This sounds highly unlikely. Actually, your comment smells particularly odiferous.
Apparently, 17" MBP sales were trending toward 50K units per quarter before Monday's keynote. That's 548 per day. But the US is less than half of all sales, so let's say 250 per day throughout the US. (With that sales velocity, it's unsurprising that Apple killed off this product.)
That's 250 units from all sales channels, including bricks-and-mortar Apple Retail Stores, their online store at store.apple.com, and all 3rd party resellers (like Amazon).
B&M Apple stores account for maybe 30-40% of US sales, so we're talking maybe 80-90 units. That's really about one 17" MBP per location per day, except for larger market stores (like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, a few others).
That sounds about right based on what I've seen as a customer at the Palo Alto Apple Store which presumably has a higher MBP sales rate due to its proximity to Silicon Valley.
Let's face it, Apple is drawing down inventory of refurbs for a discontinued product line. Not surprising that they don't have any local inventory. After all, it is claimed that Apple turns around their entire inventory in ten days.
They End-Of-Lifed the 17" MBP based on declining sales, so it really shouldn't affect many buyers.
Conciseness can be confused with bull by the odiferous-for-brains.
Let's state some facts (that seems to be the trend).
6 Retina display models on display.
In the crowded, odiferous Apple store, there was never more than 2 other people on them.
4 people didn't come in immediately pissed...
2 of the 4 were a couple - they questioned first "well, what happened to the 17""
Apple rep kindly reminded that nobody ever bought 17"
"It's just....what's the point of retina if it's small"
1 of the 4 did storm in pissed, played with it... said he was a graphic designer and ONLY bought 17".
The last one was mostly confused with a degree of pissed.
"oh, well based on statistics..."
4 people pissed does not = 4 lost sales.
You're applying MPAA logic here.
Market research has ruined entire industries (film).
If Apple did some damn market research here (instead of previous sales), I think they would have been surprised
THE ONLY PEOPLE WILLING TO DROP $4K ON A LAPTOP ARE PRO's AND ASPIRING AMATEURS. PHOTO, FILM, COLORISTS, GRAPHIC DESIGN, etc...
or rich stupid people.
Here's the thing. Most people who care about their work use external monitors (a smidge over 15").
And the $4,000 question... Why would you spend $4,000 on a laptop with the most brilliant screen ever made, if the screen is too small to do your work on?
I almost ordered the first day.
Glad I went and toyed with it.
It had less of a wow factor to me than the iPad 3.
I'd order a fat one w/o retina... but it still has the stupid cd drive.
Only 1 thunderbolt.
Also, if you play around with upgrades, you'll notice it's actually a worse deal than the retina model.
A 17" w/ 3 USB3s, and 2x thunderbolt.
4GB of ram.
Raid 0 third party SSDs.
16GB third party ram.
Expresscard adapter.
That's all I wanted.
The real reason 17" never sold.
The reason I own a 15" MBP.
At the time, the upgrade was nearly $800 more (with a few forced standard upgrades).
"Nobody" would buy a 17" retina now.
Because it would cost too much.
The same reason I'm sure most sales are the barebones $2k retina models.
The same reason 99.999% of people buy the 13" MBP.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Mass production pushes down cost.
So the retina in one size makes sense.
Killing the regular 17" was selfish.
And almost as shady as putting "NEW" on the Mac Pro.
Steve is dead.
Time to stop pissing in mouths and calling it brilliance.
But I'd open wide for a retina Thunderbolt display.
Even a quad core 13".
But the clock is ticking.
It's upgrade season.
Adobe is Mac
OR PC.
