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Apple should do something about their 17 inch laptop lineup

H

howareyoukk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 1, 2013
169
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I had a chance of buying a refurb 17 inch macbook pro..but then I chose the matte version of 15 inch cmbp over the 17 inch (because i hated the glossy display at the time)and I have been regretting my decision lately---I now want a bigger screen!

I have read some news about alienware is going to release an redesigned version of 15 inch gaming laptop;dell cancelled the 15 inch laptop lineup for alienware around 4 years ago(2010). And most of the alienware fans swore dell will never release an 15inch alienware laptop again. Guess what, its here and i reckon apple should do something about the 17 inch laptop lineup as well.what do u guys think? if apple does have the redesgined 17 inch laptop i will buy it. 15 inch is good but its always better to get a bigger display :)
 
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This has been discussed quite a bit and the same thing occurs. A bunch of people say it will never happen (including me) because apple killed it off. Others stated there's a market for such a laptop and Apple should.
 
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The majority of consumers find larger (i.e. 17") laptops to be less portable than a 15" or 13", which is why, overall, larger laptops don't sell.

The whole point of a laptop is portability. 13" and 15" are easily portable. A 17" - not so much.
 
It doesn't make much sense to me, unless they put a fancier dGPU into it compared to the 15", which they never did. Otherwise, there is no reason not to just get a 15" and buy a nice external monitor.
 
Freyqq said:
It doesn't make much sense to me, unless they put a fancier dGPU into it compared to the 15", which they never did. Otherwise, there is no reason not to just get a 15" and buy a nice external monitor.
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Thanks to scaling, and retina displays, the advantages of a 17" display are somewhat mitigated. I know a high resolution 15" display cannot fully make up for a physical 17" display, but then many folks don't want to be lugging around a huge computer.
 
Bending Pixels said:
The majority of consumers find larger (i.e. 17") laptops to be less portable than a 15" or 13", which is why, overall, larger laptops don't sell.

The whole point of a laptop is portability. 13" and 15" are easily portable. A 17" - not so much.
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Yeah but what if there were a 17-inch laptop with the weight and thickness of an Air?
 
The problem is Apple insists on charging for every inch of screen a lot more. While the 13" Macbooks are fairly competitive compared to similar Windows notebooks the 15" are not and the 17" used to be of the rocker.
Since they were so expensive they used to be very low volume compared to the smaller ones and Apple didn't think they'd need to bother with it. Probably an issue was also that initially a 17" retina display would have cost them too much.

I think that they change their mind is not impossible but so far unlikely to change soon as there usually are prototype leaks many months prior.
They are probably not shipping the next 15" with a dGPU. Maybe they redsign it a little and shrink it. Maybe now with cheaper panels they will bring a 17" with a bigger 960M GPU or something, justying the couple hundreds extra they want to charge for 2 inches (even though production costs are like 50$ higher if that).

Also they might jump on the trend to ever smaller bezels. Dell with the new XPS 13" made a really small notebook. A similar 16" MBP would be barely possible without any greater size of the remaining notebook. A 17" would be just a little bigger. I kind of doubt they do that but it would be a possibility. They probably like the look with the big bezels and wouldn't drop them for aesthetic reasons.

Personally if I was allowed to design a MBP. I would double the heatsink size, shrink the bezel and make the corner sharper as needed. Leave most of it the same and fit a 16-17" 16:10 panel. Then add a serious dGPU that isn't 2 years old( like the 750M that has been trimmed of every identifying feature nvidia brought with the 700M series, which makes it just a 650M), one such as a 960M or 965M. Also I would drop that nonsense with pairing an Iris Pro chip with a dGPU and benefit from the higher clocks of the non Iris Pro chips.
 
Yes, as others have said this subject has been discussed at length. And usually I contribute my 2 cents. Once again, I will say I will never buy another MB or MBP unless it is a 17" antiglare. When my 2009 model bites the dust, I will spend the $7200 USD and purchase the Venom Blackbook X, which is a Windows based machine, but at least it has the specs I can only dream of in a MBP. I would gladly pay Apple $10,000 USD for a MBP equivalent to the Blackbook X.
 
Apple should do something..

