Apple® - MacBook Pro with Retina display - 13.3" Display - 8GB Memory - 256GB Flash Storage

A great laptop, but not perfect. As a Mac OSX machine it performs very well, fully integrated with Apple Apps and includes free downloads of the iWorks suite - essentially giving you a free equivalent of Microsoft Office. Even better the iWork programs are fully Microsoft compatible and will open/edit/create Office files for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Few reviewers seem to include this significant benefit. The laptop is advertised as a Retina display, implying high resolution as standard. Actually, the stock resolution is less dense than the MacBook Air, but can be adjusted to provide the higher resolution of the full Retina display. Just realized that the native resolution (the manufacturers intended display) is not Retina density. The display is still magnificent, and better than the MacBook Air, but it may not be what you expect. It can be adjusted easily, but the resulting resolution is no longer native. The other thing to consider is that the video card is an integrated Iris Pro from Intel. It's a very worthy "stock" card, but it doesn't have dedicated video memory included on the card - it "borrows" system memory to provide video. This is pretty standard in laptops, but if you are a heavy gamer this may not be your machine. High frame rates from newer video games require higher power than this video card can provide. Despite this limitation, the machine does provide a very fine display and is "color true" - an important thing to consider if you are editing photographs and want a color calibrated display capable of displaying accurate colors. I don't want to overstate the negatives - they exist, but all laptops have some compromises. To end this review consider the many positives: (1) Apple is a fully integrated company. If you have a problem with any program that comes with the laptop, Apple Care is only a free phone call away. Instead of dealing with Microsoft/Dell/Hewlett Packard and others, Apple takes responsibility for their products and finds a way to make everything work correctly. (2) Apple offers free training for basic programs at all Apple Stores. They also have extensive video tutorials on their website. No charge and great service. They also offer One to One training for $99 a year. That gives you the opportunity to have a one hour personal training session for any Apple product every week. Think of having your own personal trainer for $2 a week. (3) Apple's extended warranty is bulletproof. Apple takes pride in their products and backs them fully. I've occasionally had problems with Apple products, but they have always been resolved fairly. When considering if this is the laptop for you weigh the many positives against the few, and relatively minor, negatives and I think you'll find, as I did, that this is a high quality laptop that will give you years of service at a very reasonable price. Even better, the extras that are included in all Apple products are rarely discussed in reviews, but are worth a lot in the real world. And the "cherry on top" of the deal is this: You can add Windows onto any new Apple laptop and have the best of both worlds - a fully functional Apple Laptop, and the same machine can also run Windows through the OS-X software's Boot Camp software. It's free and included with all the operating system. I looked long and hard before buying this machine. I compared it to everything I could find, and for me, there is no better high end laptop available at any price. A quality machine at a very fair price when you consider everything you get. Highly recommended.

So it came time for me to start college back in April. I was initially looking for Windows laptops but then I had a friend who had a brand new Windows 8 laptop that he let me play around with, After that I came to the conclusion that I hate, hate, hate Windows 8. Normally everybody comes to me for computer advice or fixing and Windows 8 was so bad that it made me feel dumb. I could not navigate anything on it and was feed up. If you would have asked me about Apple 4 months ago I would have bashed them all day long. Yet after doing some googling and asking around what is the best laptop for college students, and over and over I kept being told MacBook's. After careful consideration and research I decided to take the plunge into Apple waters. First I was amazed at how easy it was for me a lifetime Windows user to navigate around OSX Mavericks, it was not hard at all to figure out. After a week of playing around I can say I am as proficient on this MacBook as I was on a Windows machine. Now here comes the part about value. I managed to pick mine up when Best Buy had it on sale plus I had a sizable coupon for being a student. Not only did I get a good price but the biggest advantage was that I have not had to pay for any software for college. By Apple including iWork and iLife free I have not had to but something like MS Office. iWork can do everything that Office can do, I can open any Office files work on them or create my own. For my final project in U.S. History I had to do a Power Point presentation and I used Apple's Keynote with it's easy templates and managed to get a 100% even though I have never made a Power Point presentation before. So my point being you basically get over $300 worth of software for free, so you can take that into account when it comes to price. Plus they don't come with bloatware or any BS programs you don't want. OS X is very smooth and streamlined compared to Windows 8. I recommended Apple MacBooks so much now that I actually had my Dad buy a MacBook Air recently. I feel you can't go wrong with any of the MacBook Pro Retina's. Although do note that you must be careful on what one to get because the RAM and HDD are not upgradeable, so that is why I went with the 8gb of RAM and 256gb Flash drive because I actually do some editing and photoshop work as an artist, plus I wanted it to last through college. If you happen to be a Windows user and are nervous about switching to a Mac don't be, IMO you will be very happy.

