Sadly I suspect we are many months away from refreshes for any of these machines. If intel has indeed slipped as far as delivery of Haswell mobile parts it might be September before this discussion gets interesting. In the end all of these threads are really about one thing, that is Haswell and its GPUs. It is how Haswell performs that will mold the future of these machines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
I am bumping this thread since my mini and iMac thread is being overrun with MBP posts. : P
Sadly I suspect we are many months away from refreshes for any of these machines. If intel has indeed slipped as far as delivery of Haswell mobile parts it might be September before this discussion gets interesting. In the end all of these threads are really about one thing, that is Haswell and its GPUs. It is how Haswell performs that will mold the future of these machines.
The good news is that once the Haswell machines get released, we can start the 2014 thread!
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users
who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
These are not web surfing college kids but guys who work on their machines many hours a day and use all those options the average user doesn't need.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
Again, never happening. Ever.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
Saying this proves you don't know what you're talking about and that they don't have a clue what they're doing, either.
Yeah you know better. Where did you learn manners? When you record in the professional world 90% of the time artists want CDs as reference. Of course one can plug one in but that's a lot less convenient, especially on the road.
When you record in the professional world 90% of the time artists want CDs as reference. Of course one can plug one in but that's a lot less convenient, especially on the road.
Isn't it also inconvenient for this 90% to carry CDs around?
Artists most certainly need color accurate displays and the Retina displays aren't just high-res displays but IPS displays as opposed to the older TN models.
32GB RAM support will likely come with DDR4 and SSD sizes will increase as prices drop. Optical is going to be external from now on. 17" might come back once the Retina prices drop but it wouldn't be essential that this happens.
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users
who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
These are not web surfing college kids but guys who work on their machines many hours a day and use all those options the average user doesn't need.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
What you're describing is a type of machine that Apple has never made or addressed. They have never used either the high end of mobile gaming gpus outside of the larger imacs. 32GB today would require 4 sodimms. A number of other brands support this through hardware branded as mobile workstations. These typically have quadro or firepro mobile versions (mostly different drivers and clocked a bit lower), support for 4 sodimms, and typically decent display options. Some have blu-ray options. I haven't seen it on all of them. As for ssds, today 512 or 768 is the highest I have seen from any brand even in that hardware class. I have yet to see cto options for 1TB ssds. It's a more common feature to have more than one drive supported internally rather than one large SSD. The models are out there. Look at Lenovo's thinkpad W xxx models or HP elitebooks. I don't remember what Dell calls their line. There are quite a few options from smaller brands as well. Apple has simply never offered these features, so they wouldn't have current customers that consider them a hard requirement unless they're trying to migrate from an older mac pro to a macbook pro as a primary computing device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
17" might come back once the Retina prices drop but it wouldn't be essential that this happens.
I find that unlikely. Once you're a couple years out, if a 17" display was a hard requirement, too many of those people would have moved on.
Most likely it wasn't a great seller. For most people a 15" machine is a big laptop.
The problem as I see it Apple can't be focused on just massive sellers, they do need to support an array of users though. Any 17" machine would need to be profitable of course but with Apples pricing structure I suspect that over charging drove demand way down. Apples solution in such cases is to kill the product instead of adjusting pricing to meet market realities. That isn't always the right thing to do, sometimes you need to accept thinner margins on certain products to avoid alienating to many customers.
As for the 11" AIR it is apparently doing very well. It is an ideal platform for students not in need of a high performance platform. I couldn't see investing in one but that has a lot to do with rather old eyes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
Was the 17" MacBook Pro a huge seller before it was canceled? I don't believe it was though I invite to be proven wrong.
How is the 11" MacBook Air doing? I honestly feel it should go by the wayside but that's just me.
Less is more I feel.
13" MBA, 13" rMBP, 15" rMBP, Mac mini, iMac, and one Mac Pro.
Your mileage may vary.
Less is more is a mantra often proven wrong. It is one of the reasons Samsung has had so much success against Apple, the don't rely upon the concept at all. Rather they try to offer enough platforms that there is something to please everyone even if that means putting up with Android. Frankly Apples lack of success with the desktop line up proves without a doubt that less is not more and can lead to disasters in sales with slip ups in schedules, quality or product diversity. More so Apples expanding laptop line up and the success there highlights that less is more is exactly the opposite of what you want to strive for. The goal should be right sizing the product line.
