16GB RAM default on the new 15" Macbook Pro Retinas

(source: BBS.feng.com)


According to the various Mac Blogs and Rumors, the 15" Macbook Pro Retina is going 16GB as standard. I don't think I'll be uprading unless there is an option for 32GB RAM. Since I already have 16GB of RAM, I don't see a compelling reason to upgrade. I notice the NVIDIA GPU is now 2GB which will be handy.

I don't think it is a worthwhile upgrade to my 2.7GHZ, 16GB RAM, 760GB SSD build. It is still the best laptop I've owned and is still plenty fast.

However, I'm yearning for 32GB RAM which I have on all my workstation desktops.

16GB is bare-bone minimum when you run a lot of VMs. I can definitely feel the need for more RAM. 2GB of video RAM would be good at driving two 27" monitors. I can definitely feel some lag right now.

Storage wise I'm still good. I've only used 300GB of my 760GB. It is good to have 40 terabytes accessible via Thunderbolt so I've kept local storage to mostly scratch work.

I've thought about going back to Lenovo but I want stick to a Thinkpad over their consumer Yogas. A Thinkpad W540 is out of the question due to the mammoth size. And Linux's HiDPI isn't still as good as OSX. So for now, I'm going to stick to 15" Macbook Pro Retina.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS HiDPI

So Ubuntu 14.04 has been released and it promises to have better support for HiDPI (Retina) displays.

I decided to take it for a spin inside VMware Fusion on my Macbook Pro. 

I have to say, it is a major, major improvement. In fact, it is pretty good. There is a good slider in the display that increases the icons and interface. It isn't quite 100% perfect as many applications don't work quite right. There are some icons and sliders that don't work right in a few places here and there. But overall, it works pretty good.

OSX 10.9 Thunderbolt Bridging Follow-up. Three Way Bridge

A few post back, I broke the news about IP Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt bridging. This is a follow-up post. I decided to see if a multi-computer, multi Thunderbolt bridge was possible using just cables.

I finally installed Mavericks on my 27" iMac and decided to do a multiple Thunderbolt bridge tests.
Here is the set-up.

In short, "it WORKS!" It is really plug-n-play. In my initial trial, I assigned IPs. It is not necessary to manually assign IPs.

I connected a 2012 13" MacBook Pro, 2013 15" Macbook Pro Retina, 2012 27" iMac. Both the Retina   Macbook and iMac have dual Thunderbolt ports.

The Retina MBP acted as the hub for both the 13" and iMac. Once connected, all the machines can see each other. The 13" with it's single Thunderbolt connected to the 15" could see and access the iMac.


13" Macbook Pro

iMac

15" Retina

The 15" shows both my Thunderbolt ports active

Now for the tests.

On the 13" Macbook Pro, I could ping, mount and connect to my 27" iMac which was connected via the Retina 15".

As I mentioned above, I didn't need to assign any IP addresses. I called the machines up by their host names and IP address. So, for the 13", all I had to do was type in afp://169.254.216.89 or afp://iMac27.local and I was accessing the iMac.

Unfortunately, there is a small penalty loss when you go through another machine.

The first two iPerfs were the 13" connecting to the iMac.
5.24 Gbits/sec and 650 MB/sec.

When accessing the 15" Retina Macbook directly, iPerf jumped up to 7.16 Gbit/sec and 859 MB/sec.

I then pulled one of the cables off from the Macbook Retina and connected it to the iMac's second Thunderbolt port. Voila. It works. However, both the 13" and iMac's IP address re-assigned themselves. This was completely plug-n-play. I did not have to assign routes or anything to get the machines to see one another.

Still, these are impressive numbers no matter how you look at them. Now, this is definite proof a multi-user Thunderbolt IP network is viable.

Someone needs to make a Thunderbolt IP switch, hub, router ASAP! Lastly, Thunderbolt cables are dropping in price. I've gotten a few for under $25-30.