Hmmmm.. from where I sit (in frozen Western Canada) it appears they DID do something, quite some time ago _ they cancelled it _ and I suspect that unless you and a few hundred thousand of your closest friends ante up a down-payment of momentous magnitude, that it will stay just as 'cancelled' as it has been!! ** If the Noise was Loud Enough it would have been heard, long ago _ Sadly, for some :apple:
 
baypharm said:
Yes, as others have said this subject has been discussed at length. And usually I contribute my 2 cents. Once again, I will say I will never buy another MB or MBP unless it is a 17" antiglare. When my 2009 model bites the dust, I will spend the $7200 USD and purchase the Venom Blackbook X, which is a Windows based machine, but at least it has the specs I can only dream of in a MBP. I would gladly pay Apple $10,000 USD for a MBP equivalent to the Blackbook X.
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It takes quite a bit to retool their machines to accommodate for a 17" machine. You might pay $10,000 but realistically, that's nothing compared to the R&D costs and all that goes into it before production and procuring materials and parts for ramping large-scale production. Unless you want an exact copy of the old model, which certainly will be dated by now. Even then, expect a hefty premium to remake that.

And who else would only pay a bit more than say $2500 before deciding to get anything else? Heck, they can get a Mac Pro, a 5K iMac, and multiple portables of choice with $10,000. Companies do market research and from what they saw, demand must have been paltry for anything larger than 15".

Money is largely useless. A few hundred thousand is nothing when they have $50 million in unsold inventory just sitting there plus whatever costs required to actually realize the product.
 
I don't see them ever bringing the 17 inch back. I currently have a 2011 17 inch and love it and was very disappointed when they got rid of it. I mostly use my laptop as a desktop replacement and very rarely move it around. Most travel is from sofa to office. Also I believe when I bought my laptop the resolution I got didn't come in the 15 inch, and retina now addresses this.

At the moment I am actually fine with going to a 15 inch in the future now that I have a thunderbolt dock and have an easy option to use it basically as a desktop when needed (27 inch monitor, mouse, keyboard and gigabit network) and then when I unplug I get more portability.

Without the dock I would have still wanted a 17 inch, but not as much any more.
 
plastictoy said:
It takes quite a bit to retool their machines to accommodate for a 17" machine. You might pay $10,000 but realistically, that's nothing compared to the R&D costs and all that goes into it before production and procuring materials and parts for ramping large-scale production. Unless you want an exact copy of the old model, which certainly will be dated by now. Even then, expect a hefty premium to remake that.
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I doubt R&D is ever any issue for Apple. They have such a huge volume with their products all over the world that it amortizes without any problem. Even a 17" or Mac Pro which are compared to the rest lower volume easily amortize the cost. Other companies have to worry much more to make R&D worth their while for expensive high end computers. But Apple really doesn't.
I am also pretty sure that the machines are capable of much more than just making a slightly bigger case. Have you ever seen those things. They are fully programmable and unless the dimensions are hugely different, it is a question of changing a few variables. They can do that in minutes and really the manufacturers have to deal with it anyway not Apple.
 
Fishrrman said:
Apple will never produce a 17" laptop again...
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IT seems to be the case. The higher resolution of screens will make the 15" attractive for people who needs more screen space. That said I would love to see a retina 17" because I am a graphic designer but I am not holding my breath. I don't see Apple going that route anymore.
 
to be fair, most companies are not going this route anymore.

Your best bet may be the Razer Blade Pro 17". But even then, it has crappier specs than the lower tier razer blade for some reason.

Get the Pro 17" and just run VM on it for mac because hackintosh has a lot of issues.
 
dusk007 said:
I doubt R&D is ever any issue for Apple. They have such a huge volume with their products all over the world that it amortizes without any problem. Even a 17" or Mac Pro which are compared to the rest lower volume easily amortize the cost. Other companies have to worry much more to make R&D worth their while for expensive high end computers. But Apple really doesn't.
I am also pretty sure that the machines are capable of much more than just making a slightly bigger case. Have you ever seen those things. They are fully programmable and unless the dimensions are hugely different, it is a question of changing a few variables. They can do that in minutes and really the manufacturers have to deal with it anyway not Apple.
Click to expand...

