 15 inches (2 more than before) of a screen that can make your eyes orgasm after a few seconds (more on that later).

Here’s some other facts about this model:-

• 2.4GHz quad-core
• Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache
• 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L onboard memory
• 256GB SSD

I don’t really pay much attention to all those numbers, if I buy a top of the range mac, well it’s going to be top of the range isn’t it.

Anyway this bad boy is fantastic! The screen is unbelievable. It has about 5 million pixels on the screen or something it makes everything look amazing – even Luis Suarez’s face! The fonts look absolutely brilliant and the sites and applications that have been made “retina ready” are crystal clear and an absolute delight to use on this screen.

It does have some drawbacks though. Sites and applications that aren’t “retina ready” can be a little disappointing, the icons/images and just about everything is blurry and although you can change some settings to resolve this I’m not going to bother as I like it how it is. Some people say that retina is too expensive and yeah I would probably say that it is. The best things cost more though unfortunately.

Now the size. Firstly the screen size makes it much better for me to code and especially design, 13 inch is a little bit too small in my opinion. It’s taken my a few days to get my hands in the right position for the larger keyboard but that’s my only quarrel. It’s also a hell of a lot thinner. I’m not going to give you the exact measurements but I will tell you it’s about 1/3 thinner and lighter than the last one – meaning I can get out of the car with all my shopping and my new mac easier than the last one.

It is fast! Like super fast. It would beat Usain Bolt. I now have a “quad core” whereas before I had a “dual core” so that automatically tell me it’s twice as fast. But I can assure you it’s much faster than that. I used to be able to go to the toilet when InDesign was loading, now I can’t even get up off my chair in time.

So overall I’m very happy. It should have cost me £1800 and applecare £250 but after tricking the sales person into thinking I was a student I managed to get them both for £�1,588.80 which was music to my ears.

That’s all I know so far I’ve only had it one day so I imagine there will be many more surprises. You can watch me opening my new computer here.

Thanks for reading. Don’t hesitate to fire any questions you may have.

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