Chromebook Pixel Effective resolution 1280x850

So I was in Best Buy, looking to pick up a Samsung Chromebook and the halo Chromebook Pixel was on display next to it.  The LCD panel has a 3:2 aspect ratio and native pixel resolution of 2560x1700. This outclasses the 13" Retina Macbook in terms of pixel density but still does not compare to the 15" Macbook Retina's range topping 2880x1800 resolution.

I was curious and glanced over and was a little disappointed when I checked the resolution.

It has a non-scaling effective resolution of 1280x850 !!!! This is comparable to a normal 13" Macbook Pro with slightly 50 more pixels in vertical space. Effective resolution is what the viewable display viewport will be. It basically sees the same viewport as a low end laptop but only with sharper text. You'll basically see the same number of email messages in GMAIL give or take 3-4 extra lines due to the extra 50 vertical pixels.

Running OS 9 on a 15 inch Macbook Retina Pro at 2880x1800

Yes, it is possible to run Mac OS 9 Classic via Sheepshaver on a retina Macbook Pro. In fact, you can run it at 2880x1800. Nerdy indeed!

Macbook Pro 15 Retina Initial Review. That screen is amazing.

I finally got myself an ultimate Macbook Pro 15". 2.7 GHZ Core i7-3740QM Quad CPU, 16GB 1600 mhz RAM, and a 768 GB SSD. This is one shy away from the top spec (2.8 vs 2.7) of the current shipping Macbook. Sure, I know Haswell is just around the corner but my corporate budget spending doesn't coincide with product announcements.

This thing is a beast. Of course the hardware specs are impressive but the thing that blows my mind is that screen. This review is coming from a developer's point-of-view where screen resolution is of the utmost importance. If you want a laptop for coding and development, continue and read this review.

The screen has a native resolution of 2880x1800. That is more than my 27" iMac, 30" Apple Cinema Display/Dell U3011. Of course, that is insanely high on a 15" laptop. 

Hence, this end-user review will mostly cover the screen and that amazing resolution.

(Macbook Pro 15" Retina running native 2880x1800 resolution)

Just for comparison, compare this to my 14" Thinkpad T420 with a resolution of 1600x900.In the opening image above, you can see a VM guest playing a youtube video. That VM is set to 1600x1200 which is equivalent of how much my Thinkpad would display if it was inside the Macbook.

Now, here is a more compelling comparison side-by-side and how it looks like:

The Thinkpad runs Linux but the comparison is still valid. The Macbook has 3 full size terminal windows, a browser with the full Craigslist's homepage at 100% zoom, a file browser, and the NY Time's website full page at 100% zoom. The Thinkpad shows the NY Time's website at 100% zoom and a terminal console at 100% zoom. Simply, there is no substitute for real-estate. The NY Time's website on the Macbook Pro shows double the content and news articles. I feel like I have an extra screen with my Macbook.

Here is Photoshop CS6 editing a 1080p (1920x1080) image at 100% zoom. A full web browser open to give you the depth of scale.

Simply, if you need real-estate, the Macbook Pro 15" Retina is in a league of all its own.

I wouldn't be running that resolution everyday so Apple devised HiDPI into the operating system which is pretty ingenius. You can run at 1680x1050, 1920x1200 HiDPI which are all 16:10 ratio. Perfect for programmers and developers. There are 3rd party utilities that unlock more resolutions. I am currently using resolution tab and it allows me to run 2048x1280,2560x1600,and native 2880x1800. 

I am starting to realize anything over 1080p is crazy on a laptop form-factor for day-to-day use. If you are running it at native resolution with 100% zoom, I can see where it can get straining.

I'm sure I can live with 1920x1200/1920x1080 all day but it is a treat just to drop it down to 1440x900 HiDPI (Best for Retina) and see the razor crisp text. Speaking of razor crispness, as of today, most of my major apps have been Retina modified- Office, Photoshop/Lightroom, Textwrangler, Sublime 2, Sequel Pro, and even LibreOffice looks good.