Was the 17" MacBook Pro a huge seller before it was canceled? I don't believe it was though I invite to be proven wrong.
I really wanted to find a cheesy magic 8 ball graphic, but I couldn't find a good one. Anyway look at the remaining models. The prior versions of the 13 and 15" remain. Prior to the early 2013 refresh you still had the $2200 version of the 15" classic macbook pro. If the 17" was popular today, it probably would have remained. Phasing it out at that time meant that it was probably a slow moving product that was likely to lose some ground to the rMBP, even though more pixels doesn't grant you the same thing as display real estate. Higher resolution + IPS is too tempting. The 17" didn't have a lot of other defining features. In the PowerPC era the 17" reserved the highest clocked cpus. That is no longer the case, and they didn't hold additional drives internally or a better gpu. The hardware was virtually identical to the 15" with a larger screen. As for the express slot, when that was removed from the 15" version, it lost a lot of third party support. I wouldn't have invested in express cards after that as manufacturers can be slow on things like driver updates when it comes to limited markets with relatively thin margins.
Perhaps if the 17" MBP had a better video card to begin with, it might have sold better, no? Are 17" notebooks popular in the PC World now?
17" notebooks are always a niche, especially now. I was pointing out that the class of notebook being referenced was something that Apple never offered. Some of the other oems offer them. They probably carry high margins, but I would not expect them to be high volume items.
I went into Best Buy tonight and just felt like looking around and saw a Samsung 17" notebook with 2 GB of the 650M for $1,399. Of course I thought that was not too shabby but it dawned on me just before I wrote this that it's useless if it isn't GDDR5 memory but DDR3.
Comments
Originally Posted by Winter
Bump. Thoughts on the next retina MacBook Pro? Anyone?
Haswell, TDP-equivalent modern nVidia chips, maybe 802.11ac finally, and either slight bumps to SSD capacity or cheaper at the same sizes.
I tend not to go any more specific than that these days.
A lotta good that will do!
Sadly I suspect we are many months away from refreshes for any of these machines. If intel has indeed slipped as far as delivery of Haswell mobile parts it might be September before this discussion gets interesting. In the end all of these threads are really about one thing, that is Haswell and its GPUs. It is how Haswell performs that will mold the future of these machines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
I am bumping this thread since my mini and iMac thread is being overrun with MBP posts. : P
The good news is that once the Haswell machines get released, we can start the 2014 thread!
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users
who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
These are not web surfing college kids but guys who work on their machines many hours a day and use all those options the average user doesn't need.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
Originally Posted by Trajan Long
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
Again, never happening. Ever.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
Saying this proves you don't know what you're talking about and that they don't have a clue what they're doing, either.
The 17" is nice and before you know it, 32 GB will be available.
The 17" is nice and before you know it, 32 GB will be available.
Yeah you know better. Where did you learn manners? When you record in the professional world 90% of the time artists want CDs as reference. Of course one can plug one in but that's a lot less convenient, especially on the road.
Isn't it also inconvenient for this 90% to carry CDs around?
Artists most certainly need color accurate displays and the Retina displays aren't just high-res displays but IPS displays as opposed to the older TN models.
32GB RAM support will likely come with DDR4 and SSD sizes will increase as prices drop. Optical is going to be external from now on. 17" might come back once the Retina prices drop but it wouldn't be essential that this happens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trajan Long
Many audio video guys I know in LA are sticking with their old 17" MBP. I hope APPLE decides to support its core group of power users
who would love feature packed 17" with 32 gb ram, blu ray, discrete high end GPU and a large SSD.
These are not web surfing college kids but guys who work on their machines many hours a day and use all those options the average user doesn't need.
They CANNOT use mp3 in their business which is why an optical disc burner is essential. If you are a pro you understand. If not, please don't regale with how great a15 retina display is.
