Apple's Retina MacBook Pro ad: Lest you forget it's 'radical'

Apple's Retina MacBook Pro ad is to the point: high-resolution meets thinness.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

June 12, 2012 10:23 p.m. PT

That new Retina MacBook Pro is a radical design. Apple's new TV ad doesn't want you to forget that.

The commercial, with a voiceover by Peter Coyote, seems effective in getting across the idea that Apple has fused the eye-popping Retina Display with an "impossibly thin" chassis.

And -- if the ad is indeed an accurate representation -- shows that the 15.4-inch IPS display has pretty decent viewing angles, which is IPS tech's calling card.

It will be interesting to see how many of the $2,200-and-up laptops Apple sells. Will it be just a successful niche product or appeal to a wider audience?

Despite its price, I'm betting that plenty of non-professional consumers will snap up the new MBP. It may be hard to resist the first MacBook with a Retina display and all that other "radical" stuff.