Apple Announced 17" MacBook Pro

artlu writes "According to Reuters news, Apple has announced the launch of the 17" MacBook Pro. The new MacBook will retail for $2,799, come with iLife '06, and begins shipping next week. Details are not yet on Apple's website, but hopefully these notebooks will be triple booting as well!"

Price

[larry2k]

That's a phenomonal price for what you get. Over the high end 15.4in MacBook Pro you get a faster processor, larger screen and resolution, faster superdrive and an extra USB port and for just 300 bucks more. Amazing

Where's the SMALL ones?

[Jethro]

I love my 12" Powerbook. It's SMALL, it's light, it's easy to carry around, it fits in a backpack, it can take a 4' fall onto concrete not even dent (ok, maybe that was just luck). It's perfect. The screen's big enough, and the keyboard is full-sized.

I don't want a giant laptop. I want some features that the bigger ones have, like the illuminated keyboard and maybe a PCCARD slot. I definitely do NOT want the bulk.

Come on, Apple! Gimmie a 12" (or the not-even-rumoured-much 13.1") MacBookPro! And if it can use the same battery as my Powerbook that'd be nice!

13" please!

[benbritten]

I had a 17" g4 and it was absolutely fantastic. I write code, and having all your .h and .m.cc.c.whatever files open at the same time, as well as all the interface windows open all at once is a great boon to efficient programming. However, eventually i came to hate lugging it around (at 7 pounds, still lighter than most of my friends shitty dells at the time) and i finally downgraded to a 12".

best choice i ever made. the 12" is not noticeably slower for doing the stuff i do. (compiles a tiny bit slower, but whateva) and it still runs the 23" cinema when on my desk. weighs just over half as much, and fits in a much smaller space (so i can lug around my big nikon d70 as well)

Anyhow, props to Apple for releasing the mothership of laptops, the 17" really is a sweet machine, but the second they announce a 13" intel based lappy, i am there.

1680x1050? That sucks!

[swimmar132]

They should've made it 1920x1200. 1680x1050 is great on a 15" screen (assuming that you have a OS that you can easily adjust the text size i.e. gnome). I'd want to see a higher resolution on a 17" screen.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[CastrTroy]

You have to realize that Heat = Wasted Electricity. On a laptop, battery life is bad enough without worrying about the graphics processor killing your battery. I'm sure they could build a laptop with 20 hours battery life. But nobody really seems to be focussing on this. Low power chip + old school graphics card because it doesn't affect office work anyway, and you could probably have a pretty low power computer. Use a slower hard drive, and give it enough ram that it doesn't need to have a swap file, and you'd probably get quite a bit more of life out of the thing.

MacBook Pro

[pubjames]

I got one of the 15" ones just a few days ago. It rocks.

If you have a significant other that isn't interested in computers, get one of these and then demonstrate Frontrow with the remote to go through your photos/music/video. You might find they suddenly take an interest...

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[ktappe]

you can get a Windows laptop with better specs for under half the price.

Here we go again; the claim that a better Windows box costs half as much. But, as usual, no specifics are provided, mainly because it's untrue. Perhaps a (close to) equal box can be gotten for a few hundred less, but definitely not "half". Or, if I'm wrong, please feel free to provide specific links and specs to back up your claim.

-Kurt

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[benbritten]

Ugn. please.

every time there is an apple thread, someone comes out and says 'wait PC's are cheaper!! and here is a comparison!!' and then some apple fanatic comes back and refutes it and blah blah blah.

Look, my time is worth money. windows and linux take effort. I want my tools to work, so I can get to the business at hand. when my tools dont work, i have to spend time fixing them simply so i can get back to work. Having used windows previously (which made me even more of a mac fan) I can tell you that my mac 'just works' and windows does not (i mean, it works, kinda, if you know how to set it up right and keep it running, oh, and reboot every so often and.. and.... and...).

So, again, my time is worth money, if the mac were 5 times as expensive as the dell, it would still pay itself off in productivity in about a month in comparison. So, feel free to buy the cheaper machine, more power to yah. I would rather spend my free time with friends and family and my work time being creative. (as opposed to spending my free time fixing my computer, and my work time jumping through hoops to get shit done)

 

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Mafiew]

When dell gives those 750$ off coupons they boost the base price so it's not really as good as it seems. So, when buying a dell take a look at the prices when they are not offering any promotions to compare. The deals are still pretty good though, you can get a discount of 25% off or so.

The thing is, Apple's not really competing with Dell as Dell's laptop's are made inexpensiveley. Dell can't be beat on value but Apple's laptops are really nicely made with excellent keyboards and very solid cases. With IBM's laptop division gone to Lenovo, I think Apple laptops are poised to take the high end market, a great place for a company looking for large profit margins.

