I would hold my horses on any new technology. Its like anything else with apple, most of the sticker price is trendy or cool way of paying for the cult and name. No doubt there are fine machines but just over valued inmho.
I once bought a Vaio for $3000 it lasted about 1 year before screen broke, few other issues and it finnaly got smashed against a wall 1 year later. That's when I bought a toshiba for $600 and it has twice as good specs as the sony had. Technology adances very fast.
So in general you should not waste money on a brand, you could buy something much cheaper and use the diference for marketing / investing. That is unless you are really an Apple guy in which case you will buy it anyways.
have fun either way
Nothing is perfect and it seems that you have had a bad experience. Personally I have a 2008 Macbook Pro and I actually dropped it from a desk, one side is all bent up but it's still going strong and replacing it is a low priority for me.
In my experience most of the Apple products you can buy these days aren't overpriced for one simple reason and they're not bullshitting on this one - it works. I own an iPhone but when someone asks me which phone to get I usually find a good Android phone for them but personally I'm not a huge fan, but competition is good, it improves the end products for us, the customers. I recommend Android phones because they can buy them with a contract and pay a hundred for them and get a decent phone instead of paying a grand for an unlocked iPhone, but that's the only reason really.
One thing no one's talking about on this thread is the lack of ability to repair it. iFixIt is calling it unrepairable.
Read more about the story here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacB...-Teardown/9462/1?revisionid=HEAD#.T9pOLxdfFXw
That's the worst part of it. I love the specs, but the lack of ability to upgrade the ram, SSD, or even screen if something breaks is a HUGE turnoff. That helps Mac make sure that you buy the protection plan, but what happens after that expires? You are fucked if something goes wrong with it.
I mentioned the fact in my reply, regarding the upgradability, I don't know. Upgrading a laptop isn't something that I usually think about, another huge advantage of the Macbook and other Apple devices is that you can sell it high even after 3-4 years if it's in good condition. Try selling some Windows laptop after a year and getting more than half the money back you invested.
The only problem with the Retina MPB is it's high entry price, but as said, I think that a nice Air does well enough for most people.
being an IMer, I would rather go with two ultra-powerful laptops rather than one mac book. it looks cool, and based on reviews should be a good machine, but still for me what matters is the config and the ability to run numerous tasks at the same time including running certain bots. So will go for two good powerful windows 7 lappies over a mac book.
This is about opinion of course but if you have never owned a Mac I would really recommend one to you, I have a 2008 one and I use it as my main machine and never had any problems with it, as mentioned I even dropped it from the table, it bent a bit up but still going strong. I was a PC (as in Windows based) my whole life before I bought this thing and anything I owned before doesn't even compare to it. You can't get the feel for it when you try it for an hour or so, but after the first month, it is a fantastic experience.
Even if you're not a Mac OS fan, which is justified, most people have been using Windows their whole lives and just don't want to bother with learning a new OS, a Macbook might be for you, it is an incredible windows machine, I know a lot of people who buy it and the first thing they do on it is install windows.
Yea, I also don't like how they send out soldiers to put a gun in our heads and force us to buy their stuff.
lol, haven't you heard ? Apple is the new USSR, a new evil empire!
