I'm always surprised when developers don't talk about the F keys in their reviews of the new MBP.
I mostly agree with the author regarding the escape key, the touch bar isn't really a problem in that regard, it still works and I got used to "pressing" it on the touchbar really quickly.
I really really miss physical F keys though. I spend a lot of time debugging (either in the Chrome debugger or in IDEs) where pressing F-Something seems to be the norm to step into / step over. The lack of feedback makes it a lot harder to use these keys repeatedly (in my experience anyway). I know I could change the keys but...
To be honest, that's the one thing that really bothers me about the new machine, I got used to everything else pretty quickly. I should note that I was forced to switch to the new model (my 2014 MBP was stolen). I didn't want a new machine, wasn't happy about getting one and started using it in the worst circumstances which probably didn't help me "learn to love the touchbar". Insurance paid for the new machine so price wasn't an issue for me.
I don't think it's an abomination or anything, I just never find it better than a normal keyboard with F keys (I don't do video editing or anything where a timeline might help me).
Other developers who use the touchbar MBP, do you not miss the F-Keys ? Have you changed the keys you use to debug ?
This bothers me as well. I also have issues with the esc key though. Apparently, I tend to rest my finger on it without noticing (I had no idea). So my subconscious experience with this new laptop is that it seems quite neurotic, constantly closing windows in front of me for no apparent reason, until I discover my finger on the touchbar.
Yep. I'm right there with you. I thought the new mac had an issue loading webpages. Turns out I was involuntarily cancelling navigation with ESC all the bloody time.
It's particularly bad for those of use that run Windows/Visual Studio from a Mac. Microsoft products are historically heavily dependent on the F keys with well known conventions (F1=help,F2=rename,F3=find/next,etc).
Well, my experience is the opposite: while using the new MacBook I realized how infrequent I was using the function keys. The only times that I noticed the "missing" function keys were when I tried to open up the web developer console (F12), or rename a file (F2). I did see Apple's rationale here: ordinary users won't miss them, given I, being a developer, didn't miss them either.
But unlike you and the OP, pressing the Esc key did affect me. I couldn't completely get used to the soft key even after using it for more than one month (currently). Every time I try to press Esc, I'm a bit hesitant. The inertia was higher than I expected. So I can't agree with the phrasing that "there is no justification for the apparent panic." The annoyance exists and I'm the living proof.
But on mac to open Developer Tools you are using Cmd + Opt + I or Cmd + Shift + C and to rename a file Enter key is used. There is almost no use for F-keys on macOS other than volume and brightness controls. I don't have newest MBP but on daily basis I am using 60% keyboard without F-keys row and very rarely have to go to F-keys layer even on Ubuntu and Windows.
General macOS users don’t have a need for F-keys, true. But the people that use F-keys, typically use them frequently. In my IDE, some shortcuts use F-keys. I use them regularly.
You can re-map the Escape key to Caps Lock. I bought the new MBP and got used to this. Although I returned it later and went back to my previous machine, I still use Caps Lock as Escape.
I'm using Karabiner Elements on Sierra.
brew cask install karabiner-elements
Edit: I also believe it causes less strain on my fingers.
Oh wow. I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier! As a Vim user I've always been told it is good to swap Caps Lock and Esc, yet I haven't actually tried it due to my laziness. Probably now is the time.
If a keyboard doesn't identify itself as such (I have a bluetooth keyboard that does this), you need third-party software to do it. The built-in Apple functionality only works on keyboards that say they're keyboards.
What for? I don't know a single F key shortcut. People say debugging, which seems fair enough. I guess I've always found the mouse-based controls sufficient to use the Xcode debugger.
Apart from the debugger, what do people need the F keys for? Are people really debugging that often?
I use a hell of a lot of keyboard shortcuts, mind you. But none of them are F keys.
A pianist that doesn't use some keys is limited in the music they can produce.
I can write exactly the same code as you without using shortcuts.
I think the advantage is that I don't have to learn completely arbitrary lists of silly little keys to press, and I can keep my brain-space for useful things.
Respectfully, the point of keyboard shortcuts is that they are remembered in your hands, not in your brain. This is the main reason most of these commenters reject the Touch Bar: lacking tactile feedback for button position, it seems like it would be difficult to develop "muscle memory" for a Touch Bar function key.
