I'm with you as one who actually uses a mac as intended. Pretty much any time I'm in front of it, at least 12GB of the 16GB of RAM in the machine is in use, and at least 2 of the 8 logical CPU cores are pegged, if not more; on not-rare occasions, I see 8 pegged cores and a ton of swapping as 16GB isn't really enough (though it's the max for this machine) for some of what I'm doing, which, of course, leads to a very non-responsive system. Budget woes and the unavailability if better-spec'd portables dictate that I have to make do, however. I could get a new rMBP with a marginally faster CPU and marginally slower SSD, which would actually make the situation worse as I can't get one with more than 16GB of RAM and, thus, would still swap... to a slower disk. Oh, and I don't have $3200 to drop on, essentially, a downgrade; and yes, to maintain the same amount of storage as my current MBP, I would have to upgrade the SSD size (the upside being that *all* of that 1TB would be SSD, but I really wouldn't see any benefit from moving bulk media storage off of a spinning disk).

Sadly, my current MBP is the last portable Apple made that I find interesting. If I could get an rMBP with 32 or 64GB of RAM, that might change. A Mac Pro would be nice, but falls outside of my budget and would be much less useful when traveling, as my internet connection (and, indeed, the best I can get where I live) doesn't have decent enough upstream to allow me to interact effectively with the applications I would use it for, when remote.

The 17" models were a niche when Apple stopped selling them, yes; however, so was every other model they sold at the time. Now that Apple has clout with an demographic that's a bit more savvy than broke college kids who want to look cool, they could sell a 17" model to a much wider audience. Part of the allure to the larger models is the ability to cool a faster CPU more effectively and allow for more hardware configuration options; it's not all about screen size. There is a reason the 13" model comes standard with half as much RAM and you can't order it with the same speed CPU you can put in a 15"; and a 17" would allow for a yet faster CPU, possibly a second drive bay (alternately filling that area with more battery), and maybe a couple RAM slots to augment the on-board 16GB.

As someone who uses their machine to its potential, I'm certain you understand this, so this post is more directed at others who may read it than it is at you.

Since light emanating from one point loses brightness exponentially as it spreads to cover an area, the backlight of a larger screen will draw exponentially more power than the backlight of a smaller screen, for the same given brightness. The bigger your screen gets, the more the ration of backlight power to panel power skews toward the backlight, so you can't really say a 3820x2160 display will always draw more power than a 1920x1080 display; it may be true at the panel level, but what use is the panel without the backlight? And no panel is drawing 120W by itself, period.

While a panel with 4x as many pixels can be expected to draw roughly *up to* 4x as much current, the switching voltage of each individual pixel drops as the pixels become smaller, so the wattage of the panel does not scale linearly with resolution, but it does scale with size. Since the brightness requirements of the backlight scale exponentially with size, a larger screen quickly begins to draw more power than a smaller screen, even if the smaller screen packs more pixels.

I'm sure I've made some factual error, here, and welcome someone who actually has an EE degree to step in and correct me; however, I'm certain I've gotten the basics correct.

Fuck yeah! I love Spinal Tap!

Right, I think he meant 0.2.0

Considering that I make full use of the 1920x1200 resolution of my 17" MBP (and often have 2 external displays connected, on top of that) and already wear glasses, any retina display I use will likely be run at a hiDPI resolution, bringing that 15" display down to an effective 1440x900 (just with smoother text), a loss I'm not willing to accept. The aftermarket SSD I installed blows away the SSDs currently used in the rMBP line, so I'd be taking a step down, there, as well. As for weight; I don't carry my 17" long distances; from my couch to my desk in my home office is something like 30 feet, maybe 120 feet to my car (and it's in a backpack for that trip) and another 120 feet (still in the backpack) to my desk at work.

Anywhere else I need a computer, I bring my 15" (which has the same effective resolution as a 15" retina model in hiDPI, by the way) and the extra 1.1lb it has on the retina model doesn't bother me; I don't work out, but I also prefer not to let my muscles atrophy. Due to its lower resolution, that machine sees much lighter and more occasional use, so I just couldn't bring myself to spend the extra for the retina model, and I don't regret not doing it.