Quick Benchmarks

Speed Demon! There is no doubt this is a fast machine. Some quick benchmarks for those who are interested.

Geekbench and Black Magic speed test of the 768GB SSD.

I was previously toting two laptops everyday side-by-side. A Thinkpad running Linux and a late 2012 Macbook Pro 13" running OSX. I was using the Thinkpad because I needed the resolution and because of the upgrade-ability (ultrabay, eSATA, expresscard, docking station,etc). I shuttle a lot of large Virtual Machines so I need the fastest I/O connection I could have.  I have simply replaced the two. The Macbook Pro 15 and has two thunderbolt jacks and all my drives, RAID are Thunderbolt. For eSATA, a USB 3.0-eSATA dongle on the Macbooks have been faster than the built in eSATA of the Thinkpad. 768GB of SSD is enough to for me to run a couple of large (100GB VMs). And with iTunes Match, I no longer have to worry about my 1TB music files using up precious space on my portable computer. With everything installed (Full CS 6 Suite, Office 11, dev apps), I still have a healthy 650 GB free on my SSD.

Workflow.

16:10 Aspect Ratio. Default.

You can run your browser, IDE text editor, SQL database clients, a few debuggers/console, and even a large res Virtual Machine on one screen. The display is geared for work with the 16:10 aspect ratio.


Text. I don't think there is even a way to demonstrate the remarkable clarity of the screen through a photo or screenshot. It is that sharp. Open up the new version of Page or updated Excel and pull up a spreadsheet is probably the best way to demonstrate the clarity. Even browsing the Finder is sharp.

 I do most of my text editing in TextWrangler or Sublime. In Sublime, you can almost read the preview code pane. Again, I don't think it can be demonstrated with screenshots.

The CPU is an Ivy Bridge Core i7 3740QM Quad CPU with all the Virtualization features VT-x,VT-d.  Four cores and 8 threads. So, this makes it a great Virtual Machine provisioning machine. Coupled with a fast SSD and Thunderbolt, you can do all your pre-deploy cooking. Everything is bootable on this machine. USB3, Thunderbolt, and even the sdcard. Yep, you can even boot of a micro-sd card if you wanted to run an alternate OS. Booting off a Thunderbolt RAID (read my other posts), I have machine that can boot Windows in 7 seconds with I/O of 400-500 MB/sec.

I run a lot of VM (VirtualMachines) and this thing is impressive and problematic. The problem is the screen resolution is too high! Running VMs in HiDPI mode, gives you this:

This for the most part is fine for me because I need the real-estate. However, there is no toggle switch to HiDPI on and off as you can do with OSX. I can see where this can be a problem for others. Everything is so small!! I wonder how people manage with 13" 1080p Asus ultrabooks. This can either be a blessing or curse depending on your outlook.

My Mac resolution is set here to 1680x1050 HiDPI which is fairly good for people even with bad eyesight. Text and mac apps are their normal size. Windows 7 is running 100% zoom at 1280x1024 which would often take up the full screen on other laptops. The blue box you see is a 640x480 Linux console found in most headless VMs like Turnkey Linux.

Now here is the same Linux VM running at 100% zoom on my 1600x900 Thinkpad for comparison. There is such a dramatic difference in experience. The blue box you see (the VM) takes up 1/15 of my screen on the MBP vs 1/8 on the Thinkpad.

If you are working in console only VMs, it is best to turn off the HiDPI and zoom in. Zooming in will make things look blurry. Here is the Turnkey VM zoomed in, It is a little blurry but acceptable.

Running Desktop Virtual Machines (in non-HiDPI) mode looks pretty jarring. I had to run them in native mode and change the DPI to 200% in Windows and Linux. Even then, it isn't optimal. When the DPI settings are set to anything above 100%, text will appear the for the most part fine but you will have itty-bitty UI elements like buttons and icons which looks funny. Hence, Windows and other operating systems have a long ways to go to catch up with the higher DPI monitors.
Below is Windows 7 and Ubuntu Pear OS running at 150% dpi.