You can add custom programs to the exception list and F keys would be always shown. It's even better because you don't have to press fn key. That functionality is by default.
Xcode debugger looks pretty nice on touchbar IMHO. It would be great if other debugging tools catch up.
You already had to hit the Fn key to make the Fn keys function, correct? The defaults were the brightness, volume, etc settings. You do the same thing and they all appear on the Touchbar. Zero change in usability there.
Generally I think most devs who use MacBooks disable that option (making it so that you have to press fn to get the standard mac functionality) so that they have better access to the Fn keys. I will echo the sentiment, that there's something nicely tactile about key presses that's missing from the touch bar. That being said - I do half my work on monitors using an external keyboard/touchpad anyway, so it's really not the worst thing in the world.
Interesting that you mention this. I was tempted to buy a new MBP hoping that I could map the touchbar to debugger functions - I can never remember which F key is which. Little icons would be amazing.
Is it not possible to make the touchbar work with IDEA? That would be a major disappointment.
Even better, System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Function Keys; and select the app in which you want the function keys to show up by default. e.g. IntelliJ Idea.
The good thing that can come of this would be the resurgence of the Linux desktop. Apple just crossed the line for me (<32GB, no SSD upgrade, messing with the keyboard). I'll miss the almost perfect trackpad, but there's no way I'll support these choices.
Historically, the side effect this tends to have is that a lot of programmers flock to a new platform but bring the way they use and write programs with them. Fifteen years ago we ended up with CORBA- and Window Registry-like components bolted on top of Linux desktops. On the other hand, seeing how nowadays the Linux "community" is mostly a bunch of big cloud, automotive and IoT/vaporware companies, this could be the closest the Linux desktop has to salvation.
So far, the attempts to bring elements of the OS X experience to the Linux desktop have been very... cargo cult, in the absence of a more forgiving word. Fetishizing design choices and simplicity has made it very unpleasant to deal with a modern Linux system. Many users of tiling-wm-and-terminal-only desktops don't do so "just" because it's the most efficient option, they do it because the alternatives are horrifyingly bad.
I wasn't aware the Linux desktop needed salvation. Maybe it needs salvation for non-technical end users but it's good to excellent for end-users whose primary use involve actually using Linux for what it's good at which is basically being a fully open OS and IDE for software and other engineers.
It has been exactly two days since the last time I had to dig down and figure out what broke in PulseAudio this time. Things are certainly bad for non-technical users, but those of us who write Linux software for a living don't have it much better, either.
Do you know why it breaks? Because Ubuntu 16.04 just works on my laptop. Things that require one-time technical setup: Function key (screen brightness) and Optimus/bumblebee. I also set up touchegg because Unity hates multi-touch trackpad. But since initial setup I never have to touch anything again, and can upgrade everything via Software Update.
I would say it is no better than Windows at all (since you also need to install correct driver on Windows).
Cynically, I'd say it breaks because the only mistakes that we live with, try to work around or fix are the ones made no later than the mid-90s. Everything else, we live with for a while, then boldly proclaim that they're outdated, junk from another age, no longer appropriate for a modern system and then promptly rewrite -- so unsurprisingly, a lot of components of a major Linux desktop are basically beta-quality and/or in a continuous state of flux.
Look at the Gnome 3.22 changelog. It lists things like support for multiple renaming, being able to set alarms for events in Calendar and seamless photo sharing via Google Photos and email. I remember being excited about all these features (except Google Photos, for obvious reasons) when I was using Windows. 2000. I was using Windows 2000.
That's why we're rejoicing that we'll soon have ASLR in all mainstream distros and support for a display server/compositor where windows can't snoop on other windows is just around the corner, while Microsoft is perfecting call-flow integrity and has had a proper compositor since the days when we were barely able to bolt our applications on top of an X11 compositor.
Edit: Non-cynically: most of the breakage happens because the level of complexity involved in a most modern technologies is way over the level that can be meaningfully managed by a community. systemd, xdg-everything, they're all very useful tools, but only a handful of people can properly use them, and it doesn't help that so many of them work for Red Hat and aren't exactly transparent about a lot of things. This breeds mistrust and brings about a lot of unjustified criticism along with the justified one.
