New 17" MBP?

[pritchettnick]

I tried a search already to find any info about this and couldn't find anything. If I missed it I sincerely apologize.

Do you guys have any hope that there is going to be a new 17" MBP? If so, what evidence do you have that leads you to believe so?

 

[old-wiz]

Many threads have bemoaned lack of a 17" MBP. Unfortunately Apple is not likely to build another one.

 

[Closingracer]

I for one when I looked at MacBooks years ago love the idea of a 17 inch one and while considered one the price killed my dreams. I have always used 17 inch windows laptops and loved them and even brought one to school. Fast forward six years I still have a gaming laptop thats 17 inches but a 13 inch Macbook pro and imo the 13 inch is the perfect size for me.

 

[Bending Pixels]

Flogging a dead horse on this issue

 

[JamesMike]

I don't see it happening.

 

[Atreyu25]

Nope. 15" display can scale.

 

[maflynn]

I don't see it happening and to be honest, I'm happy with the 15" form factor.

ITs been years since apple killed off the 17" laptop, its not something that has appeal to the mass market imo. Don't forget they discontinued it for a reason, if it was making a lot of money they wouldn't have stopped making it.

 

[PKBeam]

instead of clamouring over the 17" why not support slimming off the bezels of the 15" to a 16"?

 

[throAU]

No. Because if i wanted a desktop i'd buy a desktop.

13" Macbook Pro is the best compromise size for me. If they can push the screen out to 14" by making the bezel smaller, even better.

I have used many 15" machines in addition to my own 15" MBP classic, and they're just heavier, hotter, and crappier battery life for dubious performance improvement that isn't good enough to make up for the downsides (imho). 17" is just a bigger, heavier 15" machine IMHO - they're even more unwieldy and useless for doing the job of being a portable machine you can use anywhere. Once i get to a desk, i can plug into a monitor and the form factor of the machine becomes irrelevant. Until i get to a desk, 15" or bigger is a pain in the rear.

Also I'm never going to buy another portable with discrete GPU (even if i was to go for a 15"), it's just not worth it. The laws of physics on portables simply guarantee that you're just not going to get desktop class GPU performance. They just don't have the battery or thermal headroom. All you end up with is a "meh" discrete GPU (which might be 'ok' performance wise for the first 12 months of ownership) and worse battery life and heat.

Really hoping for e-GPU to take off, a friend has been using various cards including a titan via thunderbolt for years, it works, just no one really makes a box that works out of the box without hardware hackery.

edit:
I do see the 15" retina being replaced with a machine that has 16" usable screen area, which should be a good enough compromise to replace the 17".

 

[nightcap965]

To the Unindicted Co-Conspirator's sorrow, there will not be another 17" MBP. But last time we were at an Apple Store, she played with a 15" rMBP, and was quite pleased with it. She hasn't decided to pull the trigger yet, but the 15" has a very comfortable screen.

 

[Closingracer]

No. Because if i wanted a desktop i'd buy a desktop.

13" Macbook Pro is the best compromise size for me. If they can push the screen out to 14" by making the bezel smaller, even better.

I have used many 15" machines in addition to my own 15" MBP classic, and they're just heavier, hotter, and crappier battery life for dubious performance improvement that isn't good enough to make up for the downsides (imho). 17" is just a bigger, heavier 15" machine IMHO - they're even more unwieldy and useless for doing the job of being a portable machine you can use anywhere. Once i get to a desk, i can plug into a monitor and the form factor of the machine becomes irrelevant. Until i get to a desk, 15" or bigger is a pain in the rear.

Also I'm never going to buy another portable with discrete GPU (even if i was to go for a 15"), it's just not worth it. The laws of physics on portables simply guarantee that you're just not going to get desktop class GPU performance. They just don't have the battery or thermal headroom. All you end up with is a "meh" discrete GPU (which might be 'ok' performance wise for the first 12 months of ownership) and worse battery life and heat.

Really hoping for e-GPU to take off, a friend has been using various cards including a titan via thunderbolt for years, it works, just no one really makes a box that works out of the box without hardware hackery.

edit:
I do see the 15" retina being replaced with a machine that has 16" usable screen area, which should be a good enough compromise to replace the 17".

