WWDC: Apple Brings Retina Display and Solid-State Drives to MacBook Pro

It was after the Coldplay came to a stop and CEO Tim Cook and Siri wrapped up their banter (Siri: "I am looking forward to the new Samsung . . . the refrigerator"?a not-so-subtle dig at Samsung?s new Galaxy S III) that Apple finally revealed its big hardware news: a reinvented line of MacBook Pros, complete with solid-state drives and Retina displays. Though many in the tech world anticipated the SSDs, the shift away from optical drives is still meaningful. As Apple head of design Jony Ive says, it?s a "disconnect from the past."

The standard MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models got some minor upgrades, but they pale in comparison to the tech driving an all-new model, the MacBook Pro with Retina. As the name suggests, the 2880 x 1800 display is the main selling point. In fact, Apple senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller had to abandon the tech lexicon entirely in favor of the world of paper to describe it: On the Macbook Pro with Retina Display, he said, "surfing the web can be like experiencing magazine-like quality."

That resolution of 220 pixels per inch means four times more pixels than the standard MacBook Pro. The 15-inch screen is incredibly thin, as is the body. Together they fold to make a notebook that?s just 0.71 inches thick and weighs 4.46 pounds. The new Mac in the family comes with a 2.3-GHz quad-core i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB solid-state drive, and GeForce GT 650M graphics?plus dual microphones, a FaceTime 720p camera, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. At $2199, it?s expensive, though there?s a souped-up version that for $600 more boasts processing speeds up to 2.7 GHz and a whopping 768 GB SSD.

With the new MacBook Pros, Apple focuses on style, but it also pays attention to noise. The computer has an asymmetric fan, which Apple claims will make the new Pros virtually silent. Ive chimed in via video, speaking in pseudo-poetry about the new MacBook Pro and calling it "the very best computer we?ve ever built." He attributed at least some of that success to Apple?s use of nonstandard parts, which allows the company to create a computer that is "more elegant and more efficient." What Ive didn?t mention is that those nonstandard parts may make user hard drive upgrades a thing of the past.

recess appointment eastman kodak eastman kodak richard cordray shannon de lima joe torre west virginia university