For example, running Photoshop in Windows with 150% DPI, the buttons and toolbar is ridiculously small while the text is legible.

Without HiDPI and running at 100%, you can see how blurry text is. My VM's resolution is set yo 1440x900.

A larger view to see the details.

Have in mind, this is not the fault of OSX or the Macbook. This is due to the fact that other operating systems do not yet have a good grasp on dealing with HiDPI monitors.

Your choice is to run native resolution and double the DPI if you want to run an OS with a desktop environment. This is the best thing to do but UI elements such as icons will look out of place. In Ubuntu, many apps do not conform with any DPI scaling. Java based apps tend to ignore it completely so you have apps with scaled and text and some without.

If you are running console only OS (e.g headless servers), this wont even be an issue.

Battery Life

This thing runs. It runs and runs. I would attribute this to the dynamic GPU switching. I am using a 3rd party app, gfxCardStatus, to monitor my GPU. The laptop will switch integrated Intel's Ivy Bridge IGP HD4000 when it needs to and when you power up an GPU intensive app, the discrete card kicks in.

I'm getting 5-6 hours with my normal workflow - programming in Sublime and making database queries. Impressive. Once plugged in, it pretty much runs on discrete Nvidia. I'm certain the Haswell refresh will do more on this front. However, as a person who docks most of the time, I'm happy with my current purchase instead of waiting another 3 months.

I/O Ports.

The slimming of the chassis was a big concern for me and many others. There were some compromises made. The lack of optical disk wasn't an issue for me. Firewire. Well, I've moved on to USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt so the remaining older FW enclosures I have can't even do justice to the faster SSDs now shipping. That omission won't be an issue as we forge on to faster external storage options that I've been covering on my blog for the past year.

I have to say that the missing ethernet port is a bummer. However, I can understand the justification and I am more than happy with the alternative. Two Thunderbolt ports! This more than makes up for it.
I also love the fact that the USB ports are on separate sides. Before,I would have chunky USB sticks and they would interfere and block one another.

Two Thunderbolt ports is also supplemented with a HDMI port on the opposite side. So, in theory, you can connect 3 external monitors (which I have seen posted elsewhere on the Internet).  Two of those monitors can be 2560x1600 which is impressive in its own right.

When I am mobile, I can use one Thunderbolt port for a portable SSD, a second for ethernet, and the HDMI can connect to a presentation monitor. So, I am pretty much covered and the lack of on-board ethernet concerns are no longer an issue for me. That was the biggest pre-purchase concern I had. Once docked in a desktop environment, my desktop RAID/external Thunderbolt drives have daisy chaining ports so I only need to use one TBOLT port while stationary.

In short, I wouldn't worry about the port I/O on this. As for extra USB ports, Mac users tend to use bluetooth for their low level HID input devices like mouse and external keyboards. Overall, I am more than satisfied with the set-up on the Retina Macbook Pro. My only real gripe is the sd reader doesn't flush full size sd cards.

Conclusion.

So far, I am loving this new rig. Once you use that screen for an extended period of time, nothing even comes close. I am dead serious. I no longer want to use my 27" iMac or various Macs/PCs running 27 & 30" Dells at 2560x1440/2560x1600. I've been running large multiple monitors for years now and I thought I would be prepared for this experience. I even thought owning and using an iPad 3 Retina since launch would acclimate me to this laptop.

I was dead wrong. It is completely different. Unlike an iPad, I use my Macbook Pro for work where I am typing lengthy amount of code. I am looking at spreadsheets/database views with thousands of records and 60-80 columns across.   I've always been trained to think if you are not running native resolution (downscale), the text would be blurry and the experience would be not optimized. Again, I was wrong with my pre-conceived notions. HiDPI is amazing if the OS and apps are optimized for it. Opening up PDF reports, Excel documents and even bland Word files is a new experience.