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtualizing an operating system gives you a far safer abstraction from viruses and spyware than dual-booting. Instead of "its own little disk partition," the Windows OS will reside in a single file, and it doesn't have access to any real hardware. If viruses/spyware devour the Windows OS, delete the file and reinstall. Better yet, take a snapshot of the clean OS, configured as you like--if there are any problems, revert to the snapshot. Easy peasy.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[mmeister]

Up to 5 times faster for many operations, but substatially slower for legacy software & software that relies on altivec.

Well, Apple does say UP TO 5 TIMES FASTER, so they are aren't lying. I would never expect them to say anything negative about their product in any of their marketing material, that's just retarded.

That's like going to a job interview and focusing on all your faults, rather than what you have to offer the company. We all have faults, it doesn't mean we should tout them.

Apple has always been a forward thinker. Legacy support has always come at some performance price. If you want to get angry, get angry at the likes of Adobe, which apparently bet on Apple's Intel switch starting later, rather than sooner. They got caught with their pants down (an Intel Mac version is still OVER A YEAR AWAY).

No thanks..

[HerculesMO]

Spending nearly $3000 on a computer that isn't nearly as powerful as $3000 would buy me otherwise? No thanks... I'm waiting for a sub-$1000 Mac so I can just have a Mac... I'm not going to spend obscene money on something that quickly will be outdated. Even if it is a Mac.

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[soft_guy]

Serious gaming is an oxymoron.

If you want to game, get a PlayStation. If you need a computer to get work done, get a Mac.

If you want to run the latest virus, get Windows.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[tgibbs]

Funny--I'm hearing people I wouldn't expect, long-time Wintel users, talking about buying one of the new Macs. It seems there is a lot of pent-up demand for Macs, which has been held back mainly by fear.

What if I get a new Mac and after a few months decide that I actually like Windows better?
What if Apple goes out of business and I can't get software?
What if my employer requires me to use a particular Windows application?
What if a program or game that I want is only available for Windows?

Suddenly, all of these worries have vanished.

Once Again

[TheNetAvenger]

- The 1680 x 1050 resolution of the 17" display is the same as many desktop 20" widescreen LCDs such as the Apple 20" Cinema Display and the 20" Dell 2007WFP

Who again is NOT totally angered that Apple won't offer high resolution displays. Comparing the pixel count to their 20" Display is SAD, SO SAD...

I have a 2002 Toshiba Laptop with a 15" screen that does 1600x1200, and a 17" Laptop that does 1920x1200...

Why is Apple still the poor cousin when it comes to graphics? (Let alone the Video solution they are using is 2-5 times slower than offerings from other companies.

I was really hoping they would offer people that work with graphics (even as a hobby) a high resolution display.

And if people complain about tiny print or tiny buttons, once again I will say, Why in the HELL does OSX NOT do a better job of Scaling the UI? Even WindowsXP does a better job, OSX should at least catch up to such a low bar.

Besides, I have good eyes, and the 'smooth' lines and crisp video you can get at a higher DPI is more than worth it. I can at least play WMV HD 1080p on my 1yr old 17" laptop, why in HECK can't I play that resolution of Video or Movies on a Mac of all things. An area of the industry they pride themselves on. (Yes I know the 30" screen has 1920x1200, but we are talking laptops here.)

Every Mac user needs to say, Ok, Apple, (A,B,C are really good, but you totally blew it on D,E,F, and G features.) Why is Apple the cheap version of what I can buy from Dell?

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[sammy baby]

the application is 'about the same speed as before', but the operating system is not. The entire machine is faster. My wife has the 15" MBP and I have the 17" G4. The difference is vast.

I understand - what I'm saying is that the performance gain in hardware is pretty much canceled out by having to run the app through the code-morphing Rosetta foo. Since the only thing that I really have performance issues with is Photoshop, I don't yet have a compelling reason to upgrade.

That's not to say that I don't drool over them a little, but I have one of the last Powerbook G4 models, so trying to upgrade now would get me a smack from the spouse. :)

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[rjstanford]

What is this sort of reactionary condemnation of people that want to play sophisticated games on their Macs or run a different OS or experiment with changing driver code? The distilled quote seems to be, "I use my Mac for x, therefore user who try something else are violating the intention of the manufacturer." So what? Tweaking hardware to see what it can do or to expose a possible bad design decision or (shock, horror) to learn something new is interesting to a lot of folks. Sheesh.

Its just like working on a car, guys. You redo your interior and the engine blows? Hey, the manufacturer is liable. You chip your turbo up from 7psi to 18psi (removing an "artificial limitation" on the hardware) and the engine blows? Its your own damn problem, and you have some expensive head work in your future.

