The decision to buy rMBP & warranty, or NOT?

I gonna tried to be brief as I can but not leaving any detail. Obviously the decision is personal and it's hard to make a decision w/o all the detail information that go into it. The final questions are mainly just three.
1. Should I buy 15inch rMBP or not?
2. If not, what should I be thinking next?
3. If I decided to buy, what kind of warranty should I be looking for?

Side NOTE: I do plan to get the baseline rMBP with 16GB RAM since I could use external HDD on USB3 or even TB port as expanded storage and RAM is not user replaceable by any mean. While SSD can still be replace not relatively too hard once warranty is gone.

Here is my background.
I'm a geek, that's pretty much a summary. I know how to build to PC, and I had built a few. All for difference purpose, from making a lower power small footprint PC and use it as a firewall/UTM all the way to building my storage and media server. I use both Windows & Linux but I never own a mac, the rMBP might be my first. That said, I'm not an anti-mac guy. I just use what suit me best regardless of makers, models or OSes. I have both Android & iOS devices. All jailbroken & rooted/custom ROMS.

So why would a geek for an rMBP then? Because photography is a hobby of mine, a dam expensive one. And I'm not talking about taking snapshot here w/ point-and-shoot here. And I figure that retina screen notebook is something I can take advantage of, and obvious there are no PC notebook that come close ATM or any near foreseeable future. While I personally would want something smaller than 15-inches, I have done a little digging and I afraid that the leaked benchmark imply that the next 13inch MBP(retina) may only be dual-core, 4 threads. So, that would not be a reason for me to wait. My current notebook is already 2nd-gen i5 and I wouldn't get much benefit in term of CPU power going from 2nd-gen dualcore to 3rd-gen dualcore. So this very narrow the choice down to just 15inch rMBP that seem to fit me ATM.

The reason I'm a bit reluctant is because it's so new and there isn't much information around it yet. Recently I even heard the GPU may even be a bit underpower to drive that retina display. And also, while I can afford to buy over $2k notebook, it's not a wise decision to just do so w/o any deeper analysis and I'm in a middle of contract negotiation w/ my employer. So I figure I can wait and use this time doing some more information gathering. When the contract is done, then I can just buy it. Again, I'm not in the financial problem, it's just seem like the right thing to do.

Now, say if I gonna buy it what kind of warranty do I get? Obviously it's not gonna be upgradable or repairable for that matter. I have heard of AppleCare and the service at genius bar from both extreme ends. From they can replace it even if they know it had water/coffee spilled anyway to they already replace the mainboard/logic-board twice and they aren't going to do it for the 3rd time even if it's a hardware problem and with in warranty period. There are other choices that I take a look at also, like SquareTrade. The true is, I have no clue how both Apple Care and SqureTrade are. So I leave this to the wisdom/experience of the cloud. Another option that I looked at is the StateFarm's Personal Article Policy. Well I have used it before for insuring my photography gears. I know if I would add a $2200 notebook, it would probably gonna cost me about $30-50 a year for non-business use. While it's a difference type of insurance, since it only cover physical damage and theft, it's also an option. That said, I have never tried to make a claim on this type of policy, so I don't know how well it would fare.

I hope I don't leave anything important out, and feel free to give me a good constructive advise and answers.

 

Regarding the gpu, if you are in need of gaming at 2880*1800, it happens on undemanding titles, that res usually brings top of the line gpus to their knees. However people dont complain about blurring at 1680*1050.

now anand comment that the hardware aint enough to drive that res and the scaling is... strange. The software and drivers is where the problem may lay. As we can see from the comments on people that got a ML GM. It improved a lot on that lag scrolling.

Regarding apple care, get it. it doesnt cover ACD, I have insured mine (mbp 13) for that and theft.

 

Regarding the warranty, I don't know who at the Apple Store told you that they would repair or replace a liquid-damaged machine under warranty because that's not something AppleCare covers. There probably are cases of people getting accidentally damaged machines repaired under AppleCare, but that would have been on an individual basis by a genius as an act of kindness and pity. I currently have AppleCare on my MacBook Pro, but if I had to do it over again, I probably would have skipped it and bought a cheaper warranty through SquareTrade with accidental damage coverage. Alternatively, I would probably have purchased a separate insurance policy just for the notebook, which includes accidental and theft protection. You could do it through your homeowner's coverage, too, but if you make a claim, there's always a chance your rates could go up. This company specializes in insurance for mobile devices, including computers, cell phones, and game devices.