As for why PulseAudio in particular keeps breaking, I'm not familiar enough with its source code to say. My problems revolve around things like randomly deciding to use another output device. I work around it by not using it, really. Every couple of months I take KDE and Gnome for a ride, they keep breaking, I open up the page of my local Apple dealer, I gaze incredulously at how much money they want for that hardware, close the page, pacman -Rcs plasma-meta and get back to WindowMaker.
I couldn't have said it better. The truth is, all my life, I wanted a Linux desktop that looks beautiful and just works. Simply, stupid, works. No magic involved. I work with Linux remotely almost everyday. I love to tinker, I love to learn - but it must be my choice what to tinker with and what I am going to learn next. I want to play with things that make me happy and give me satisfaction. And constantly maintaining my system and googling around for solution is not one of them. I tried... Crom help me, I've really tried. After yet another failure I just felt extremely disappointed and moved back to Windows at home. At work I am using MacBook Pro (previous one) and I am very happy about it - like it better than Windows. Honestly, OS X desktop is the best what happened to me so far. My last Linux desktop adventure happened few years ago, though, so maybe, just maybe, it got better recently... I still have hope, maybe there is some windows manager out there, but I'd need to thoroughly evaluate it on some spare machine before moving forward with it as my main desktop system.
I reluctantly decided that my MacBook days were over with these 2016 machines. But moving to linux was a huge step. So I bought a $360 2011 ThinkPad W520. A quad core laptop (with 32gb ram capacity). To experiment. Well, it was a dream machine, so now I'm using a quadore ThinkPad p50 (xubuntu) (with NVIDIA graphics). This is a great experience. It runs VMware way better than macos, and the keyboard ....
I've read about i3 several times over the past few years but finally checked it out a few weeks ago, and it fits exactly what I've been looking for in a Linux desktop for so long.
All I've ever wanted from Ubuntu/Gnome/KDE/XFCE (at least while developing) was the ability to launch programs easily from the keyboard, to tile windows in various configurations, and to manage virtual desktops.
i3 makes all of this easy with an incredibly simple and logical set of keyboard shortcuts. To anyone thinking about trying out i3, the learning curve isn't as bad as it seems, especially if you use a distro like Manjaro-i3 that can take care of some of the harder parts for you.
It's funny how much I think about the trackpad when I consider leaving apple. Seems like a a stupid reason when you tell non-apple users, but seriously, everything else feels so primitive in comparison.
Macs took over some of the developer space that Linux laptops used to be in. As a usable Unix environment with excellent hardware, it's a solid investment.
Me too. I wanted to move to a quad core. I was ready to get the new 15" but 16gb? My son has a hand-me-down 2010 MacBook Pro with 16gb. Anyway now I have a P50 quad core, with a 95whr battery, 7w idle power consumption, expandable to 3 HDD, two of which are as fast as the Mac, and a keyboard which is ridiculously good. It runs xubuntu. And I got change after selling my 18month old 13" MacBook pro. reality distortion bubble has been popped a bit.
With only a slightly smaller touchpad, Apple easily could have included a row of function keys, which are half height anyway. Then the touch bar would either be additive, or ignorable depending on one's attitude. But the trade-off makes it painful.
I don't believe that the fundamental issue can be fixed. Ironically "Touch Bar" is something you can't feel when you touch it. Real physical buttons guide your finger to the correct location if you miss them slightly. "Touch" buttons don't.
To fix that, one would need to rework the whole OS and applications in such way that they don't use F-keys at all, but rather something else.
So, fixing Touch Bar means rethinking OS and application shortcuts.
I don't think average users really use F-buttons that much, but we developers generally do.
if there was even a way to just have the f-keys on all the time by default, that would have helped. Last I looked, that was not an option - you needed to hold down the fn key (or control?)
The older macs, you could have f-key 'default' with the other options activated by holding the FN key, or reverse it, so that the brightness/etc were default, and f-keys activated by holding down the FN key.
There is no option to just have f-keys defaulted, with other touchbar stuff activated by FN key. For people who simply want standard f-keys as default all the time (like you could have in the previous macs), there is no option right now.
I've got the 13" maxed out Late 2016. I've owned every form factor of the MacBook Pro and this is my least favorite.
I like the USB-C and have bought into the tradeoff of having no Magsafe. It's also a minor plus to be able to plug in either side of the machine. The TouchID is good too. However, I've found the TouchID extremely laggy for some reason (esp. on unlock) which really reduced the benefit.
