“When the 17-inch MacBook Pro was killed in 2012, I may have mourned for the loss of my favorite notebook, but I could understand that maybe it was a little too large and heavy to attract a large number of users,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Or I am assuming that is one possibility, the other being that making a Retina display variant might have been too expensive given the state of the technology then. Obviously Apple knows how to do a 27-inch 5K version now, but I do not expect them to resurrect the larger MacBook Pro.”

“While it’s certainly heavy and all, I’m quite satisfied with my MacBook Pro,” Steinberg writes. “While it benchmarks well enough, to me the MacBook Pro is a real slug mostly because of the traditional 500GB hard drive. Having placed a 1TB SSD in my late 2009 iMac, I can see what a tremendous performance improvement you get from just going SSD. Even though processor-intensive tasks move no faster, anything that requires disk access benefits.”

“<y solution was obvious, and that was to replace the drive with an SSD," Steinberg writes. "The full startup process was reduced from several minutes to 30-40 seconds, which included loading four apps. From the very first, I could believe I had purchased a new computer. Without the heat buildup from a busy hard drive, the unit also runs cooler. With a lower voltage storage device, the battery may last somewhat longer too, but I didn't do any actual measurements.""

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in April 2012:

On the rare occasion that we use a non-SSD Mac, the experience is jarring, as we’ve become used to the speed of the SSDs in our MacBook Airs and iMacs. It’s a huge difference. Once you go SSD, you won’t go back.

Related articles:
What does (and doesn’t) actually speed up your Mac – February 6, 2014
Don’t buy a new Mac without an SSD or you’ll regret it – April 9, 2012