The Retina display on Apple's new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro is eye-popping. So is the price, if you want all the fixings.
The 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro --unveiled by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday-- starts at $2,199. That's the price for the most basic configuration, with a 2.3GHz processor and no upgrades in storage or any accessories. As an experiment in excess, I decided to find out how much money I could hypothetically spend on the new MacBook Pro, if I upgraded every spec, purchased every accessory, and turned down no augmentation, embellishment, or anything, really, that Apple offered me during checkout.
It was a little like the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man," if "Yes Man" followed a character who couldn't say no to any internal hardware enhancements.
So how much money would you spend on a new Retina MacBook Pro if you upgraded everything and bought every accessory offered to you in the shopping process? Turns out: About $9,000. For a new laptop. You could buy a perfectly lovely two-bedroom house in Stockton, Calif., for that much cash.
Anyway, here's how I got to the $9,000 MacBook from the advertised $2,199 starting price:
