Apple Planning to Launch 13-Inch Retina MacBook Pro This Month? [Rumors]

9to5mac is reporting that Apple is going to announce a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro alongside the iPad Mini at a forthcoming product announcement event. More »

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 now fully supports Retina MacBook Pro: both HiDPI and GPU compute

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 now fully supports Retina MacBook Pro: both HiDPI and GPU compute

Adobe’s video editing application is already a lovely thing on the Retina MacBook Pro, but not visually — only in terms of its raw performance on that Core i7 CPU. Until today’s update — 6.0.2 — the software hasn’t actually been able to make use of HiDPI itself, and neither has it been able to exploit the performance-boosting potential of GPU compute on the laptop’s NVIDIA GTX 650M graphics card. If you’re lucky enough to own this combo of hardware and software, Adobe’s official blog suggests that you go ahead and check for the update or apply it manually following the instructions at the source link below (it’s actually within Bridge that you should check for the update, with other Adobe titles closed). We’re hopefully about to apply it ourselves and will report back on its impact.

Update on the update: As expected, video thumbnails look sumptuous in the absence of pixelation, making this a worthy revision. That said, software encoding of a short timeline was still faster with the Mercury Engine set to software mode rather than GPU compute. A 2:30 clip took 2:02 to encode with OpenCL, 2:00 to encode with CUDA, but just 1:42 to encode in Software mode. No doubt people who do multi-cam editing or need to render complex effects in real-time may see a benefit — please, let us know if you do!

Update: Just had word from NVIDIA that may explain what’s happening with our encoding times. We’re told it’s only if we enable “Maximum Render Quality” that GPU compute will shine through in terms of performance, because enabling max quality in software mode would slow it down. So far we’ve only tried with default settings, so clearly there’s room here for more experimentation.

Filed under:

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 now fully supports Retina MacBook Pro: both HiDPI and GPU compute originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAdobe  | Email this | Comments

OWC offers 480GB SSD upgrade for Retina MacBook Pro, requires screwdriver and careful math

OWC offers 480GB SSD upgrade for Retina Macbook Pro, requires screwdriver and careful math

Order up a Retina MacBook Pro and you’ll likely be confronted with a gravelly message about how the SSD is “built into the computer” and not user-upgradeable. As it turns out, that’s not quite true — so long as you’re prepared to ignore a whole bunch of other warnings written inside the chassis itself, iFixit has shown how to remove the factory drive and now OWC has a new SSD to replace it with. The only downside is the cost: at $580, OWC‘s 480GB Mercury Aura Pro is actually more expensive than Apple’s official 512GB upgrade. In an effort to sweeten the deal, OWC is offering those who buy before September 30th a compact USB 3.0 enclosure to make use of the freed-up drive. Alternatively, you may want to wait for prices to drop or for OWC to offer an even bigger capacity with better cost / benefits.

Filed under: ,

OWC offers 480GB SSD upgrade for Retina MacBook Pro, requires screwdriver and careful math originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 06:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Macrumors  |  sourceOWC  | Email this | Comments

Why You Really, Really, Really Need AppleCare on That Retina MacBook Pro [Apple]

Apple’s retina MacBook Pro may well be the platonic ideal of a portable computer. It’s fast, it’s thin, it’s brilliantly realized. Oh, and as iFixit has discovered, it’s a gigantic—and expensive—pain in the ass to fix yourself. More »

Google Chrome Now Looks Good on Retina Displays [Google]

If you’re an ardent user of Google Chrome and happen to use a Retina MacBook Pro, good news: the latest stable release of Chrome includes support for the high-res display. No longer will you have to use another browser or cause pain to your retinas. Download it here. [Google via Engadget] More »

Google Chrome 21 stable release adds Retina MacBook Pro support, webcam use without plugins

Google Chrome Retina Display

Some Retina MacBook Pro owners have been waiting for this day for six weeks: that promised Retina support in Google Chrome is now part of a finished, stable release. Chrome 21 is now crisp and clear for those who took the plunge on Apple’s new laptop but would rather not cling to Safari for the web. No matter what hardware you’re using, Google has rolled in its promised WebRTC support to let webcams and microphones have their way without Flash or other plugins. Other notable tweaks like wider support for Cloud Print and gamepads tag along in the update as well. If you’re at all intrigued by the expanded hardware support in Chrome, Google has an abundance of details (and downloads) at the links below.

Filed under: ,

Google Chrome 21 stable release adds Retina MacBook Pro support, webcam use without plugins originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Google Chrome Blog  |  sourceGoogle  | Email this | Comments

Is the Retina Display on Your New MacBook Pro Suffering from Ghosting? [Apple]

Owners of Apple’s latest and greatest laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, say that they’re having issues with image persistence, where screen ghosts are popping up on white backgrounds for as long as five minutes after the image initially appeared. Cnet says that Apple has exchanged a few laptops already, but is this a case of early manufacturing issues, or is it a larger engineering flaw? [Apple via Apple Insider via Cnet] More »