Apple retina display and flash drive

[M_Six]

The Retina display Macs (all of them) cannot be serviced by anyone except Apple and cannot be upgraded after purchase. When the battery dies (approx 2 years), you have to send it back to Apple for a new one.

For what it's worth, I have the last non-Retina generation 15" MacBook Pro. It was about $1700 and cost another $85 or so to upgrade to 16GB RAM from Crucial.com. (Apple really screws you on RAM upgrades.) Then I grabbed a 512GB SSD for about $412. So about $2200 for the non-Retina model you described above. The RAM is very easy to install in a MBP and the hard drive was simple if you're careful to follow the directions.

I've seen the Retina displays and was not terribly impressed, but I didn't have a chance to look at images with Photoshop on a Retina model, so maybe that would have highlighted the difference more clearly. I can tell you that my MacBook Pro is lightning fast when it comes to opening RAW files in ACR. The SSD makes all the difference. It's also very quiet and runs a bit cooler with the SSD. And when the battery dies, I can take it to the local Apple store and have it replaced without mailing it off to Cupertino.

The Retina display means nothing on an external monitor unless the external monitor is also Retina-capable (read: $$$$$).