siddique305 wrote:
My Friend Has An Apple Macbook Pro With Retina Display And He Says That Is Better Than My Beast !! His Specs Are - 2.3Ghz 3610QM, Nvidia GT650M, 8GB Of Memory. My Specs - 2.4Ghz 3610QM (Overclocked) , GTX670M Overclocked , 16Gb Of Memory.... If He Just Says The Portability Is Better I Would Have Agreed But He Is Saying That Macbooks Are The Best !! Best All Rounder Notebooks And Bla Bla Bla.......
So What Do You Guys Think ? Retina Macbook Or G75 For Video Editing, Photo Editing, Gaming, And All Of Those Good Stuff
Siddique
Honestly, I'd tell your friend he needs to find a new hobby, but then if he keeps persisting, ask him who he's really trying to convince: you or himself.
I used to repair Apple laptops (and desktops, monitors, AIOs) for a living. Apple makes a lot of tradeoffs in what they do. All of their retina models have basically zero upgradability, unless you want to pay a ridiculous (even by highway robbery standards) amount for a custom form factor SSD module. RAM is soldered directly to the logic board, the retina display is now basically a fused piece which is not exactly very environmentally friendly (something Apple has tried to pride itself on in the past). Batteries are glued to the bottom case, so you have to replace both if the battery goes bad. The CPU and GPU have been soldered directly to the logic board on Apple units since the G3 days... At least on laptops, so there's no hope of even a modest upgrade.
The one or two good things I will say about Apple, is they (under Jobs anyway) hired talented engineers who would use just about every last scrap of space on the PCB. I also would do some Toshiba work at an old job, when I didn't have like a 2 week backlog of Apple units, and there would be times where a Toshiba motherboard might have 6-8 square inches of just completely blank PCB. Which was kind of handy in the sense that it was an area I could grab onto the board without having to worry about ESD, but seemed like such a waste of material. The other thing Apple tends to do well, is they sprinkle sensors rather liberally throughout the internals of the system, and really think through the cooling systems.
However, Apple has long sacrificed performance, upgradability and repairability for portability.
The one thing that also always bothered me was how they basically rigged the game in their favor on the retail end. They would make life so incredibly difficult for any AASP that might pose even the smallest of threats to its retail operations in the area, that it would be all but impossible to get things done. AASPs were expected to adhere to certain performance metrics, like an average of 1.1 parts per repair (PPR), a total repair turn around time (REPTAT) of under 10 days if memory serves, if the unit comes back for any reason with 30 days you get a First Time Fix (FTF) ding. You also got measured on how fast you got KBB (known bad board) back to Apple. Not to mention every week your minder at Apple will decide that you have to jump through a different hoop, and you should turn your business completely upside down in order to please Apple. I haven't read it, but someone told me that in Jobs' autobiography he talks about how this is an intentional tactic to keep companies off-balance. So basically it becomes more and more difficult for the AASP to actually do any repairs in a timely fashion, because every week you're supposed to make something different your top priority. So customers understandably get frustrated, and then take the unit to an Apple store if one is available, and of course the retail store will say something to the effect of, "I don't know what their problem is, but we'll take care of you!" They can just shotgun repairs, throwing parts at it until they stumble across the solution, and all manner of other things that are grounds for having your AASP contract torn up. To be fair, I'm betting the average Apple store employee isn't even aware that AASPs have to play by a very different set of rules.
One of the things that annoyed me in particular, was I worked at a sort of repair depot for a national retail chain. A large number of units would all funnel from the various stores to this location, and I was the one Apple repair tech, which is why I had 2+ weeks backlog of units a lot of times. Apple hated this with a passion, and was always harping about it. Never mind that they subcontract their own repair depots run by Flextronics (and they don't want people to know it's not actually Apple running their depot). Pretty much all laptops taken into an Apple store will just be shipped off to their depot in Kentucky if memory serves. They have about three locations that service different model types. They will service iMacs and Mac Pros in store, because they don't want to pay for shipping those things. You bring that up with your Apple minder, that Apple has its own depot network, and assuming they deigned to even engage you on the topic, it would basically boil down to being told "do as we say, not as we do."
I hesitate to use the word hate, but I have several very strong and deep misgivings about Apple on a professional level. I can't, and don't, blame their engineers for what people on the field service and retail arms have been doing, which is quite probably illegal under US anti-trust legislation. Like any company its size, there are some departments which are very good (I got to be on very good terms with the SPS and TSPS people, who are a subgroup of the field service division, and with one or two exceptions they're a great bunch of people), and some departments which are not. The field service and retail arms of Apple are actively colluding to rig the system in favor of Apple's own retail stores.