Now, not everything is perfect. There are a handful of older apps that have not been optimized and they look like crap.

Hence, I am now at a dilemma. I even bought myself a new 27" Dell U2713HM for the house and I've been using it with my iMac and other Macbook. Prior, I would make the larger monitor my main display and convert my other Macbook into a palette monitor for secondary use.

I can't even plug an external monitor to this Macbook 15" retina and extend the display. I simply can't. It is simply annoying to see text so sharp and them get jarred by another display right next to it.

This is why this laptop is so special. It is one thing to play with it a store or mess around with a friend's or colleague's machine for a few minutes. Once you use it for more than 3 days (36 hours), your preference will totally change. That is how amazing this screen is.

Cons:
Pricey. Yep, it is pricey. It came to nearly $3400 with California sales tax.

For some eyecandy, here is the Macbook Retina 15" running Earth 3D which turns your desktop into a live wallpaper of a 3D earth. The discrete GPU will kick in and it is a treat to show off the screen.

5 minutes to clone a factory fresh mac

So I got myself a new Macbook Pro Retina 15". I cloned the factory image using Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode. It took less than 5 minutes to clone the entire factory new image. 

That is fast.That is more than fast. That is insanely fast.

13" Retina MacBook Pro 2560x1600

So here I am working and watching the Apple keynote live event of the unveiling of the new Retina 13 MacBook on my 30" WQXGA screen.

I've been running 2560x1600 for over four years and it blows my mind that a 13" laptop has the same resolution as my (once) $2-3,000 monitors.

Just for reference, this is what you can fit on with a WQXGA display- Full page browser, a MySQL client, a text editor., a terminal console, a Firebug debugger, a File Manager, and a music player.

Another screenshot of WQXGA real estate. 

Virtualization on the iPad 3 with Parallels 7

When people speak of virtualization on the iPad, they are referring to a remote desktop session to a hypervisor. In short, an iPad remote desktops into a host computer running the virtualize operating system. You can't  quite yet use an iPad as an x86 host hypervisor.

Today, I am going to review Parallels 7 Mobile Access. Parallels 7 is a popular Virtualization application for Mac OSX. The mobile client has been billed as "retina" ready so I decided to take it for a spin.

Why not VirtualBox? I'm a big fan of VirtualBox (VB). I use it on all my computers and I like the fact I can move VMs across platforms. I use VB for testing all my console OS (server builds). However, for rich GUI driven OSes, Parallels is much faster, has better Mac OS integration, and a better user experience. Most notably, it has an excellent mobile client.

In some hypervisors like VirtualBox, you can set up an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) port and use an RDP client on the iPad to access to virtual machine. The screenshot below shows how one can set up and configure RDP access in VirtualBox. The only problem with this method is that you must be on the same subnet as the VM host; meaning you must be in the same network. Furthermore, your experience will be totally dependent on whatever RDP client you are using. Some of the RDP apps are hit-or-miss on the App store.

Parallels Mobile Access's major key features are tunnelled access and Retina display support. Those may be two compelling reasons to choose Parallels over something like VirtualBox.

The Main menu allows you to instantly access your available VMs.

With a simple signon to Parallel's centralize servers, you can access your VM hypervisor from anywhere. Even behind firewalls, there is a secured tunnelled access (akin to reverse NAT) to your Macintosh from your iPad. Another key unique feature is the ability to start and close VMs. Compared to VirtualBox, you can remotely boot up your VM. VirtualBox can be setup using a 3rd party web based client or you can remotely start up VM from an SSH session but that is a different topic for a different day. In short, Parallels makes it easy to start and stop VM.

Parallels Mobile Access has a good set of multi-touch gestures for things like enabling the soft keyboard, right-click, double click and hiding the touch menus. Overall it works good except with a high res display, you really need to be patient and zoom-in when you deal with vertical scrollbars such as those on web browsers.

