Apple set to drop 17in MacBook Pro, says watcher
Plans up in Air
Apple's 17in MacBook Pro will be phased out in 2012, one analyst has predicted, in favour of an Air-style refresh of the line that excludes the company's largest notebook.
While discussing Apple's computing strategy for the year, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed the laptop no longer has a role in the Air-themed line-up. Sales are falling, he says, and Apple wants a leaner line-up.
So long?
Talk of slimmer 13in and 15in MacBook Pros aligns with recent rumours of a refresh built around Intel's new Ivy Bridge chips and which will see Apple abandon optical drives in its laptops.
No doubt Apple expects folk after a larger display on the desks to use an external monitor.
Still, with other whispers talking of a Retina refresh and a resolution of 2880 x 1800, the 15in display might just compensate sufficiently. ®
COMMENTS
That would make no sense!
The larger factor laptops are popular with design bods and other creative industries as it allows them to have decent screen real-estate whilst having to be mobile (visiting clients etc...).
Eliminating that would be stupidity of the highest order - and would indicate a dumbing down of yet another part of their offering, shifting to the lowest common denominator.
Analyst
If I pull entirely made up facts out of my backside, will El Reg clain it is news as well?
I predict the new Macbooks will have rubber keyboards and all storage will be dropped in favour of Sinclair Microdrives.
You don't dump your bestselling product.
The 13 inch Macbook Pro is far and away Apple's bestselling laptop, so they won't get rid of it. It's a very nice machine, but I am not quite sure why it is their bestselling laptop, given that the 13 inch Air has the same graphics, an only somewhat slower CPU (1.7GHz rather than 2.4GHz, but substituting an SSD for a Hard drive makes up for a lot of this), a higher resolution screen, is much lighter and more portable, and costs only slightly more for the base configuration. (If you order the 13 inch Pro with a 128Gb SSD like the Air does, it actually costs more).
Although, given how many times I hear people in Apple stores ask "Why does that one only have a 128Gb Hard Drive, when that one has 500Gb?" perhaps I do. Non-technical customers seem to have "How big as the hard drive?" as one of their key questions, along with "How many megahertz does it have?", so perhaps that is why they buy the Pro over the Air. They seem to have no interest at all in screen resolution, though, which I find a bit baffling. (I have the 13 inch Air, myself).
There actually is going to be a bigger technical difference between the next Air and the next 13 inch Pro, however. Unlike the 15 and 17 inch Macbook Pros, the present 13 inch only has a dual core CPU, due to the power and heat envelope for the present enclosure requiring a CPU with a thermal design point of no more than 35W. Quad core CPUS with a 35W TDP don't exist for Sandy Bridge, but they do for Ivy Bridge, so the next 13 inch Macbook Pro will be Quad Core (at least in some configurations), whereas the next 13 inch Air will still be dual core.
The next 13 inch Macbook Pro may well lack an Optical Drive and may well be thinner than the present model, but it will still be a separate model from the Macbook Air.
Linkbait
I'm sitting here posting this from my 17" MacBook Pro.
The guy's talking out of his arse. I suppose he's also supporting the tablet-style interfaces for everything. And single monitors.
Typical of an ANAList who doesn't do real work.
Re: Wouldn't surprise me - Tooling
Even if "tooling costs" did matter, there is no obvious reason why Apple would not just retain the existing chassis, put newer electronics inside it, and otherwise keep the design the same. Apple can neglect the line and not spend much money updating it, but people who really want a 17 inch Macbook Pro can keep buying it and won't be pissed off. That's much better than discontinuing it.
