Apple to discontinue 17'' Macbook Pro? | Hacker News Reader

Apple to discontinue 17'' Macbook Pro?

appleinsider.com

12 pointssuper_mario24 comments

I 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.

I 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.

I removed mine a few years ago and swapped in a extra SSD using http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

I 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.

they've done that a few times in the past.

Good gravy, I hope not. Xcode alone almost demands you have a 17", especially if you are IB'ing up iPad. Not to mention Photoshop.

I 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.

Drifting 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/w...

I 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

You 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.

Excuse me for being offtopic, but how did you go about replacing the optical drive with a hard drive?

There are ~$20 drive bay kits. Search Amazon.

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

My 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

Speaking of large laptops, where are the 21" laptops?

If they dropped 17", but upped the resolution of the 15" past that of the current 17", I'd be fine.

I 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.

The iPad 3 makes a beautiful second monitor. (App called Air Display).

I 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.

I 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.

I'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.

Agreed 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.

To 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.

I 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.

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