 

The GPU really isn't underpowered to drive that display. Even the Intel HD 4000 could properly push the pixels out at that high of a resolution without issues. The experiences you are reading are probably from gaming and maybe from general usage. As pointed out, the later has to do with drivers. The GPU is underwhelming for modern gaming at the native resolution but this isn't marketed as a gaming notebook to begin with and it definitely doesn't have a gaming level cooling system. For photography and video editing, the GPU is more than capable. The warranty really is up to you but I definitely recommend buying one as, technically speaking, none of the parts in the RMBP are user serviceable. No company has come out with a compatible SSD unit yet so that isn't even upgradable later down the line. OWC, the same company that released SSD upgrades for the 2010 and 2011 MBAs, is probably working on a solution for the RMBP and 2012 MBA but they haven't released anything yet (or at least as of the last time I checked). Your home owners insurance/renter's insurance should cover theft of your item so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I have renter's insurance through my car insurance company. It was an additional $5 a month and covers everything I own from theft, fire, and natural disasters. You can look into buying a reputable 3rd party warranty that covers accidental damage if you are really worried about that. Some credit cards even offer that type of warranty on products purchased using them. You will have to call your credit card company to check on that though.

AppleCare does have its advantages in that you can get the notebook serviced in person at a local Apple Store where the Geniuses tend to be a lot better than some over-the-phone interaction with a call center in some other country. That's the main reason why I purchased AppleCare for my 2011 MBA and I ended up using their service (albeit within the standard year warranty) last month. A keyboard key of mine did not have any resistivity whenever I pushed it in and the key was mushy. I took it in, the guy said it would be about an hour, and I came back only to find that they replaced the scissor mechanism on everyone of my keys just in case along with the actual keys. I don't know about other stores but that one went above and beyond what I was looking for and made the purchase price of AppleCare worth it.

 

Hmm. That insurance company has some good rates if you are in school. I ran a test to see what a year would cost at $2000 coverage with a $25 deductible and it turned out to be $77. Very fair rates, still going to do some research before I hop on that warranty.

The one plus of applecare though is the fact that you bring it to the store and you walk out fixed. With a third party insurance company, you have to file claims, go to service locations, etc...

--edit--- I agree with the above post. Any time I had issues in the past, the apple service people really did go above my expectations.

 

Not to sound disrespectful because your questions and concerns are very valid, but the summary of you being a geek and building PC's and such was more than unnecessary for us to read. I like to get to the point rather than reading a novel. .

Regarding the GPU, where did you read that it wasn't powerful enough to drive the retina display? That doesn't make sense, Apple wouldn't put in a GPU that couldn't handle it's latest machine's most celebrated feature. That can't be correct information from your source.

Regarding the warranty, again you heard incorrect information. Apple does not cover any sort of physical damage, only normal wear and tear and defects from manufacturing.
Do you understand how SquareTrade works? I actually like it but there is a stipulation. One of the reasons why the price is so great is because their warranty is like putting money in the bank with zero interest earning. Say your RMBP breaks down and the repair cost is $1500, if your SquareTrade warranty has $2000 coverage then ST will pay the $1500 service charge and you will now have $500 left for the next repair.
If your next repair is more than $500 then ST will pay you out your remaining balance and close your account and you'll have to pay the difference. Applecare pays for endless repairs up to a replacement, that won't happen with ST.

As far as buying new technology such as the RMBP, historically it's always been best to buy the second or 3rd version rather than being the first kid on the block due to issues and possibly a better GPU for more complex uses of the retina display in the future.

 

Suggestion: If you're 'really' serious about photography then save your cash, buy a standard mbp, max the ram/ssd space and buy a very high quality external screen.

 

The HD 4000 is powerful enough to drive the display. The GT 660m is powerful enough to drive the display and several other displays.

The GT 660m is not powerful enough to run many 3D AAA game titles at 2880x1800 - that would require a MUCH more powerful GPU. However, as stated, the pixels are small enough that you can play games at normal resolutions (in the range of 1280-1920 horizontal res) and have the game upscale to full screen (2880x1800) and still look good. Playing in non-native resolution had a much larger effect on image quality in the past when screen resolutions were lower.

For 2D / raster images, it's not an issue.

As far as the warranty, it sort of depends on how much money you have. Buying the warranty (like all warranties) is primarily nice in that it keeps you away from the risk of having to pay for a very expensive catastrophic failure. But, your expected value is worse for buying the warranty (the company selling the warranty is making a profit off of it).