I don't see any reason why computer-mods wouldn't be covered under the same framework. Paint your case and the computer blows up? Their problem. Overclock your video card and it overheats and fries something? Your problem. Or are you saying that's "not fair"?

Re:Don't.

[alanQuatermain]

There's a difference though:

• If you install software which corrupts your partition table, you can always wipe the disk & re-install.
• If you raise the clock speed & heat output on your GPU and it cooks other components, or burns up due to not having enough heat dissipation to run at that speed, then you need to replace the hardware.

The first situation is easily sortable. The second situation depends on whether the manufacturer will replace the machine under warranty. If they won't (which is reasonable -- you would have to go through some awkward steps to do this) then you've got a nice new Apple-branded flower press.

Personally, I'd love to bump the clock rate, if I had one. But I'd wait to see if the only adverse effect is a more noisy fan. I'd also likely wait for an OS X utility that would switch it, because I'd want to raise the clock speed only when I'm about to *use* it, which would likely only be for certain things (i.e. the latest games which don't play well with a lowered clock).

-Q

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

You were on exactly the right track, then you went off in to fanboy left field. You can "Get Stuff Done" with an experience that "Just Works"(tm) in Windows XP if you're not stupid. The things that Windows users should be doing to prevent problems are common fucking sense.

If I'm a stranger, I walk up, and I hand you a suspicious looking candy and say "here, eat this!", do you just eat it? No, you eye it suspiciously and most likely turn it down. Why? Because from the time that we're kids, we're taught "Don't take candy from strangers." So why can nobody get the same clue about the internet? I've never once gotten a virus or spyware infection from doing what the typical user does in a day. Even using IE with XP Service Pack 2, you have to go to pretty considerable effort to overcome the computer's default setting to refuse to "take candy from a stranger", i.e. run an untrusted executable.

While I am by no means a Microsoft Apologist or Windows Evangelist (I run Ubuntu as my primary desktop for anything but games and graphics work), I can safely say you can get stuff done just fine in XP. Without constant reboots. No seriously. My uptime, on average, is a month or more. And that's on my desktop here at work, plus the reboots only occur for patches. Our 2K and 2K3 servers spend upwards of 3-4 months up at a time and only have to reboot for patches.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a bluescreen on this desktop I'm typing this from. And all three times were due to badly behaved nvidia drivers, not Microsoft code. Yes, I like using linux at home. Yes, I feel Apple (finally) makes a good OS with OSX. But if you want *any* credibility with the people you're arguing against, you damn well better pick points that they can't instantly refute from personal experience when you spout off about why your product is "better".

Face it, the reason you use your Apple instead of an Microsoft product is one of two reasons when it comes right down to it:

1) You hate Microsoft.
2) You love Apple.

While it can be any combination of those two, fanboyish arguments like yours are just as fucking retarded as the people that make stupid arguments about Apple's prices. And to clear up where I fall on the issue: yes, Apple's laptop prices are pretty much in line with the best other companies have to offer for similar performance. Have been for a while.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[Anonymous Writer]

Laptop: iMacBook, MacBook Pro

They could also simply go with "MacBook" rather than "iBook" or "iMacBook". That would seem to fit the naming convention better, even though it doesn't have the "i" in it.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[drinkypoo]

No, it's been held back by a lack of Windows, which prevents people from running applications. It's not called fear, although a characterization like that is typical of an Apple fanboy. See, people buy computers (whether they be PCs or game consoles or handhelds) because those platforms have the software they want. That's #1. #2 is style, and that can be enough to sell computers when people don't know what software they want to run - hence the people who buy Macs because "they're easier to use" or other bullshit excuses.

It's not about fear, it's about the best tool for the job. Now, for some people, that tool is the system that can run both OSX and Windows. Of course, for most people, having one operating system is still better than two, and so they'll go with the cheaper option.

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[djdavetrouble]

Consoles are limited by serious shortcomings for "serious gamers".
It is NOT an oxymoron. There are those whose primary recreation
is computer games. You don't have to like it.
Your complete dismissal of pc's and mac's as a gaming platform
shows your lack of regard and respect for others who are not as you.
While the mac may not be the greatest gaming platform (argued ad infinitum here)
the top shelf games are available: world of warcraft, UT, Sims, etc.
I personally have played on consoles and have way more fun playing
games on a pc or mac platform. I don't play sports simulations though,
which seem to be huge on console platforms.

Yes, but am I forced to pay the Apple Tax?

[expro]

Can I get bare-bones hardware to install Windows on, or do I have to pay the Apple Tax.

Just had to try it out: s/Windows/Apple/ s/Linux/Windows/

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[Anonymous Coward]

So how does Apple manage to sell computers, when its made obvious again and again that they make a second-rate product?