I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. And... I'm glad I'm here! This is undisputedly THE best computer I have ever touched. Bar none. I will never own anything besides a mac ever again. It is so sexy. So lightening fast. So sleek and cool. It's performance is unmatched. I had an 17" HP Pavilion Entertainment PC w/ 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 2.4 Ghz AMD processor for 4 years. It was a beast. It was big. I barely shoved it in my book bag and forced the zipper shut. It was the top of the line when I bought it, by non-mac standards. But there is no comparison to the mac. This mac. This Mac is a 13.5" Macbook Pro w/ Retina Display, Late 2013 Edition. Reading text is so smooth and I could read for days on it. Netflix TV Shows look so amazing on it. The picture on my Macbook Pro is so much better than my brand new Vizio HD TV I got a few months ago. In fact, I haven't turned my TV on since I got this Macbook Pro on Monday (it's Friday night, technically early Saturday morning). It is so small I put it in my book bag and don't even know it's there (obviously I keep my eyes on it at all times since it was $1500 but it takes up no space). I love it! The trackpad on this Macbook Pro is perhaps the most noticeably clever and efficient design I have found. The shortcut and stuff are different on Mac's than non-macs. On this Macbook Pro you can two finger swipe back and forth through pages and horizontal four finger swipe through three separate utility screens with ease, upward four finger swipe clears out separates out the windows(tabs stay together) to very small windows(3=desktop window(that I like to have say a periodic table picture open, or solubility rules etc. so I can swipe back and forth whilst doing online homework), safari(tabs together), and the utility screen(includes calculator, calendar, unit converter, weather, etc), three finger swipe selects text, a very nice two-finger page scroll that automatically (when hovering over) scrolls through separate windows, i.e. text entry window, etc. The sound quality is absolutely wanderful. It has such large sound. It sounds just like me or you talking, it is so very realistic, just like a pair of lungs and vocal cords in a computer. Music is good too! It has plenty of storage. I will never use all of the 256GB (my last computer had 500GB and I used about 180GB in 4 years). This machine plays videos so lightening fast is is so awesome. You can go to Youtube and flip through videos like nobody's business. It's performance on Google maps lightening fast. There is no faster computer than a Macbook Pro. Do yourself a favor and purchase one day. You will be so glad you did. It is worth it. Even if you have to starve yourself to be able to afford it it is worth it. This Macbook Pro is so sweet. It is the perfect machine to be with me throughout undergrad and probably well through postgrad and my career. Thank you Macbook Pro, I love you.

I've been a Windows user for probably well over 15 years, and these days with the constant onslaught of viruses and malicious attacks on the OS, the cheap plastic build quality of Windows laptops, and because I don't do any pc gaming anymore, I said to myself "no more of this game". Since I've had a couple iPhones for a while and have been extremely happy with them, I decided to give the MacBook lineup a try, and I'm really glad I did. The build quality is second to none, OSX has a proven track record for stability and not being anywhere near as susceptible to virus attacks compared to Windows, the added features on every new release makes it better and better, and the screen is gorgeous to look at! The bottom of this computer when you're not doing anything that's CPU intensive, amazingly, stays very cool. The 3 year old HP Win7 laptop this replaced would almost cook your legs just from internet browsing with several tabs open! The noisy fan on the HP barely did any cooling, while on my new Macbook, it's completely silent! In fact with no spinning hard drive it's dead silent. $1500 is a tough price to swallow for just a laptop when there's endless numbers of them on the market that are a thousand dollars less, but I feel that it's worth it for the quality, the Apple eco system and the great support that comes with it. iTunes (for one or two of its faults) runs lightyears better on a Mac than any Windows pc, transferring media between the MacBook and my iPhone 5 is lightning quick. The only thing I have trouble with sometimes in iTunes is getting it to transfer downloaded music to my phone, I hope it's something that'll be taken care of in future updates. The switch from Windows wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, if you know your way around a computer but are new to OSX, it won't take long to figure out how it works. Yes you can use any mouse and it has the right click function much like Windows ;) Overall, a worthwhile purchase for a computer that should last several years with no major issues.

I needed to purchase a personal laptop as the company I work for was going to begin encrypting all drives (including SD cards, smartphones) that are plugged into their machines. I do a lot of photo editing and wanted a lightweight machine with a great display that could easily run Photoshop and other robust programs. So far I am extremely pleased with this product, setup was easy and even though I'm used to using Windows I've been able to learn how to navigate and use OS X quickly. I love the use of apps for things like email that eliminates the need to install provider specific add-ons that require separate logins, updates, etc. This model's specs are very compatible to my work laptop which is an HP running Windows 7. They're both 8GB RAM, SSD, same basic GHZ, but my HP is using the i7 processor instead of the i5 the Apple runs. I can launch the exact same websites and applications on both machines on the same network simultaneously and the MacBook is much, much faster even though they share the same basic specs. That's enough for me to justify the few hundred dollars extra the MacBook costs. I've used more laptops in my life than I can count and am always hesitant to purchase them because no matter what the specs say you never know what you're getting yourself into. Most have left me disappointed in a matter of weeks or months. I can safely say that this is the best laptop I've ever purchased, I love the clever little things that Apple has done such as the magnetic connection to the power cord which means when you trip over it your investment won't go crashing to the ground. It's those little things that let me know Apple put a lot of thought into everything. It reminds me of the first time I finally gave up on other types of smartphones and purchased an iPhone, it just works, and I kicked myself for wasting so many years on phones that didn't. I have a feeling I won't be returning to other laptop makers any time soon.

