Which 13″ MacBook? – Old School, Retina, Or Air? – The ‘Book Mystique

In many ways it’s the best of times ever to be an Apple laptop fan, speaking as a user who’s been one for 20 years The hardware materials quality and standard of finish have never been better and are second to none. Intel’s recent families of dual-core and quad-core CPUs are astonishingly fast and powerful. And while I don’t love everything about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, it’s still a truly great desktop operating system.

There’s also remarkable range of choice, at least for the present, what with Apple having chosen to keep the four-year-old unibody form factor originally introduced in October, 2008, in production alongside the MacBook Air, which has been re-categorized from its original role as a sort of boutique premium priced product with compromised performance to taking over as Apple’s price-leader entry-level notebook line, and the new, top-of-the-line 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pros with ultra high resolution Retina displays.

Of course there’s a good, pragmatic rationale for continuance of the old-school 13-inch MacBook Pro. As Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller acknowledged during the company’s Special Event new product release rollout on October 23, the 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro is not only the best-selling MacBook model, it’s the best-selling Mac system overall. You don’t want to mess lightly with that sort of success.

There are plenty of reasons for the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s market success. In my estimation, selling for $1,199, it represents the most computer value for dollar spent that Apple has ever offered in a laptop form factor. And while Apple has dropped the base price of the 13-inch MacBook Air with a 128 GB flash storage drive to a matching $1,199, the MacBook Pro still arguably has a value advantage, with its faster, full-sized 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU with Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz, 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive — easily user-upgraded to higher capacity drives with a 750 GB HDD and flash SSDs up to 512 GB offered by Apple, RAM expansion slots officially supported up to 8 GB configurations, an internal optical drive, plus Thunderbolt, USB 3, a SD Card slot, and a built-in Ethernet port.

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The MacBook Air offers not nearly as much versatility and configurability, with limited and expensive SSD drive capacity, non-upgradable after manufacture RAM (8GB available BTO), A 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz CPU with 3MB shared L3 cache, no internal optical drive, and no Ethernet connectivity. Drive upgrades are technically feasible but not for amateurs. The 13-inch Air does have a higher-resolution display of 1440 x 900 resolution compared with a mediocre 1280 x 800 for the non-Retina MacBook Pro, is nearly a pound lighter, and has SSD speed as standard equipment, albeit limited capacity.

Now there’s the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro (rMBP), which gives us a third 13-inch Apple notebook option. One supposes that Apple’s medium to long term game plan will be for the Retina screen MacBook Pros to ultimately replace the old-school models. Phil Schiller implied as much in an interview with the New York Times’ Harry McCracken last week, with his comment that Apple is not going to let what they consider outmoded technologies like rotating hard disks and optical drives, ”hold them back”, noting: “They’re anchors on where we want to go.” That’s a pretty strong signal that the future for the non-Retina MacBook Pros is likely a short one, but those of us who aren’t as enthusiastic about solid state memory and wireless software delivery, and non-upgradable RAM, and fewer physical connectivity options can and should be enjoying the prodigious variety of choice Apple is making available for the present.

An interesting factoid is that the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro is actually smaller than the 13-inch MacBook Air, with a 12.35 inches wide x is 8.62 inches deep x 0.75 inch thick form factor. By comparison, the Air is 12.8 inches wide, 8.94 inches deep, and 0.68 inch thick, is still thinner than the Retina, but definitely with a smaller footprint.

I wasn’t overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the 15-inch rMBP when Apple released it in June, and I’m likewise not about its smaller counterpart. That they’re wonderful pieces of kit I don’t dispute, but at a high price in lost versatility and arguably long-term value for users like me who tend to hang on to system hardware for many years, upgrading memory configuration, storage capacity, and replacing batteries as needed. My preference is for computing devices that are easy to open up with plenty of upgrade latitude. Apple, on the other hand seems bent on turning all of its hardware products into variants of the iPad.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is a mere 0.75 inches thick and weighs 3.57 pounds, making it almost a pound lighter and 20 percent thinner than the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro. Its footprint dimensions are 12.35 x 8.62 inches, and interestingly the 13-inch rMBP is slightly thicker than its 15-inch sibling at 0.75″ vs. 0.71″. The non-Retina MacBook Pro weighs 4.5 pounds, and is 0.95 inches thick with footprint dimensions of 12.78 x 8.94 inches.

As for the Retina display, as Phil Schiller noted in the Oct. 23 that it completely changes what you expect from a notebook.” So true, but not entirely in a good way. The 13-inch rMBP packs more than 4 million pixels into its display, at a pixel density of 227 pixels per inch, and features IPS technology for a 178-degree wide viewing angle, with 75 percent less reflection and 28 percent higher contrast than the non-Retina 13-inch MBP.

It’s available powered by either a standard 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor or an optional, 2.9 GHz Core i7, with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB of 1600 MHz memory, and up to 768GB of flash storage. There are two-each Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port offers quick connectivity to HDTVs, a FaceTime HD camera, dual microphones, improved speakers, three-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a MagSafe 2 power port. Things you don’t get include FireWire and Ethernet ports, and an SD Card slot.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is not inexpensive starting at $1,699 with the 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory and 128GB of flash storage. Ordering the 13-inch rMBP with an upgrade to 256GB of flash storage takes you to $1,999.

In their teardown of the 13-inch rMBP, iFixIt rated it as slightly more recyclable than the 15-inch rMBP. iFixit Chief Information Architect Miroslav Djuric says that once inside, they discovered that two of the six battery cells held in with screws and no adhesive, and it took them only 15 minutes of prying using a Torx screwdriver and three spudgers (but no heat gun) to remove the battery without terminally puncturing the battery cells – something Djuric says is definitely doable with the 13-inch model as opposed to nearly impossible with the 15″ rMBP, but still much more difficult than battery replacement in the non-adhesive, non-Retina MacBook Pros. Also, five screws hold the trackpad in place, so you can actually replace it if it breaks, which is pretty much impossible on the 15″ model, so there is a bit of positive progress on the serviceability and repairability front.

On the other hand, Djuric notes that the RAM is still not upgradeable, exterior case fastening screws are still proprietary, and replacing the display will still cost you an an arm and a leg. Consequently, the 13″ Retina earns a mediocre two out of 10 iFixIt repairability score, a meager one point higher than its 15″ stablemate.

Whether we like the direction MacBook Pros with Retina display are taking us or not, they represent the future of Apple laptops. In the meantime, we have a luxury of choice for the immediate future, and if you want to take one last kick at a traditional form factor MacBook Pro, you should probably grab one of the non-Retina MacBook Pros soon while you still can.