The keyboard is _fine_ and in some ways I feel it's a good compromise for the form factor. However it is very, very loud. It's terrible for typing on calls. If your significant other is watching TV next to you they'll get annoyed too.
Battery life is average. I've found it quite variable to the point that I don't "trust" my charge on a long flight any more - which is still fine with my previous gen machine.
Maybe an outlier here - I feel the Touchbar is a UX nightmare. Maybe if you're principally in one app it makes a lot of sense, but I change around a lot. It goes totally against muscle memory. I have to look down to work out what's going on, and even then take it in. I see that they're going for some kind of "discovery" experience, but predictability and patterning is important too - especially with an interface that you're trained _not_ to look at.
I've locked it to the standard buttons that don't change, but even then my finger grazes it and the brightness of my screen changes... For me it's a distraction.
+1 here. I also have a maxed-out 13" Late 2016 Pro. The fake Esc key on the Touchbar makes me sad every time I use it (I don't have your Touch ID lag, though). And, as you say, the keyboard is insanely loud. Who needs to advertise "I AM TYPING" so much? And if loud feedback is so important in a keyboard, wtf ESC wtf?
I've made my peace with USB C for power, but the battery feels like it's good for trips to the coffee shop but not for actually taking a long flight anywhere. As you say, variable battery life is more of a curse than a blessing. It leads to distrust rather than gratitude.
And all this mediocrity for an eye-watering price. It's my first regretted Apple purchase (I managed to avoid the brief wearable fad).
My screensaver says it all: "Don't buy one of these machines."
Same. The TouchBar needs a lot of tweaking at a software level. My problem is when I hit "Play" or "Pause" I expect my music to play or pause. The problem is that it's possible for other apps to steal focus for play and pause. For example if you're watching a video clip in Safari and hit Pause to stop your music after you started playing the video, it will pause the video.
The most annoying thing I'm dealing with at the moment is HipChat stealing focus of the play button. When that happens and I hit that play button, HipChat just plays the new message sound. Its so dumb.
The TouchBar is more complicated and awkward at the moment. In my opinion Apple needs to tweak the Keyboard settings to let me deal with these "stupid apps" and we all need to report TouchBar issues to third party apps doing it wrong like HipChat.
> The most annoying thing I'm dealing with at the moment is HipChat stealing focus of the play button. When that happens and I hit that play button, HipChat just plays the new message sound. Its so dumb.
Is the HipChat app built on something like Electron? It could be they're using a hidden <audio> element to play the new message sound which the browser engine thinks you want to play/pause.
> The most annoying thing I'm dealing with at the moment is HipChat stealing focus of the play button. When that happens and I hit that play button, HipChat just plays the new message sound. Its so dumb.
Yup, had this with WhatsApp web too. My suspicion is there's a hidden <audio> tag for the sound and safari's just exposing controls for that.
I wonder if they would have been better leaving the Escape and Function keys alone and adding the Touch Bar as a (useful) additional interface rather than a (bad) replacement interface?
The main problem I have with the keyboard is that the small travel gives it very small tolerances for to achieve the "clickiness", and after a few months use I can already feel that some keys are less clicky than others, due apparently to uneven wear in the mechanism among different keys... I wonder if there'll be a "keyboard-gate" situation in a year as more people notice this, or if I'm an outlier.
IMHO, the touchbar had more to with competitive positioning against microsoft's touchscreen than optimising benefit for the user. It's the new 'one button mouse'.
An 8 year release process lines up with the release of touchscreen-enabled windows 7 and 8. Sure, they may have been investigating it before the windows release, but the choice to produce this hamfisted feature, rather than a touchscreen, still looks like a competitive reaction.
Many things take lots of time to develop, and lots of things never make it into an actual release.
EDIT: khaledtaha's comment above sounds even more plausible, give the strategy Apple currently appears to be pursuing.
Steve Jobs: "I'm as proud of the things I have done as the things I have not". Jobs would not have brought this version of TouchBar to market; not a chance.[1]
[1] My source is my personal opinion and anecdotal. If I'm not unimpeachably correct in this assertion you should downvote; there is no possible means to prove the assertion so only judgement can decide the validity of my claim. While I had met Jobs and had multiple run-ins with him in Palo Alto (I was an avid walker and lived on Ramona for several years), I never knew him well on an intra-personal level.
