UPGRADE 2012 MACBOOK PRO RETINA WIFI UPGRADE
UPGRADE 2012 MACBOOK PRO RETINA WIFI WINDOWS

It follows that for heavier tasks that activate the dedicated GPU, higher-end MacBook Pros may have worse battery life than the entry-level models. A conversation with an Apple rep during the post-announcement hands-on time last week revealed an interesting wrinkle, though: AppleвЂ™s battery life testing figures all involve tasks that rarely, if ever, activate the dedicated GPU, so these battery life estimates donвЂ™t account for situations when the GeForce fires up.

UPGRADE 2012 MACBOOK PRO RETINA WIFI UPGRADE

One important thing to note for buyers who upgrade to the dedicated Nvidia GPU: Apple advertises the same battery life ratings on both the entry-level SKUs with integrated graphics and the higher-end models with dedicated graphics. Especially if youвЂ™re listening to music, playing videos in the background, or even communicating frequently using e-mail, IM, or Twitter clients, AppleвЂ™s eight-hour figure is probably realistic for normal usage with the auto-brightness sensor turned on and doing its thing. Performing the Web browsing test while looping an MP3, for example, dropped the battery life to 11 hours and 15 minutes, and performing the Web browsing test with the screen brightness cranked to 100 percent delivered seven hours and 40 minutes of runtime. This MacBook Air-esque number is only going to be possible for the lightest of workloads, though-changing the conditions of the test even slightly resulted in big variations. In our light Wi-Fi browsing test, which loops through a set of Web pages at the rate of one every 15 seconds until the computer dies with the screen brightness set to 50 percent and the keyboard backlight disabled, the Pro lasted for 12 hours and 24 minutes.

UPGRADE 2012 MACBOOK PRO RETINA WIFI WINDOWS

Even Haswell-based Windows Ultrabooks with similar components can usually only run for seven or eight hours.ДЄpple is trumpeting less ambitious battery life gains for the Retina MacBook Pro despite the systemвЂ™s large 8,625mAh battery-it's rated for eight hours of Web browsing, where the old model was rated for seven.ДЇor light usage patterns, this number can actually be pessimistic. Those devices are rated for (and can often get) nine and 12 hours on a single charge depending on whether you buy the 11-inch or 13-inch model. The long version: IntelвЂ™s biggest ambition for the Haswell architecture was to increase battery life, and nowhere has that ambition been better realized than in the 2013 MacBook Airs. The short version: If youвЂ™re using it lightly, AppleвЂ™s battery life numbers for the Retina MacBook Pro are actually a little conservative, and in light browsing, itвЂ™s capable of getting into MacBook Air territory. It remains a very nice improvement over 802.11n, in any case. These observations hold true for our file transfer test: the 802.11ac implementation in the MacBook Pro is better than the one in the Air, but not by the degree that one might expect. Moving the laptop away from the router and putting a wall between them shows that the ProвЂ™s signal strength falls off at about the same rate as the Air's, where the iMacвЂ™s stronger antenna can hold a better signal at the same distance. To test throughput, weвЂ™ll first look to the iPerf network testing tool, which can give a more realistic idea of the bandwidth you can expect from a given network connection than that connectionвЂ™s theoretical maximum speed.ДЄs in the 2013 iMac, adding a third antenna to the Retina MacBook Pro doesnвЂ™t get you 33 percent more throughput than the two-antenna 2013 MacBook Air, though it does outspeed the Air by 100Mbps or so. The 2013 iMac uses the same three-antenna, 1.3Gbps configuration while the MacBook Airs get by with two antennas and max out at a theoretical 867Mbps.ДЄs of Mavericks, all of the problems we noticed with 802.11ac file transfer speeds when we reviewed the Air have been ironed out, so Pro buyers can pick up a laptop and an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme without hesitation. The long version: Apple has been rolling faster Wi-Fi out to all of its Macs all year, and the Retina MacBook Pros get their three-antenna, 450Mbps 802.11n setups swapped for faster 1.3Gbps 802.11ac. Actual transfer speeds are slightly higher than the 2013 Airs, but not by much. The short version: Thanks to 802.11ac, the Retina MacBook Pros increase theoretical Wi-Fi transfer speeds to 1.3Gbps, up from the 450Mbps 802.11n in previous versions and 867Mbps 802.11ac in the 2013 MacBook Airs.

Upgrade 2012 macbook pro retina wifi