What you're describing is a type of machine that Apple has never made or addressed. They have never used either the high end of mobile gaming gpus outside of the larger imacs. 32GB today would require 4 sodimms. A number of other brands support this through hardware branded as mobile workstations. These typically have quadro or firepro mobile versions (mostly different drivers and clocked a bit lower), support for 4 sodimms, and typically decent display options. Some have blu-ray options. I haven't seen it on all of them. As for ssds, today 512 or 768 is the highest I have seen from any brand even in that hardware class. I have yet to see cto options for 1TB ssds. It's a more common feature to have more than one drive supported internally rather than one large SSD. The models are out there. Look at Lenovo's thinkpad W xxx models or HP elitebooks. I don't remember what Dell calls their line. There are quite a few options from smaller brands as well. Apple has simply never offered these features, so they wouldn't have current customers that consider them a hard requirement unless they're trying to migrate from an older mac pro to a macbook pro as a primary computing device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
17" might come back once the Retina prices drop but it wouldn't be essential that this happens.
I find that unlikely. Once you're a couple years out, if a 17" display was a hard requirement, too many of those people would have moved on.
How is the 11" MacBook Air doing? I honestly feel it should go by the wayside but that's just me.
Less is more I feel.
13" MBA, 13" rMBP, 15" rMBP, Mac mini, iMac, and one Mac Pro.
Your mileage may vary.
Most likely it wasn't a great seller. For most people a 15" machine is a big laptop.
The problem as I see it Apple can't be focused on just massive sellers, they do need to support an array of users though. Any 17" machine would need to be profitable of course but with Apples pricing structure I suspect that over charging drove demand way down. Apples solution in such cases is to kill the product instead of adjusting pricing to meet market realities. That isn't always the right thing to do, sometimes you need to accept thinner margins on certain products to avoid alienating to many customers.
As for the 11" AIR it is apparently doing very well. It is an ideal platform for students not in need of a high performance platform. I couldn't see investing in one but that has a lot to do with rather old eyes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
Was the 17" MacBook Pro a huge seller before it was canceled? I don't believe it was though I invite to be proven wrong.
How is the 11" MacBook Air doing? I honestly feel it should go by the wayside but that's just me.
Less is more I feel.
13" MBA, 13" rMBP, 15" rMBP, Mac mini, iMac, and one Mac Pro.
Your mileage may vary.
Less is more is a mantra often proven wrong. It is one of the reasons Samsung has had so much success against Apple, the don't rely upon the concept at all. Rather they try to offer enough platforms that there is something to please everyone even if that means putting up with Android. Frankly Apples lack of success with the desktop line up proves without a doubt that less is not more and can lead to disasters in sales with slip ups in schedules, quality or product diversity. More so Apples expanding laptop line up and the success there highlights that less is more is exactly the opposite of what you want to strive for. The goal should be right sizing the product line.
Maybe it's just me, but I find an 11" screen to be too small.
I am hoping they eventually drop the 11" Air and make the 13" Air $999 or less but that's just me.
As for the graphics in the 15" MacBook Pro (maybe even the 13" but this is doubtable), my eyes are heavily reliant on the Kepler refresh.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
Was the 17" MacBook Pro a huge seller before it was canceled? I don't believe it was though I invite to be proven wrong.
I really wanted to find a cheesy magic 8 ball graphic, but I couldn't find a good one. Anyway look at the remaining models. The prior versions of the 13 and 15" remain. Prior to the early 2013 refresh you still had the $2200 version of the 15" classic macbook pro. If the 17" was popular today, it probably would have remained. Phasing it out at that time meant that it was probably a slow moving product that was likely to lose some ground to the rMBP, even though more pixels doesn't grant you the same thing as display real estate. Higher resolution + IPS is too tempting. The 17" didn't have a lot of other defining features. In the PowerPC era the 17" reserved the highest clocked cpus. That is no longer the case, and they didn't hold additional drives internally or a better gpu. The hardware was virtually identical to the 15" with a larger screen. As for the express slot, when that was removed from the 15" version, it lost a lot of third party support. I wouldn't have invested in express cards after that as manufacturers can be slow on things like driver updates when it comes to limited markets with relatively thin margins.
Originally Posted by Winter
Perhaps if the 17" MBP had a better video card to begin with, it might have sold better, no?
I don't really see that as being a reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
Perhaps if the 17" MBP had a better video card to begin with, it might have sold better, no? Are 17" notebooks popular in the PC World now?
17" notebooks are always a niche, especially now. I was pointing out that the class of notebook being referenced was something that Apple never offered. Some of the other oems offer them. They probably carry high margins, but I would not expect them to be high volume items.