This must be the worst forum ever nobody ever replies to my posts
Anyhow for better or worse Apple is repairing my old MacBook Pro, thanks Apple, so I won't need to buy a new one and won't need to worry about USB 3 compatibility, and I would really miss the 17" screen.
I did get interested in the 15" high-res with matte screen w/quad core i7 and the ability to (at my risk) run 16GB RAM and swap out the optical SuperDrive for another SSD. Having a built in FW800 is great for legacy stuff but It was disappointing to see only one thunderbolt port. Especially given Avid's "interesting" decision to only provide a single Thunderbolt port on the HD Native Thunderbolt box. The MBP Retina had dual thunderbolt ports, but no Firewire 800 or Ethernet (need to use thunderbolt adapters) and no option for a second internal HDD/SSD.
Darryl