As a computer enthusiast, I had been researching for months on different laptops from Samsung, Hp, and Apple. I've never owned a Mac before but I'm glad I decided to purchase this product, it was completely worth the $1600. This laptop boasts a super crystal clear retina display that makes reading, viewing pictures, and typing up and editing documents a joyful experience. The Macbook pro 2013 retina packs a powerful 4th gen i5 Intel processor nicknamed haswell that aids in prolonged battery life of the new laptops. The mac also includes a super fast 256 gb pci-e ssd, 8 gb of ddr3 ram, and iris graphics all in a super slim and elegant .71 inch thick unibody aluminum chassis. Since the day I purchased this product, my custom built pc has been collecting dust on my desk. Everything I'd normally do on my pc besides heavy gaming, I could now do with my brand new retina macbook pro. Using this machine makes doing school tasks and web browsing a breeze due to the machines quick responsiveness, fast boot times and best of all no major bugs or constant updating. It's no surprise as to why so many students chose to purchase macs for school. This machine is fast and powerful to due some casual gaming from tiki to time. I usually play civilization 5 in between medium and high settings on the 2560x1600 resolution and have no problems with lag or stutters. Although this game does put a strain on the machine and gets the fin to spin at full speed. The laptop itself doesn't got as hot playing this game as my friend's 2010 macbook pro but it does get pretty warm. Overall, this thin and elegant laptop is just as good if not better than my x58 based desktop. The Pci-e storage is ages ahead of the standard 7200rpm hard drive and the has well chip makes everything snappy. The reason why I find myself using this laptop most of the time over my desktop is the super quick boot up times, and the great mavericks interface. This is one of the best computers Ive ever owned and I'll be looking more into apple computers for desktops. Although the price tag is hefty, you get what you pay for and in this case its sheer quality and functionality. Highly recommend this product.

I was a former windows user and am now totally hooked on Apple. I was waiting for the new features to be enhanced in the flash hdd category and Apple finally got to where I wanted them to be; So I bit. It was a little burdensome getting to know how to do some of the same tasks that I knew how to do in windows but I got the hang of it. There is almost too much to list about how I love this laptop. The trackpad click system is so much easier. I especially love how lighting fast this laptop is in all respects. Even after sleeping (to reserve battery life) it fires right up in a second. I love not hearing a fan and no moving parts. The system works almost flawless (I have had the trackpad freeze a few times) but the the freeze only happens ever few days and it is nothing compared to the bugs in windows. The problem seems to have gone away (knock on wood). The speakers actually sound a lot better than my HP laptop that is 3 x the size. The battery life is unbelievable. I love how apple organizes emails from multiple accounts and how organized the whole system is in general. I love the lighted keyboard. I thought I would regret paying so much more than the windows laptops but it is worth every penny and more. I actually use this laptop more than my iPad now because it is so lightweight and portable.

I have always used a PC laptop and when I first decided to get an apple computer I was skeptical on transferring files and compatibility but no worries apple makes it easy and everything is simple to use and lighting fast. My first apple computer was a iMac 2013 model and I fell in love with the display and how everything was smooth and fast a few months later I decided to get my second mac since I needed it for school and portability was key. The macbook air to me was too thin and felt more flimsy and I wanted something with a better performance standard since I do a lot of photo editing and minor video editing and the macbook pro with 256gb and 8gb ram was plenty for me I didn't need too much Hard Drive space since my iMac already has 2TB of memory figured using the macbook as a travel computer. Whats great about apple products is that all the equipment is connected with one another such as from my iPhone to iMac to macbook and iCloud really does a great job. I did however purchased a mini 64gb flash drive to put on the computer to store my media via iTunes so I'm not running a lot of memory usage. Back to the computer the processor in this is adequate enough for everyday usage and battery life is great I am able to use it for 10 hours more than the stated 9 but maybe because it is new. Build quality is superb another apple trademark and not because I am being an apple fanboy I used to despise apple products because of how costly they are but after switching from my android phone over to iPhone I realized I didn't need a phone with a lot of tech features I don't use and apps that are free but not reliable. With my iPhone not crashing was when I decided to get an apple computer and now I am a true apple products consumer because you really do get what you pay for. The speakers on these are great for a compute won't blow you away but they are clear and loud and the retina display is amazing!! especially watching HD videos and editing photos a decision I made over the base model 500gb non retina version which was a few hundred cheaper but running on 2012 hardware. Overall I would highly recommend anyone to buy a mac!