Apple introduced Retina screens in the MacBook Pro a few years ago and I never took the plunge. I had no need for a 13” laptop at the time and bought a 11” MacBook Air1 a year later. What convinced me was its small size and long battery life, and I needed a mobile typewriter and access to Lightroom when traveling, to be able to offload my memory cards and perform a preliminary selection of the shots I took—this would later turn out to save me hours of work.
Retina screens have been a part of my life since the iPhone 4 and iPad 3. Apple achieved something incredible by quadrupling the pixel count—it removed a barrier between the content and its reader. I still remember how I considered the first iPad and iPhone 3GS to have amazing screens. That all changed soon enough and I cannot imagine going back to traditional displays in my mobile devices. Despite the advances in mobile LCDs I was still relegated to using a traditional display on my 27″ iMac and MacBook Air. The former was good enough when viewed at a normal distance while the latter, used as a typewriter, most of the time of my knees, didn’t bother me at all. Despite that, I still longed for a Retina displaying having reviewed a few MacBook Pros.