The answer is that they aim at elitists that want to "think different." Apple have realised that if you appeal directly to the egos of these individuals, you can sell them just about any old thing.

Their marketing is such a triumph that the average mac-user will happily pay over 2 grand for an underpowered but very shiny toy, and still end up thinking that they are part of some cognitive elite.

Will It Be As BUGGY as the 17-inch MacBook Pro???

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, wonder if it will work as well as the 15"???

This Weeks What's Wrong With Macs! COPIED DIRECTLY From YOUR Helpe Site macfixit.com!

Special Report: Troubleshooting the MacBook Pro
Covering these topics:
  30 Cinema Display distortion
  Audio distortion/poor sound quality
  Battery problems: Shuts off when not connected to power, more
  Built-in Display distortion
  Dead MacBook Pro's-on-arrival units!!
  Downgraded SuperDrive relative to PowerBook G4
  ExpressCard issues
  FireWire 800 cards for ExpressCard/34 slot on the way
  High-pitched whining noises: Eliminating
  iSight not functioning properly
  Kernel panics upon waking up (Inability to wake from sleep)
  Lack of alternative power adapters
  Missing components
  Poor general network performance
  Printer issues: Not recognized, more
  Problems sharing the Internet connection
  Slow networking performance with VLANs; VOIP phones
  Wireless connectivity issues
  MacBook Pro (#15): Kernel panics upon waking up (Inability to wake from sleep); More on whining noise; Wireless connectivity issues; more
  MacBook Pro (#14): Inconsistent wireless connections with third-party routers; Problems operating from battery; more
  MacBook Pro (#13): Whining noises -- more fixes; AppleTalk printers not showing up over AirPort; more
  MacBook Pro (#12): Poor network performance for some
  MacBook Pro (#11): More on whining noises, fixes; Problems sharing Internet connection; more
  MacBook Pro (#11): Audio distortion; whining noises; screen flickering; more
  MacBook Pro (#10): High-pitched whine being emitted, possible fixes; More seemingly defective units
  MacBook Pro (#9): More units arrive DOA; More on sound quality
  MacBook Pro (#8): iSight not functioning properly; Screen artifacts; Sound quality/speaker issues; more
  MacBook Pro (#7): Notes from service manual; Poor sound quality; more
  MacBook Pro (#5): Notes from service manual; Poor sound quality; more
  MacBook Pro #4: FireWire 800 cards for ExpressCard/34 slot on the way
  MacBook Pro #3: Ship date; Lack of third-party adapters; Adding a FireWire 800 port; ExpressCard issues
  MacBook Pro (#2): SuperDrive apparently not dual-layer; S-Video out gone; No internal modem
  Apple releases MacBook Pro Core Duo: 4-5X faster than PowerBook G4 (yeah sure!, NOT what Benchmarks have shown!)

MacBook Pro (#12): Poor network performance for some
Monday, March 13 2006 @ 08:15 AM PST

Some users are reporting poor network performance from the MacBook Pro, an issue we are not experiencing in-house.

Note that we cover a broad range of Intel-based Mac networking issues in a separate series of articles, along with various workarounds that may also be applicable in the case of these MacBook Pro issues.

MacBook Pro - More on whining noises; Problems sharing Internet connection; and more PROBLEMS!

We continue to report on a distinct and irritating high-pitched noise being emitted by the MacBook Pro.

In some cases, whining sounds of this nature are related to the tied to screen brightness and caused by defective inverter boards. This was a common problem with the PowerBook G3 "Lombard" models, and the sound could sometimes be affected (or eliminated totally) by gently flexing the inverter board.

Turn on iSight Several readers have reported that turning on the MacBook Pro's built-in iSight eliminates the whining noise.

One reader writes:

"Hi, i have the same problem. When i turn on the webcam the noise disappears, but when the webcam turn off, the noise starts again."

The MacBook Pro ONLY SHIPPED IN February!!!

Re:Once Again

[dfghjk]

I certainly agree with you, and I'd add that PC notebooks offer 1920x1200 resolution in a 15.4" screen as well as a 17" one. I love those.

What really annoys me is all the talk about screen dpi. Screen dpi is not entirely the issue since viewing distance also comes into play. What really matters is the angle of view and the arc of a single pixel. Since notebooks are viewed frequently at closer distances than desktops, their screen dpi values should naturally be higher. PC notebook manufacturers seem to get that while Apple does not. Apple is stupid for doggedly sticking to 100 dpi displays despite the fact that (a) you don't want that, (b) technology has offered better for a long while, and (c) it was never a good idea in the first place. I once owned a 30" cinema display but sold it because I couldn't stand the coarse, 100 dpi jagged image. I currently use the 9MP IBM monitor. Sure it's 200 dpi but I just sit closer and get superior results. Too bad Apple broke support for it in OS X.