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Why Do People Still Buy The 17" Macbook Pro?
- Thread starter smcgil9899
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For me the screen size is one of the most important things being that it has a 17" 1920x1200 display so I can see more content without having to reduce the text down to a size I can't read comfortably. The retina display is of less interest to me.
The internal storage is indeed more flexible, I like having a 1.5TB Fusion Drive in my 17" MBP, this is the other main reason for me to keep my 17" MBP. It beats having to carry around external drives, although I still use a few external drives for infrequently used data. Going to a rMBP or MBA would be a big step down for me in this area (especially as 1TB of storage in a rMBP isn't cheap).
However there are other potential benefits that some people might like, such as:
- Better built-in speakers
- Expresscard slot
- 3 USB ports
- Built in gigabit ethernet (don't need a dongle which uses up another port)
- Built in FireWire 800 (don't need a dongle which uses up another port)
- Built in optical drive (I don't need it and have removed it for more internal storage, but some people do)
- Infra Red remote (useful for presentations)
- Separate headphone and line in ports (plus digital input and output)
Sure for most of these you can have a load of dongles, hubs or other external devices attached to your machine, but maybe for some people these are useful to have built in. Especially as the rMBP has fewer external ports, and things like thunderbolt docks aren't exactly cheap.
Well, that's a question of what you need. If, for example, you want built in ethernet, fw800, express card, the option of two internal drives and the storage flexibility, then the 17 wins out. If you don't want the screen size, don't have a large volume of files, don't use the express card slot etc, and want a smaller but swankier screen, then clearly you'll prefer the rMBP, but the question was why would anyone choose the 17 - those are the reasons.
Upgradeability, Screen size, and its not that old yet. I think people will buy for for normal use at least in 3 years.
So - as I said:
1. The screen size.
2. The ports (ethernet, firewire, express card). If I need to plug in an ethernet connection and some firewire drives I need to carry a bunch of christmas tree ornaments, and I'm screwed if I forget them.
3. Internal storage.
For people who use their computer professionally workflow is a big issue. Having to replace drives or introduce dongles, and move material off internal drives onto christmas trees they have to carry around is a disruption they don't want.
Some people get the 17" cMBP over the 15" rMPB for the same reason I got a 15" cMBP over a 13" rMPB.
Screen size! Its amazing the difference that little bit of screen makes. You also get a cooler device, thanks to the extra fan, and a much more upgradable device.
Screen size! Its amazing the difference that little bit of screen makes. You also get a cooler device, thanks to the extra fan, and a much more upgradable device.
My 17 inch MBP total internal capacity of nearly 2.5 Tb (960 Gb SSD and a 1.5 Tb HDD) on board....all my data is always with me.....no messy externals.
When at base it is connected to a 27 inch Thunderbolt display so the Retina is no benefit. When away from base I have 1920x1080 real estate, same a a Retina, but on a larger screen but slightly less sharp. As has been said the real world performance difference between a 2.5 Sandybridge quad core and latest Retinas is not great.
Prices are a function of supply and demand. People with 17 inch MBPs are hanging onto them. More people want them than are available so the price goes up. I have three of them and not looking to sell yet.
Why would I want a Retina?
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My prediction Mike? In about 2 minutes someone will be telling you you don't need that much storage, or screen real-estate. 
Where I live, there are always 2012 Macbook Pro 15 Retinas with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD, sometimes even the 512GB SSD, for sale on Craigslist for $900-$1400. I'm actually talking with a guy now about his Retina. It is a 2012 15 Retina with a 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. He is asking $1000.00 and it is legit. I have already seen it and tested it out. I'm just waiting to get the money together.
I know it sounds crazy, but a lot of people out there who want Macs don't understand anything about specs. All they know is that Macs can be expensive and if they can find a used one for $700 on eBay then it looks like a good buy. They ignore things like battery life, HDD vs SSD, RAM, etc.