Eventually, someone will release a 3840x2160 or 3840x2800 17" laptop with decent specs and a decent case, keyboard, and trackpad and, unless that someone is Apple, that will likely be among the last days I use an Apple machine.

I don't know about that... My nice 47" TV draws 210W at maximum, powering a 47" 120hz panel, a CPU (smart TV), TV tuner, image processor and stream decoder, and 2 channels of 20 watt nominal (10watt RMS) audio. The only part of that I can account for in numbers is the audio amplifier, which is probably something around 80% (being generous) efficiency... 20W x 2 channels / .8 = 50 watts, leaving 160 for everything else. In use and streaming a video, the unit (according to my Kill-A-Watt) actually draws 172W, which means all components except the audio amp (which we determined to be a 50W load) are sharing the remaining 122W.

Additionally, I have a less-nice 36" TV that draws 64W in total (5W for audio), and the following 3 higher-end monitors: a 25" that draws 31W (6W for audio), a 23" that draws 35W (no audio), and a 22" that draws 36W (no audio).

Add to that, my current 17" MBP has a very nice (if perhaps a bit too blue before calibration) panel that sucks down only a handful of watts (the entire system can run with all cores pegged and pushing the GPU to its limits, on 85W and still charge the battery).

How do you figure a 17" panel is going to draw more current than a 47"? Am I missing something?

Mismatch traces carrying parallel signals in a system with tight timing tolerances and get back to me. I never said what you're claiming, but congrats on the degree.

A 17" retina... driven properly (the crap performance is the result of driving them at voltages that are below-spec or near the low end of the spec for a given panel)... and, being 17", plenty of room for the battery to support it all... maybe a 2nd hard drive bay (I ripped out my DVD drive and stuck the original HDD in a caddy that fills that space, and installed an SSD... I'd love to have a similar setup next time around, as well)... otherwise similar specs to the high-end 15" rMBP model... that would be my ideal laptop right now.

Or, maybe, "design" as in how the PCBs are laid out and the various component are interconnected. Yes, this matters, and yes, Apple does this.

Don't even get me started on Apple's phone offerings... complete and utter garbage IMO. The iPad, on the other hand, sees much more use than the Android device I finally realized I wasn't actually using and gave to my wife the other day. That and my MBP, I absolutely love; I just wish they still made 17" MBPs, as this one's getting a little long in the tooth, though it still suits my needs just fine, for now.

Precisely. Spoken just like I used to say it before I inherited the one I'm typing on now.

Same CPUs? Yes. Same RAM? Yes. Same chipsets? Mostly. Same build quality? No. While I have seen Apple put out some real garbage, it's rare; in general, their build quality is on par with, or better than, most manufacturers' high-end, similarly-priced systems.

I say that as I'm glancing over at my VAIO Z-Series, which has similar specs to my MBP from around the same time, and cost a couple hundred less. A fair trade for being twice as thick, twice as heavy, and made of plastic; it maybe should have weighed in at a few hundred $$ less for that.

MY experience with their PSUs is the exact opposite. My wife caught the cable of her MBP's PSU in the mechanism of our recliner and shorted it out no less than 3 times. I am now using that MBP and I use that very same PSU (having repaired the cable each time) 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, at my desk at work. This is a late 2011 MBP and the factory original PSU I'm talking about.

Regarding the PMU issues, she encountered such issues with this machine shortly after each incident with the recliner. I've encountered exactly zero in the past 2 years in which I've been using the machine; but, then, I haven't shorted it out, either.

17"...

They sell 17" MBPs?

Please, please tell me they started selling them again!

The late 2011 model I'm typing this on, the last 17" model they produced, really could use a refresh.

The Secret Service was involved and his crime spree crossed state lines. He'll be going to one of the good ones.

The fee the merchant pays goes to their card processor; the fee their card processor pays goes to Visa, MasterCard, or whatever card company. The fees and interest you pay go to your bank.