"I have heard of AppleCare and the service at genius bar from both extreme ends. From they can replace it even if they know it had water/coffee spilled anyway to they already replace the mainboard/logic-board twice and they aren't going to do it for the 3rd time even if it's a hardware problem and with in warranty period."

Neither of those extremes are true. If you spill coffee on your laptop and it malfunctions, they won't cover the bill. The warranty does not cover accidental damage. If two replacements are made and a third is required, it will be performed (it's required of them) if you are under warranty. They may consider replacing the entire machine at that point.

 

So Apple doesn't offer the type of warranty that lenovo offers?

 

Lenovo, HP, Dell, Sager, MSI, Asus - all offer some form of accidental damage protection, most of the time at extra cost. Apple does not. The real kicker is that you can get ADP on an iPhone or iPad as part of AppleCare+. Why the company doesn't extend this protection to its computers is absolutely baffling to me.

 

I don't know the details of Lenovo's warranty offerings. If that is accidental damage protection, then Apple does not offer that.

 

no they don't offer anything past 3 year depot/applestore warranty without accidental.
Masterchief, Lenovo, Hp and Dell offer up to 5 year NBD warranties with full accidental Protection ( unlimited services not just up to value of unit like squaretrade ) on business class units .... for between $130 and $349

Saturn. many ASUS and dell business units give 1 or 2 year with accidental included in the price, albeight ASUS can be slow on fixing them

 

Sorry if that bother you but as I have stated earlier, the decision is personal so I decided to add some of my personal background as well so the answers are more personalize and not some generic one.

As far as the GPU being under power, I read it at AnandTech. I have read their stuff for quite sometime; they are very reputable and their articles are very well sound. [ source]

The last two paragraphs pretty summarize their thought even w/ ML.

 

thats why I put the anand comment on focus, I supposed that you read that article. I do like anand a lot, though it was strange for him to come up with that hardware innuendo. As I said the ML GM, not the one that he tested, fixes that. Thus its a software problem.

The HD 4000 was made to drive 4k displays. And since I dont experience lag scrolling when on my mbp 13 with the HD 3000 at 2560*1440p, it was a strange comment

 

The decision to buy a rmbp should be focused on three things:

1) The use of macOS. If you are not tied to macOS, there is only one other compelling reason to choose rmbp

2) The retina screen. You mention photography, but even a home-enthusiast probably doesn't want to edit pictures on a 15" screen. The retina screen is nice, but really only in resolution. The retina screen covers the standard color gamut well, but actually covers LESS of the adobe color gamut than last years' model. Truthfully, a $1300 windows laptop with a 95% gamut 1080p screen would probably work just as well in Windows for most things. Such a laptop paired with a really nice external monitor would likely be a LOT more useful for photography and editing.

3) Price for the features and performance you want. The above two reasons must bridge the price gap for you personally. The concept that a 95% gamut 1080p 15" Windows laptop and a REALLY nice external monitor are considerably cheaper than just the rmbp make this difficult IMHO for anyone not tied to MacOS.

All of this is your call, but if in your position, I would likely get a custom Clevo/Sager Windows laptop with a nice screen and a really nice external monitor.

Another point no one mentioned... the rmbp has problems cooling its i7. The gpu isn't even the problem, its the cpu.
The rmbp is thin and light, but has inadequate cooling in comparison to even the 11" clevo with similar hardware!

 

This is actually a plus for almost everyone, especially photographers, except for a very specific subset of photographers who are doing high-end specialized printing. Otherwise, aRGB isn't helpful and can cause problems.

As far as the "cooling issues", the temperatures look to be about in line with other Apple laptops. It's clearly not meant to be sitting on your lap while doing high performance workloads like rendering or 3d gaming. However, it's also not going to get damaged just by using it if it's on a desk.

 

Isn't too early to tell if the rMBP is reliable as other Apple laptops?

 

Well, if you want to get technical, it is about 3 years too early to determine if the RMBP is as reliable as other portable Macs. We won't really know how well these things age until 2015 but I highly doubt people are going to wait that long before buying them. The same issue arose with the first iPad but it has proven itself over the last two years. I still see people with original iPad 1 models that operate fine and don't have any major physical damage. Unless there is some major flaw that has been overlooked by the countless professional reviews, I wouldn't really worry about it especially since most models (whether they are from Apple or not) are going to change in a 3 year time period. By the time a newly released models proves itself, the company is already changing it by coming out with a re-design.