Need help with upgrade decission!!

[agierke]

i recently purchased my first laptap and i went back and forth as to whether the retina display was worth the significant additional cost. the deal breaker for me was that the MBPw/ret didnt have an optical drive and it had more thunderbolt connections than other connections (usb/firewire800). i still find the need to burn DVDs (which are still lower cost than thumbdrives) and i have many more usb devices to plug in than thunderbolt.

also, though the retina display is pretty....i couldnt figure out any real world advantage the retina display would give me in my photography. on the contrary, i kind of worried that if the ret display looked so good that my images would seem drastically different when they ended up in print or viewed on client computers.

i ended up choosing the 15" MBP non retina and i am quite happy with it. i would strongly recommend you consider whether the retina display really offers you a gain in your photography or if that money would be better spent addressing lenses.

[Sith Zombie]

also, though the retina display is pretty....i couldnt figure out any real world advantage the retina display would give me in my photography. on the contrary, i kind of worried that if the ret display looked so good that my images would seem drastically different when they ended up in print or viewed on client computers.

Thats kinda like my thinking too. It would be great to view your images on, I'v read the color gamut is almost 100% of sRGB, awesome for you but who knows what your clients would see when you hand them the files. Perhaps somebody could enlighten??

[tomscott]

Yes the DVD drive is fairly easy to replace with a HDD on the normal MBP, but you need to put it in a caddy. The new retina Macbook pro its not. It got the lowest score for repairability ever by iFitxit.

This nonsense about the screen too. If you are doing any photographic work and looking to output you should be profiling the screen and your paper so you can simulate the results depending on your paper type to get true colour prints. The retina is nothing but higher resolution showing you more pixels, therefore a sharp image. It does not affect the image at all.