They do make desktop class gpu inside laptops now. They sell the nvidia 980 inside laptops but St the expense of being bigger and a lot of cooling features like copper pipes and etc. Give it a few more years and you'll might have desktop gpu's in a more mobile laptop like friendly case

 

[throAU]

They do make desktop class gpu inside laptops now. They sell the nvidia 980 inside laptops but St the expense of being bigger and a lot of cooling features like copper pipes and etc. Give it a few more years and you'll might have desktop gpu's in a more mobile laptop like friendly case

Yes, but as per my above post, 6-7kg plus for a 'laptop' with 30 minute battery life when actually using the GPU heavily is a bit of a joke. You're bound to a power outlet when running 3d stuff, which means you may as well have an external thunderbolt enclosed desktop GPU on the desk where you're plugged into AC power.... putting the GPU inside the machine is pointless.

A few year's time, you'll have 'desktop class' GPUs from today in a laptop sure.

But by then the industry has moved on and the portable, with a budget of perhaps 50 watts for the GPU is always going to be well behind what a desktop can do with up to 500 watts for GPUs.... simply due to power and cooling. Desktop GPUs are not standing still.


edit:
have friends with alienware / asus gaming laptop rigs... i still don't see the appeal, at all.

 

[colinwil]

I tried a search already to find any info about this and couldn't find anything. If I missed it I sincerely apologize.

Do you guys have any hope that there is going to be a new 17" MBP? If so, what evidence do you have that leads you to believe so?

If they did, and if it had a dedicated GPU I'd buy one tomorrow.

People say they killed off the old one because of lack of sales. But who knows? Maybe they just couldn't do a 'Retina' one back then at a reasonable price?

Anyway - I keep my fingers crossed...

 

[throAU]

If they did, and if it had a dedicated GPU I'd buy one tomorrow.

People say they killed off the old one because of lack of sales. But who knows? Maybe they just couldn't do a 'Retina' one back then at a reasonable price?

Anyway - I keep my fingers crossed...

Even if you totally forget focusing on the Apple lineup, 17" PC laptops are extremely rare too.

Whether or not you're talking Apple or PC, the 17" form factor is very much a small niche and generally they don't do anything a 15" class machine doesn't do.

For most people a "laptop" has to be usable on the go; 15" machines are already pushing what most people consider reasonable to lug about, and 15" machines are already too big to comfortably use on aircraft, etc. Even 13" machines are cramped in economy class - hence the existence of machines like the 11" MBA and the Macbook.

Yes, a retina 17" would have been expensive, and based on how many 17" laptops of ANY brand i've seen in the past 10 years (and I work as an IT nerd doing SOE development amongst other things), sales would have been low.

Yes there are exceptions, and some people love the 17" size. But they're not very common.

 

[alexjholland]

Anyone who wants a 17 inch Macbook Pro is probably on this forum and using it to complain that they want one.

Whereas there are astronomical numbers of people who will never join a Mac forum and are quite happy handing over cash for a 13" laptop instead, to use for Facebook, emails and Skyping their friends.

Same situation with the many angry people posting about how Final Cut Pro X is no longer a 'pro solution'. They're statistically non-existent, compared to the millions of people who come back from snowboarding trips and holidays each year with some GoPro footage they want to make a fun film out of.

 

[venom600]

I tried a search already to find any info about this and couldn't find anything. If I missed it I sincerely apologize.

Do you guys have any hope that there is going to be a new 17" MBP? If so, what evidence do you have that leads you to believe so?

My argument has always been that there will be no new 17" Macbook Pro because the entire market for 17" workstation notebooks is dead. However, things have changed. The Lenovo Thinkpad P70 is like a reference design for everything we could want in a 17" Macbook, from Thunderbolt 3 to Xeon processors and powerful workstation class discrete graphics. The technology now exists to make it more than just a larger 15" Macbook Pro and there are a lot of people who want one. I wouldn't bet on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they release one.

 

[Closingracer]

Even if you totally forget focusing on the Apple lineup, 17" PC laptops are extremely rare too.

Whether or not you're talking Apple or PC, the 17" form factor is very much a small niche and generally they don't do anything a 15" class machine doesn't do.

For most people a "laptop" has to be usable on the go; 15" machines are already pushing what most people consider reasonable to lug about, and 15" machines are already too big to comfortably use on aircraft, etc. Even 13" machines are cramped in economy class - hence the existence of machines like the 11" MBA and the Macbook.

