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Maybe if they optimized for features instead of making it smaller. This is the Pro not the air. People who care about size are going to get the Air. People w

by bcheung 10y ago

Maybe if they optimized for features instead of making it smaller. This is the Pro not the air. People who care about size are going to get the Air. People who get the Pro want Pro features and don't care as much about size and weight.

gumby 10y ago
As someone who lugged 17" lunch trays around for years, I beg to disagree. I don't know about Apple's market research so have no idea why they think this particular configuration will appeal to the fat part of the pro-buyer bell curve. I think you are 100% correct for photographers and music(ians/ engineers et al) in that they have big heavy cases of stuff anyway so the weight difference is in the noise. But as a software developer I decided weight is paramount for me. Disclaimer: my development these days is mostly in the command line, with code running on remote machines, so even speed of compilation isn't as big a deal as it used to be. I had the 17" machines mainly for number of pixels on the screen and secondarily for disk space.
- melq 10y ago
  If weight really is the most important aspect of a laptop may I ask why you are even bothering with an MBP? Seems kind of silly. Even with the relatively large difference in size and weight from my last one (mid 2009, which I think might've been the last year they made 17"), I've never found myself thinkin "man I'm glad I dont have to walk around with that extra 2.5 lbs in my bag anymore". It's definitely alot sexier, but at some point can't they be satisfied with their success in slimming it down, rather than making terrible design decisions to shave off another 0.3 inconsequential pounds? Personally I long for the keyboard of my '09 mbp and would love for Apple to stop obsessing over making their already thin enough shit thinner. I would gladly accept the formfactor of those older models if it meant I didn't have to deal with the miserable keyboards they're using these days, and had the option to increase my ram sometime down the road. Typing on my 2015 mbp feels like I'm drumming my hands on a countertop.
  - gumby 10y ago
    > If weight really is the most important aspect of a laptop may I ask why you are even bothering with an MBP? Seems kind of silly. This is a reasonable question. And back when I was buying 17" I didn't pay any attention to weight. But man it was a drag to walk around a conference with that huge thing in my bag, to run to a flight with what felt like a brick in my bag, etc. In theory I could replace a lot of the casual use of my machine with iOS (mail, rss, web, etc) but all that is so much more effective on a real, responsive machine with a keyboard, multitasking, etc. So in the end the laptop is my primary interface to the nonphysical world and I need to have it continuously on hand.

by bcheung 10y ago

gumby 10y ago

As someone who lugged 17" lunch trays around for years, I beg to disagree. I don't know about Apple's market research so have no idea why they think this particular configuration will appeal to the fat part of the pro-buyer bell curve. I think you are 100% correct for photographers and music(ians/ engineers et al) in that they have big heavy cases of stuff anyway so the weight difference is in the noise. But as a software developer I decided weight is paramount for me. Disclaimer: my development these days is mostly in the command line, with code running on remote machines, so even speed of compilation isn't as big a deal as it used to be. I had the 17" machines mainly for number of pixels on the screen and secondarily for disk space.

melq 10y ago
If weight really is the most important aspect of a laptop may I ask why you are even bothering with an MBP? Seems kind of silly. Even with the relatively large difference in size and weight from my last one (mid 2009, which I think might've been the last year they made 17"), I've never found myself thinkin "man I'm glad I dont have to walk around with that extra 2.5 lbs in my bag anymore". It's definitely alot sexier, but at some point can't they be satisfied with their success in slimming it down, rather than making terrible design decisions to shave off another 0.3 inconsequential pounds? Personally I long for the keyboard of my '09 mbp and would love for Apple to stop obsessing over making their already thin enough shit thinner. I would gladly accept the formfactor of those older models if it meant I didn't have to deal with the miserable keyboards they're using these days, and had the option to increase my ram sometime down the road. Typing on my 2015 mbp feels like I'm drumming my hands on a countertop.
- gumby 10y ago
  > If weight really is the most important aspect of a laptop may I ask why you are even bothering with an MBP? Seems kind of silly. This is a reasonable question. And back when I was buying 17" I didn't pay any attention to weight. But man it was a drag to walk around a conference with that huge thing in my bag, to run to a flight with what felt like a brick in my bag, etc. In theory I could replace a lot of the casual use of my machine with iOS (mail, rss, web, etc) but all that is so much more effective on a real, responsive machine with a keyboard, multitasking, etc. So in the end the laptop is my primary interface to the nonphysical world and I need to have it continuously on hand.