They did say that last year though! Maybe I should get a mini to tide me over...

Agreed. 17" screen isn't just about having a few extra keys. It's fantastic to be able to keep working adequately when you can't get to a large screen.

I'm tempted to get the last of the current 17" ones as a refurb before they disappear. That should keep me going for a while... my pre-unibody 2008 MPB will need replacing soon no doubt.

My contention is a 17" laptop isn't really that portable either. All the ones have tried have been rather... cumbersome. As I say, all the 17" laptops I've seen have actually been pretty rubbish 'laptops'.


Agreed. As the saying goes "it's your money". There are other saying about money too...


Wow, that whole two inches. For several hundred quid.

Jon

I've loved mine for it's size, and when you compare the two side-by-side that two inches DOES make quite a difference. Like I say, I hated working on my old 15" iMac, but can do it pretty comfortably on the 17" MBP. Okay, not "ideal" but workable when you can't/don't want to hook up to a big screen.

I've never had issues with it not being portable - okay it's not the lightest, but it's manageable, and if they've made the new MBPs slimmer/lighter anyway, that would help?

Okay - not everyone want's a 17" granted , but there are a hell of a lot of people (including me) do - I'm pretty gutted it's been dropped... I'll just have to get used to working on a smaller screen I guess...

So...Many...Double...Entendres

Must...Resist.

Ha!

Actually, the fact they've dropped it kind of suggests there wasn't a hell of a lot of people who wanted them. if it was a massive seller, they wouldn't have punted it.

Jon

Same could probably be said about the Mac Pros tbh...

Okay, fair point. But I can't imagine it's sold THAT badly as to drop it... surely? Most Mac 'mates' I've known always 'want' the 17", but usually couldn't afford it so end up buying a smaller one.

Ah well. It's all pretty academic now as it's done and an Apple U-turn is a rare thing...

I never said I'd get a Mac. I'm sure I could get a 17" non-Mac laptop and still save over the 15" Macbook Pro.

One thing about mac pros though is that everyone's waiting for an upgrade. When I told my local apple reseller I was waiting for the next model, he told me I was far from alone. Apparently virtually all of his traditional pro customers have not bought anything for two years, waiting for the mac pro upgrade. That's why they're not selling any from this sector at the moment.

That may have been the point I think. It was kind of an 'aspirational' product. It was there to give people something to lust after, but then decide it's out of their budget and buy a smaller one. Something to get people in the door, if you will. That role is now nicely filled by the Retina macbook.

It probably sold enough to show an overall profit - I can't imagine what the margin was on those things - but maybe not enough to keep an entire extra production line running.

Jon

But on the 30" you can actually get more information on the screen and read it, on the 15", if you have the fonts scaled down to give the same amount of information visible, you will need a magnifying glass to read it.

The high resolution 30" display gives more much more information than a smaller display, a super-hi-res 15" display depicts the same (or a bit more) information than a normal display "more clearly". My 15" display is 1920x1080, I'd prefer 1200 pixels vertically, but adding another 720 vertical pixels is going to make the text too small to read, if the text holds the same pixel size. The "trick" with retina displays is that the fonts remain constant in visual size (point size), not the pixel size, meaning you have 4 times more pixels to render the same information.

That doesn't really help the problem of not being able to get enough information on the screen, you might be able to drop a point size or so, but actually display 4 times the amount of information over the old model and still be able to read it isn't realistic.

The rationale seems to be that it's better for the presentation of non-textual information i.e. for video and images, where you're interested in the overall content - which a high res screen can show more of at reasonable quality even at smaller physical size - rather than considering small components of the content (as in individual words in a piece of text) one by one.

Not entirely sure I agree but that does appear to be the justification.

I see what you mean RE size vs resolution.

On Windows I would probably agree. In fact, on Windows (at my old work) I struggled even with 2 19" monitors;

However, on Mac OS X I use the fullscreen apps a LOT because it makes it so easy to flip between them and also to get an overview (Mission Control) of all the apps that are currently running.

Because of this I am fine even on my 11" MacBook Air. The only bit I have any trouble with is the Xcode interface builder as it can't show a full iPad screen (etc...). But with the 15" retina that problem is solved as pixel-for-pixel it would easily fit onto the screen.