Introduced on April 24, 2006, the 17-inch MacBook Pro features a 17-inch display with a native resolution of 1680 × 1050 and weighs 3.08 kg (6.8 pounds). At the time of release, the 17-inch featured the Intel Core Duo processor at 2.16 GHz; similar to the 15-inch, the 17-inch MacBook Pro had an upgrade on October 24, 2006 that gave way to the faster Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocked at 2.33 GHz. On June 5, 2007 the processor speed was bumped to 2.4 GHz. On November 1, 2007 Apple introduced an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6ghz MacBook Pro upgrade for $250 more.
In addition to the standard features of the 15.4-inch model, the 17-inch MacBook Pro also features an additional USB 2.0 port and an 8× SuperDrive as opposed to the 6× SuperDrive of the 15-inch models (prior to the upgrade on June 5, 2007 which included 8x drives in both 15" and 17" models). Its ATI Radeon X1600 GPU was replaced with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT on June 5, 2007.
The 17" MacBook Pro replaces the 17-inch PowerBook G4 and has features very similar to those found in its immediate predecessor. It is, however, slightly thinner at 2.59 cm (one inch).