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MacBook Pro goes Retina: Here's what you get

Retina at last for the MacBook. The highest resolution yet for an Apple device.

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
2 min read
Watch this: MacBook Pro with Retina Display: Hands-on

Apple announced the 0.7-inch-thick "next-generation MacBook Pro" this morning. And its marquee feature is a Retina Display, making this the first MacBook to get one.

Resolution: The display boasts a staggering pixel density of 2,880 by 1,800. That's 220 pixels per inch and a total 5.18 million pixels. And that beats the 2048-by-1536 resolution on the third-generation iPad.

Apple's Phil Schiller said it's the world's highest-resolution notebook display. He's certainly right if he's talking about 15-inch laptops.

Screen: Higher contrast ratios, better viewing angles via IPS technology, and 75 percent less glare, even though it's a glossy screen, according to Schiller. And note that this is the first MacBook that has an IPS (in-plane switching) screen. iPads and standalone monitors have IPS tech but not the Pros -- to date.

Graphics engine: Nvidia is back in the Mac. This time Apple has tapped Nvidia's leading-edge 28-nanometer graphics processing unit (GPU) tech in the form of the Nvidia "Kepler" GPU, the GeForce GT 650M. The 650M has a total of 384 "shader cores" (image processor cores). "The gaming performance of the GeForce GT 650M equipped with DDR3 graphics memory lies somewhere in the former 2011 high-end category between the GeForce GTX 460M and GTX 560M," says Notebookcheck.

Other hardware: Quad-core Intel "Ivy Bridge" processors, up to 2.7GHz. Up to 16GB of 1600MHz RAM. Schiller noted that this is needed to drive the display. Battery life is up to 7 hours with 30 days of standby time.

A 2,880-by-1,800 display. Pixel density on a 15-inch display doesn't get any denser.
A 2,880-by-1,800 display. Pixel density on a 15-inch display doesn't get any denser than that. CNET
0.7-inch thick next-generation MacBook Pro compared with current MBP. It's a lot thinner.
0.7-inch thick next-generation MacBook Pro compared with current MBP. It's a lot thinner. CNET

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