I don't know about thefts, but when buying off of Craigslist, I take every precaution I can. I check out everything. If I get a bad vibe, I will check the serial number with the police. I never have been burned by buying on Craigslist, knock on wood.
I live 5 miles from Chattanooga, Tn. There are 6-8 huge cities, for example, Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville, Huntsville, Ashville, Macon, Birmingham, etc. around me within a 2 hour drive. There are always Macbook Pros for sale.
In February 2013, I bought a 2012 15 Retina for $1400 with AppleCare off of Craigslist. I sold it though because I had always used 17" laptops and couldn't get over the small size. But for the last 6 months, I have been using my daughters laptop and her's is a old 15.6" Toshiba. So I guess I have pretty much gotten used to smaller laptops. I have been saving my money and supposed to get a bonus from work, so I'm getting my own computer. But I really like the 17" screen size, but don't want to waste my hard earned money on a computer that is outdated. But from what I have gathered from this thread, is that the 17" Macbook Pro is still a powerful machine. Am I correct? I just use my computer for light Photoshop and light video editing.
Yes, I think a bunch of people would. I know I would love to go back to a 17 inch with retina/ haswell and 16 ram. We have the tech to make it pretty slim.
I don't care about slim on a 17 inch. I'd rather use the space to add storage and ports!
Apparently it does for the particular benchmark
P.S. A base Haswell Macbook Air gets better scores on the Peacekeeper browser benchmark than my quad core Ivy Bridge rMBP. I'd say that the performance increase which is of interest for the majority of users
Oh I'm sorry, I just looked up the way geekbench scores are constructed and it turns out that if a device get a score that's for example 2 times as high as another device, it indeed actually finished the tasks two times as fast, relatively (and therefor the performance would also bee 2 times as much), so that's my bad.
But yeah as you said yourself, programs behave very differently on different architectures, so in real life speeds can be very different from what benchmarks may lead you to believe. However, if you look at multiple benchmarks and compare them to a known pc, you can get a general idea of how fast a computer should be.
It honestly depends what you're doing. I think for the majority of users there is no perceived difference at all.
That's why I said "a general idea".
Tasks like opening apps are usually bottlenecked by the hard drive rather than the CPU so I get that in "real life" usage most users won't notice that much difference.
what I think is so insane is the price for speck cases for the 17in on ebay. Now that the company discontinued them they are going for almost $200 new and often $100 used. 6 months ago they were under $30 on the bay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Speck-Macbo...7?pt=US_Laptop_Cases_Bags&hash=item3a8b2fe4f5
i got a clear one back in 2011 when i got my 17in, but kinda was wanting a green one as my case was starting to scratch, but at 125-175..no way.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Speck-Macbo...7?pt=US_Laptop_Cases_Bags&hash=item3a8b2fe4f5
i got a clear one back in 2011 when i got my 17in, but kinda was wanting a green one as my case was starting to scratch, but at 125-175..no way.
It's not insane - its basic supply and demand. The price is going to go up now the supply is cut off.
yes. I am aware of basic market economics, but its good to see you were paying attention in class that day
It is still an outrageous price hike. Often discontinuation can have the reverse effect as well. I was able to pick up a new bookbook case from twelve south's amazon store for $40 shipped.
It's just a better machine for media production compared to a rMBP: storage, ports, big screen estate (and no scaled and blurred crap for pixel precision work, less sytem resources wasted for retina UI), ability to run older OS X versions for better performance and software compatibility.
Or they have no desktop or want to use external hard drives. Space is huge, if you are a magician - you may have lots of music projects for logic, DJ - you'll most likely have hundreds of gigabytes worth of music, photographer - some Photoshop PSDs take up straight up space (200MB if not more, for one project!), Video Editor - all that content you record and the projects you make with it take gigabytes at a time.
Space is a huge issue to folks like ^
Yes, sorry, my sarcasm was flying too low. I crashed into what people really believe. I've been told pretty much that by so many people, I just think it's funny at this point.