Apple is not going to toss money into a system that few want. I expect the demand to be much lower than the Mac Pro even. They have the money but it'd be a bad financial decision trying to appease a vocal minority. You have to ask: what is this machine for? The stationary person? Get a desktop. A mobile user? Their 15" covers well enough and there is no way to satisfy everyone.

Ive also isn't someone who just sketches out a design and lets other companies handle it. Machining without waste and optimal efficiency is not cheap or fast. Remember those leaked iPhone parts? The milling brackets (whatever they're called) are as intricate as the actual product themselves. Machines are there but to make something worthwhile comes with its own design challenges, none of which will come cheap at a global scale. All to what, satisfy a few discontent forum users momentarily?
 
I don't see this happening with the ability to scale the display resolution on the 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display, not to mention it's more portable than a 17" notebook among other reasons.
 
might as well get the 21 inch i mac, its cheaper than the 17" (most likely)
 
maflynn said:
This has been discussed quite a bit and the same thing occurs. A bunch of people say it will never happen (including me) because apple killed it off. Others stated there's a market for such a laptop and Apple should.
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Well said.

I was just thrilled with the 17" MBP's I had back when they were a current model. I've stopped even thinking about them since because it's pointless. But I'd be so eager to buy one if they ever resumed production.

At work at least 30 of us used and enjoyed them consistently year after year, until they were killed off. Being perfect for the work we do especially with the nice roomy 17" display, we'd still benefit from that size.

They may have been too trouble free and profitable. Fast, reliable and very useful, those facts might have been too much for Apple to deal with. Ha...Ha...Ha!
 
FrozenDarkness said:
to be fair, most companies are not going this route anymore.

Your best bet may be the Razer Blade Pro 17". But even then, it has crappier specs than the lower tier razer blade for some reason.

Get the Pro 17" and just run VM on it for mac because hackintosh has a lot of issues.
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razer blade pro 17 inch is no good and the black luck..the 17 inch screen with 16:9 ratio looks like it is smaller than a 17 inch screen with 16:10 ratio(the one the macbook pro 17 inch had). And i use final cut pro x for my film project practiced. Win machines do not have fcpx..so yeah..The rumours say that apple is gonna release the 12 inch macbooks and if I remember correctly there was a time when 12 inch macbooks were coexisted with the 17 inch macbooks..maybe its the sign that apple will reproduce their 17 inch macbook pros later in the future?
 
howareyoukk said:
maybe its the sign that apple will reproduce their 17 inch macbook pros later in the future?
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I think you're grasping at straws. The computer market is shrinking or at the very least stagnating. Apple is doing well with what they have, they'll not going to roll out a laptop that is less portable, more expensive to produce when the 15" rMBP fits the needs of the majority of consumers.

They killed it off for a reason, my opinion is they did so, because they weren't making enough money to justify its continuance. Nothing has changed since they did that.
 
Regarding the "there is a market for a 17'' MBP" angle:

What has to be taken into account is not only how many 17'' MBPs Apple could sell, but also what those potential buyers would buy instead. I assume that most of those who would like to have a 17'' rMBP will still settle for a 15'' rMBP (or an iMac), rather than buying a Windows machine or no new laptop at all. This has to be taken into account when Apple estimates whether it is worth to spend money on developing an additional model.
 
With scaling, I can comfortably use 1920x1200 already. The high resolution screen and the extra USB port was the only advantage of the 17" MBP.

Come on guys, I know you like the form factor, but lets stop pretending like the 17" MBP wasn't nothing more than a high end 15" MBP will a large screen. It'd be one thing if Apple would actually take advantage of the larger chassis, like putting dual SSDs, more battery, or a GPU with a higher TDP. We all know Apple wouldn't do this even if they actually made a 17" rMBP.

As for why it got dropped, Apple made you buy high end specs just to get the screen size, making its base price ridiculous. If Apple would have sold 17" with the with the same base specs as the 15" for only $100-$200 more, it would have sold better. This has always been the Achilles heel with Macbooks. Even if all you do is iMovie, but wanted to enjoy a 17" on the go, you had to buy FCP X specs at $2500 just to get the screen size.

So on one hand, I could see why the advantage of the 17" wouldn't be worth it's cost to Apple. On the other hand, if you make a 20" rMBP cost $4000 base price and it doesn't sell, does that really mean no one likes the 20" form factor?
 
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