In Parallel's Modality or Window mode, you can run the VM's resolution independent of the host computer. What this means is you can pump up the resolution to as high as you want on the iPad.You can run at 1920x1200, 1680x1050 and as high as WQHD (2536x1440). With the iPad's retina screen, you can rub 2536x1440 with amazing clarity. The scaled screenshot below cannot convey the breathtaking clarity and sharpness. Running Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, the VM display is absolutely gorgeous. Typeface, window transparencies, icons, and graphics are super sharp on the iPad 3's 9.7" HiDPi screen.


Look at the real estate available on a 2536x1440 workspace!

If you are on the same wifi network, you can pair a keyboard to an iPad 3 and have an excellent super-sharp high res mobile desktop experience.

There are many great uses on why one would use an iPad as a hypervisor client. I recently bought some old Macromedia based DVD interactive Disney learning games for my son. I failed to read the box requirement and notice it supports Windows 95-98 and Mac OS9. Running on  a live Window 7's laptop is horribly painful because most modern computers are not good at scaling to 256-colors at 800x600 resolution. On a 15" HP laptop,my son's Disney program takes up 1/4 of the screen and the rest is filled in black. Furthermore, children now are used to point-n-click touch screen tablets. He has a hard time accidentally right-clicking a mouse which often closes/quits his application. For those old apps that run horribly on new hardware, a Virtualize Win98 is the way to go. The iPad helps revitalize and access the old applications.

Retina MacBook QUAD-head 14 million pixel display

I nearly had a nerdgasm when I saw this picture. Impressive. The Macbook Pro Retina is pushing about 14 million pixels right there. All of those monitors are greater than 1080p resolution.

True Retina on the New MacBook Pro

I am waiting for accounting to clear my order of the new MacBook Pro with Retina screen to be approved. In the meantime, I've been doing some research and notice a lot of confusion in the internet and blogosphere. The confusion mostly arises from the misunderstanding of HiDPI scaling. As resolutions get insanely higher, the typical native resolution = display resolution no longer applies.

Apple released the first 2880x1800 display laptop that runs in Retina mode. The native display resolution is 2880x1800 but the system runs in various scaled display resolutions.  There is a difference between native resolution and display resolution. Apple employs a HiDPI mode for the normal usage. This is called Retina mode. Retina mode gives you the real estate of the previous MacBook Pro at 1440x900.

In retina mode, the OS runs in HiDPi mode where certain elements like text are running natively and everything looks extra sharp. This is how the iPad3 works. Everything is extra sharp but you don't get the extra display real estate. Your icons, browser window all looks the same as before. Hence, this is where the upset and confusion arises. Many are accusing Apple of misleading because they can't see the extra icons on the desktop.

Well, you can run at a higher "display resolution." In fact, you can even unlock the full native resolution to be your display resolution.

Anandtech does a great analysis on the screen and scaling. You can run retina mode (1440x900),  display resolution of 1680x1050,  or 1920x1200. Even in scaled mode, the screen looks incredibly sharp due to high dot pitch. At scaled mode display resolution 1680x1080 and 1920x1200, it still looks sharper than screens with those native resolution.

Still confused? Well running full native mode would be painful for many people with mid to poor eye sight because everything would be extra small. I think the hiDPI methodology was the best way to go. It gives you many great options for the majority of users. Yet, this still fuels the flames for anti-apple folks to swipe Apple at any given chance.

It was only a matter of time but many people have already unlocked the full resolution for OSX. You can read it on various blogs and forums like this one: HOWTO: 2880x1800 Without Scaling in OS X . Here is an example below of running 2880x1800 natively.

source: http://cloudmancer.com/images/trueretina.jpg

Now, I am more excited than ever. I've played with it in 1920x1200 and I think that is the resolution I will  most likely be using it at.

iPad 3 as a Cinema Display on-the-go