 Hey, this is Ross with The Verge, and we're looking at the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Apple is announcing this as the new flagship MacBook product. So there's a few big features here. Most notably the size and the Ivy Bridge chipset. But let's go ahead and get right down to what you care about, the Retina Display. At 2880 by 1800 pixels, it is actually the most pixel-dense screen of any MacBook. That all breaks down to 220 pixel per inch density, not quite the same level as the new Retina iPad, but pretty close. So what you're really getting is four times the pixel density than your standard MacBook Pro, and it really breaks down to actually not being able to see the pixels. The text and images in Apple's apps actually look really good, especially Safari, for example, in TextEdit, the text looks very crisp. iPhoto, Aperture, you know, high definition pictures, you really do see the difference, especially when you have a full screen DSLR photo and you're kind of looking at the details. Obviously Apple's gone ahead and optimized its first party suite for the Retina Display. That's something third party developers are going to have to do also. In the meantime, however, third party apps, most notably Chrome, for example, Firefox, Opera, Kindle, Nook, all of them have text that actually displays, actually a little pixelated. If you compare it to the standard Pro, it actually looks a little bit worse. To be honest though, we kind of think this is more of a minor short-term inconvenience. In terms of form factor, the laptop is actually kind of a hybrid love child between the standard MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. It's not a wedge machine, but it does have a.71 inch thin chassis. That's a good 37% smaller overall than the standard MacBook Pro, and at 4.46 pounds, actually 25% lighter too. And inside that smaller form factor, we've actually got Intel's third generation core chipset, the Ivy Bridge. This one in particular has a 2.6 gigahertz core i7 processor and Nvidia GT 650M graphics chipset. It's quite a powerful gaming machine. And Apple itself showed off Diablo 3. We've actually played Diablo 3 ourselves on this. Maxed out the resolution 2880 by 1800, raised up all the settings, the shadows, special effects, the blood, the guts, the gore. And what we found out is you can actually get a consistent 20 frames per second. It's not great for the hardcore gaming, but really only later in the game would that become an issue. And if we lower the resolution, you get a very consistent 30 frames per second regardless of the situation. So all in all, it's not the most powerful gaming machine. In terms of Apple's machines, it's actually one of the best we've seen. Apple's been touting its asymmetric fan system, saying it actually gets the laptop a lot cooler and a lot quieter. And while it's definitely much quieter, with more processor intensive apps, especially games and video, it is still hot to the touch. One of the ways Apple has managed to keep the size down in the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is by opting to go with flash storage entirely. Starts at 256 gigabytes, goes all the way to 768. It's much, much faster. If you've ever used the MacBook Air, you know the startup times, the boot times, the times from sleep are near instantaneous. It's actually really, really impressive in practice. As far as ports go, Apple has actually made a few radical changes, especially for people who have used MacBook Pros for a while. Gone completely now is the FireWire, which is something we kind of saw coming. Also though, the Ethernet port actually turns out to be a little too tall for the frame that Apple wanted to make. So in their place, we've got two Thunderbolt ports. And of course, you can buy Thunderbolt adapters if you need the FireWire and Ethernet. We've also got two USB 3.0 ports, one on each side. They also work with USB 2.0. Again, they're much faster. Perhaps one of the nicest changes here is the HDMI out. Before you had to actually use the mini DisplayPort adapter, plug into a monitor, and then also get like an audio cable. This time though, you just do HDMI to HDMI, put it in a TV, you get a 1080p signal, really good audio. It's very impressive, and the time it actually takes to plug it in and actually get working is measured in seconds. It's really nice. And then there's MagSafe 2. Apple has done away with the old MagSafe and opted for something that's a little flatter. But of course, none of your old adapters are now going to work with this, and vice versa. Apple does offer a MagSafe 1 to 2 adapter. It's actually about $10, snaps right on. So people with a lot of power adapters, just consider yourself warned. The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display starts at $2,199. And with that, you get a 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB flash storage. That is $400 more expensive than the base price of the MacBook Pro, but again the trade-off is flash storage versus hard disk drive, Retina Display versus otherwise, disk versus otherwise. So really it's more up to you what you value here. Regardless of your feelings toward Apple generally, or even the new MacBook Pro specifically, it's more or less a certainty that laptops all over are about to make a strong push for high resolution displays. The more high resolution screens on the market, the more websites and apps will be optimized for it. The MacBook Pro with Retina Display really is kind of the culmination of everything Apple has learned in the MacBook field. Granted, of course, it is the most expensive MacBook Pro out there, one of the most expensive laptops out there, but if budget's not an issue, this is the best laptop you can buy right now.