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Apple to discontinue 17'' Macbook Pro?
- melling 15y agoI think there would be a big market for a 17" MBP that weighs 5.5lbs. Remove the optical drive require an SSD. Of course, I'm waiting to upgrade to the 3.5lb 15" MBP.
- icefox 15y agoI removed mine a few years ago and swapped in a extra SSD using http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- MoOmer 15y agoI don't think so. I think general consensus among the rumor mills is that they're doing a staggered roll out, revising the 17" later this year.
- AdrianRossouw 15y agothey've done that a few times in the past.
- duaneb 15y agoI don't think I've seen a 17" mac in around three years. See a lot of 17" gaming laptops, but aside from editing video or photoshop, I'm not sure why you would want something that big.
- bdunbar 15y agoI'm not sure why you would want something that big. Heh. I remember the same argument against the added expense of a 15 inch monitor. Twice I lobbied my boss for a 17-inch mac, was turned down due to reasons of cost. Why? Because 'more screen' is better, be it terminal windows, emacs, or a browser. Like a lot of guys, my laptop functions more as a portable computer than anything else.
- kls 15y agoAgreed I am a freelancer and I am always on the road, in a good deal of my working situations I don't have the luxury of hooking my laptop up to a second monitor. If Apple killed the MBP 17 it would suck of me. I understand that my use case may be a niche and not the norm, but I would have to imagine there is more than just a handful that have similar needs for the 17. If they kill the 17 I would probably look at building out a hackintosh system on a large screen PC laptop rather than move down to the 17. I have been anxious for this refresh, due to the fact that I skip a refresh so my 17MBP now is the generation before the current offering, as such I can't upgrade past the 8GB ram barrier which I am really starting to feel when running VMWare. I hope the news is just rumor, because I could have already switched to a PC laptop with a hackintosh set-up, but I have been grinning and bearing it knowing a refresh was around the corner.
- frou_dh 15y agoTo have a single self-contained computer with enough resolution to work with 2, 3 or 4 windows comfortably (in a keyboard-driven way like SizeUp.app, of course). Remember the 15 is actually 15.4", so it's less than a 2" difference.
- stephencanon 15y agoI have both a 17" macbook pro (work machine) and a 13" macbook air (personal machine). I would not happily trade either one of them for anything else. I find the bigger screen is invaluable for coding; the small size of my personal machine makes it great for travel.
- PaulHoule 15y agoI wish they'd come out with more RAM, for the work I do, 32GB would be sweet. I like macbooks and I'd buy one if I could get one with enough RAM but I'll probably get something bulky and ugly from Dell instead.
- sciurus 15y agoDrifting off-topic, but look at the Thinkpad W series. When I evaluated workstation laptops around a year ago they seemed nicer than the Dells, so I got one for a project and have been happy with it. http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/w-series/w520/ http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/w-series/w...
- SkyMarshal 15y agoI don't know how well this carries over to the W series, but the T series are pretty rugged. Drop test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkSxdR-W0g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkSxdR-W0g
- jcnnghm 15y agoYou can put 16GB in the newest 17" Macbook Pro's. I have one, and that's what I did. I also swapped the optical drive for a second hard drive, and replaced the primary hard drive with an SSD.
- Tyr42 15y agoExcuse me for being offtopic, but how did you go about replacing the optical drive with a hard drive?
- no-espam 15y agoThere are ~$20 drive bay kits. Search Amazon.
- SkyMarshal 15y agohttp://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- chrislomax 15y agoMy boss uses a 17" mac for design purpose. I think anything less than 17" would be sub standard in his eyes. I'm sure a lot of other designers would see it the same way if I am honest
- jawngee 15y agoGood gravy, I hope not. Xcode alone almost demands you have a 17", especially if you are IB'ing up iPad. Not to mention Photoshop.
- ScottBurson 15y agoI love my 17". It's my third 17" Mac laptop (the first one having been a PowerBook, so you can see I've been using them for a while), and I'm very glad I picked up a new one last year. Yes, it's a bit large at times, but against that, it has plenty of screen space for development work -- I can pull it out anywhere and work as effectively as I would at home. Granted, programming is the only task for which I need this much screen room. Otherwise the 15" would be fine. I'm also glad it has the optical drive, which I still use on occasion. For the 15", I can see the sense of leaving out the optical, but the 17" should be a desktop replacement, seems to me.
- jamesu 15y agoSpeaking of large laptops, where are the 21" laptops?
- jcnnghm 15y agoI hope they don't do this, it's hard enough to work with a 17" screen. I usually run two windows side-by-side with BetterSnapTool. Carrying an external monitor everywhere I go is impractical.
- gte910h 15y agoThe iPad 3 makes a beautiful second monitor. (App called Air Display).
- no-espam 15y agoI would be happy if they added high resolution/retina displays on the 13" MBP which I still prefer over the air for the simple reason I can replace the SSD and memory.
- gte910h 15y agoIf they dropped 17", but upped the resolution of the 15" past that of the current 17", I'd be fine.