Yes, a retina 17" would have been expensive, and based on how many 17" laptops of ANY brand i've seen in the past 10 years (and I work as an IT nerd doing SOE development amongst other things), sales would have been low.

Yes there are exceptions, and some people love the 17" size. But they're not very common.

I disagree. If you want to game on a laptop the 17 inch is the way to go. Remember these laptops are big and bulky because of the need to have the fans, heat pipes and etc to cool it. The battery life of them always suck being a 13,15 or 17 inch laptop so your probably not going to be bringing it anywhere elsewhere anyways. If Apple wanted to theoretically go after the gaming market and add say an intel i7 -6700HQ, Nvidia 970M* and 8GB of RAM it could be a good reason to make a 17 inch Macbook pro.





*Nvidia 980M price increase isn't worth it since you don't get that much more power with it.

 

[PKBeam]

> Apple
> Gaming laptop
:/
OS X is not a gaming platform.
The minority looking at gaming laptops will probably be browsing for something else.

 

[throAU]

I disagree. If you want to game on a laptop the 17 inch is the way to go.

If you want to game on a laptop you need your head examined imho. The performance generally sucks and you're spending 2x what you could on a desktop that would run things a lot better.

They're only useful for gaming if you lug them from desk to desk, and even then i believe people have managed to get thunderbolt e-GPU setups to work with the internal laptop display now. An MBA or MBP with thunderbolt + eGPU is still probably lighter and performs as well as a 17" gaming laptop (a friend had a triple-head titan-based MBA 11" eGPU set up). And not a total brick when you just want something portable to do other stuff on.

Sure you need AC power for the GPU, but you need AC power to game on a laptop anyway - sure the GPU may be built in but running games on battery on a dGPU machine you'll be pressed to get more than an hour or so of battery life.

And as far as gaming on an MBP goes... been there, done that, was pretty meh.

 

[Closingracer]

If you want to game on a laptop you need your head examined imho. The performance generally sucks and you're spending 2x what yo could on a desktop that would run things a lot better.

They're only useful for gaming if you lug them from desk to desk, and even then i believe people have managed to get thunderbolt e-GPU setups to work with the internal laptop display now. An MBA or MBP with thunderbolt + eGPU is still probably lighter and performs as well as a 17" gaming laptop. And not a total brick when you just want something portable to do other stuff on.

Sure you need AC power for the GPU, but you need AC power to game on a laptop anyway - sure the GPU may be built in but running games on battery on a dGPU machine you'll be pressed to get more than an hour or so of battery life.

And as far as gaming on an MBP goes... been there, done that, was pretty meh.

Maybe you need your head examined? How are you going to tell people how they should spend their money? I have a gaming laptop and gladly paid the premium because guess what I wanted it and 1080p is perfectly fine or games. You can get a laptop with a nvidia 970m for around $1,000 which is around $500 cheaper than when it was released. I have a laptop because A) don't have the room to really want a desktop and B) the games I play work great on it and pretty much plays every game being released

 

[throAU]

Maybe you need your head examined? How are you going to tell people how they should spend their money? I have a gaming laptop and gladly paid the premium because guess what I wanted it and 1080p is perfectly fine or games. You can get a laptop with a nvidia 970m for around $1,000 which is around $500 cheaper than when it was released. I have a laptop because A) don't have the room to really want a desktop and B) the games I play work great on it and pretty much plays every game being released

If you want to blow thousands on a 17" gaming laptop, go for it. I have friends who do so.

I still think they're making poor choices and could get far better bang for buck and user experience in other ways, but yes, how you spend your money is entirely your prerogative.

 

[Fishrrman]

Waiting for Apple to release a new 17" MacBook Pro...
... is like waiting for Godot ...

 

[Closingracer]

If you want to blow thousands on a 17" gaming laptop, go for it. I have friends who do so.

I still think they're making poor choices and could get far better bang for buck and user experience in other ways, but yes, how you spend your money is entirely your prerogative.

It's not always about best bang for your buck.....if that was always true why do people buy Macbooks when a windows laptop at half the price can do the job? If your a gamer but travel a lot a gaming laptop is the best option for you since you can easily bring it to hotels where you couldn't easily do that with a desktop

 

[0007776]

It would be nice to have it as an option, but it isn't going to be coming back.

 

[Hildegerd]

I hope they will grant us the professionals workhorse again.