Some of you have wondered why I've been silent on the MacBookPro Retina (and the "new" iPad, for that matter). Heck, Microsoft's Surface announcement last week was another instance of Thom being unusually quiet. Truth be told, I just haven't had time to do the computer side of photography justice lately, though I will correct that once I get gearophile.com running (obviously I have higher priorities at the moment, e.g. things that this site deals with directly, including the site itself).
That said, I do have a couple of comments some might find useful.
Apple is doing what Apple does sometimes: getting ahead of the market and even itself. There's no doubt in my mind that extremely high pixel count screens and Thunderbolt and non-updateable hardware are where we're headed. The MacBook Pro Retina is a signal that Apple is already headed that direction (especially when you consider the Retina displays on the iPhone and iPad now). The question you have to ask yourself is whether you want to be ahead of the wave, on it, or see how the others who ride the wave do before you commit to the water.
More screen pixels is tricky, as Apple is finding out. On the one hand, the displays look simply amazing when used right. On the other hand, we need to rethink OS and apps a bit in order to use them right. Apple is doing okay on that front, but not great. Maybe next month's OS update and a slew of application updates will change my mind, but the MacBook Pro Retina seems like an awkward choice at the moment. Moreover, be aware that you'll be taking a step backwards in terms of how much of the AdobeRGB Color Space is shown. Plus we haven't heard much about how the screen calibration devices work with this new model. So jumping on board is definitely pre-wave, if you ask me.
Thunderbolt is definitely an asset. What most photographers know is this: memory and drive access are our two primary bottlenecks now, not CPU/GPU. Unless you're a one by one, not in a hurry , take your time image post processor, even 8GB seems confining when working on D800 images. And moving images around, heck, even just doing a complete backup of them can now be an hours-long process. Firewire and USB 3.0 help compared to USB 2.0. But I didn't really appreciate Thunderbolt until I upgraded my MacMini video workstation to use RAIDed Thunderbolt drives. They don't quite keep up with internal drives (especially SSD or RAID1), but there's a limit of how much internal storage you can stuff in machines, especially portable or small ones like my Mini. It's astonishing to me that just adding a Thunderbolt RAID to the Mini allows FCP X to Multicam (simultaneous HD video feeds) very, very comfortably (I ran 12 feeds of 30 fps HD material into it at one point; gotta love those little GoProHD2s for unique angle footage ;~).
But choice in the Thunderbolt world is still somewhat limited, so again we're a bit ahead of the wave, though I can feel it starting to crest.
So come a year from now the computer side of photography is going to be different. Especially on the portable side, which is exactly where we needed some change. You can get in early and suffer the usual fate of first adapters. Or you can wait a bit and see how the wave settles in and decide where the best ride will be and how to get up on it (what's with the surfing metaphors today? [and don't tell me I'm all wet ;~]).