Software

The notebook comes with the pre-installed Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion operating system.

The biggest problem of Retina-based MacBooks is the small number of applications optimized for them. For example, Microsoft Office 2011 still looks ugly on a Retina display. Icons, fonts, all of it looks ugly and jagged. Strangely enough, at the same time Open Office runs perfectly. Not to mention Apple's own iWork, of course.

In our case, the native applications satisfied all our needs, so Microsoft Office was the only disappointment. The low resolution in Cyberduck or Transmission was not a problem, because these application run in background most time. There were also certain issues with Image Tricks (shown below), so we used GIMP instead.

On the contrary, Coda 2 looked good.

Websites in Safari looked even better on this model than on the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, with artefacts being less visible.

Sometimes we saw thin but noticeable vertical stripes. Obviously, a website design bug, but you should be ready for these to pop up elsewhere as well since not every website is "optimized" for such a high display resolution.

In general, if you mostly work with office suites and can switch from Microsoft Office to Open Office or Apple iWork, your Retina experience will be quite satisfying. Again, bear in mind that third-party software is still poorly optimized for such outstanding resolutions.

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