Upgrading to a full three-year plan under AppleCare will cost an extra $349 and is pretty much a must-buy, considering the proprietary nature of Apple products and their sealed bodies. It's impressive, but I'm looking forward to moving the goal posts again for the next generation.Īpple includes a one-year parts-and-labor warranty, but only 90 days of telephone support.

We've settled into a comfortable level of battery life with MacBook Pro laptops. It's also about what you'll get from either the 15-inch Retina Pro or the 13-inch Pro. No big improvements to battery life were expected with the move to Intel's latest generation of CPUs, and this model's run time of 6 hours and 54 minutes in our video playback battery drain test is exactly the same result as last year's Pro (which was similar to the iteration before that). Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacksĢ USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, SD card reader, eSATAĮthernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional mobile broadbandĪpple MacBook Pro 15.4-inch (Summer 2012) Interestingly, both this and the Retina version are still 16:10 aspect ratio displays - some of the only laptops to keep that standard. Of course, even that resolution can't compete with either the 1,920x1,080 found on many premium Windows laptops, or the 2,880x1,800-pixel resolution on the MacBook Pro with Retina display.

A 1,680x1,050-pixel display is a $100 option, and money well spent (plus, there's also an antiglare version of that higher-res screen). It's similar to the 1,366x768-pixel display you'll find on less expensive midsize Windows laptops, but anything even close to this price range should start off with a much higher resolution. The 1,440x900-pixel display is one of the few weak spots in this system. This unibody chassis has the benefit of being thin, but strong and flex-free at the same time. The basic building block should be familiar by now: a solid chunk of aluminum, which is carved down into a shell with support struts. It's still one of the best overall laptop designs around, and still one of the thinnest full-power 15-inch models, but thanks in part to competition from ultrabooks (an Intel marketing program to design and promote thinner laptops across several screen sizes), Windows laptops are catching up quickly. While its internal components have been updated to include the latest hardware from Intel and Nvidia, the 2012 version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro looks and feels the same as previous iterations.

Macbook pro 15 mid 2012 model number