It doesn't matter what Jobs would've done. It's a different Apple now. Also "Never ask what I would do. Just do what's right." Tim, Jonny or whoever clearly thought the Touch Bar was "right".
If you need a massive disclaimer at the end of your comment explaining that something you expressed as a fact shouldn't be treated as a fact what's the point? Jobs made plenty of bad product decisions, some much worse than the touch bar.
I suspect I'd use the touch bar in Notes where I frequently want to use title and header and normal formatting, but have trouble remembering the keyboard shortcuts for those three functions (I'm not in Notes much).
That's the thing: the HN crowd is a small segment of their user base. For most people, Cmd-P might as well be C-x M-c M-butterfly. The touch bar doesn't replace the function keys but rather the mouse.
Hmm, there's a touch of contempt for the average user in what you say... something that causes this current trend towards over-simplification.
Users love clear, systematic, repeatable, stable. Anyone using a shortcut often enough, given enough time will learn to use it because anyone can appreciate the advantage.
People that hunt-and-peck, or click around like seniors in a retirement-home absolutely hate the hostile and cumbersome UI that is hiding all the usefulness behind gimmicks.
It's not like I said they were "click[ing] around like seniors in a retirement-home". ;)
IMHO, users don't care about simple, clear, systematic, or repeatable, either; only stable. But keeping said workflow stable doesn't matter when your boss' bonus depends on how much innovation he fostered.
I even had the Touchbar die on me when waking the laptop from a previously drained battery. The whole Touchbar was just black, requiring a full reboot. This only happened 2-3 times in about 6 weeks, but still.
I also have occasional problems with externals Monitors (i use two, one through DVI) staying black and requiring plugging out/in to fix.
These small annoyances are just unnecessary as it worked perfectly before. I don't really see a benefit in the Touchbar anyway. When I alt-tab out of spotify it will show the spotify icon to control it but as soon as i got to another app it will steal the focus and i have to go back to Spotify manually. UX nightmare.
If you have UHS-II cards and a nice USB-C card reader, that alone can make the experience a positive one, dongles or no. Truth is, I really really like USB-C so far (two months in), and will be happy once a few more of my legacy devices are USB-C native (or replaceable by a model that is).
I just wish someone made a multiple port USB-C hub, not just another dumb USB-C-to-USB-A hub. I preordered an Arc Hub, but just as with stock options at a startup, there's a 50/50 chance I'll ever see any value there...
The card reader was killed because people were using them to expand the nose-bleedingly expensive to upgrade soldered on 128k hard drives. Apple's seeking to drive up the selling price without adding quality.
I tried using a really fast and expensive 128GB card as extended storage. They're pretty much unusable, slower than a fast USB3 stick, and less practical than a Samsung T1 SSD or something like that.
I don't mind the lack of an SD slot, but I won't buy another Macbook Pro until there's 32GB of memory. I have a late-2013 Haswell MBP with an OWC-upgraded SSD, and I prefer it over my work computer, a 32GB maxed-out Thinkpad running Linux... in pretty much every aspect.
Why? If you don't care about spending extra for the dongles, after you've bought them there basically are no downsides to having to use them for legacy devices anymore, but all the advantages of USB-C still remain.
I don't understand why people get so worked up on the dongle thing anyway, for me it really is a non-issue, and I have only a single C-to-A cable. I do think Apple should not have been so damn greedy and just put a dongle in the box though, there really is no excuse for leaving it out considering the already crazy high price of the MBP 2016.
Until they get borrowed or even "borrowed". Every other day in my office has a mac user wandering around looking for some sort of video adapter dongle or similar, asking if anyone knows who borrowed theirs. Person A isn't in the office, so person B borrows their adaptor 'just for now' and then absent-mindedly takes it home, leaving person A scratching their head the next day.
The problem with dongles is more than just price-point.
When they're cheap and small enough to leave on all your existing cables, then yeah, they're probably a non issue.
May be even better in the new MBP because you don't have to care what port to plug into since they're all the same- I always end up trying to plug USB into the magsafe on my 2015 MBP since USB is in the same position on the right side.
Since the author quotes prices in GBP, I'd say to everyone - skip the Apple Care! In UK consumer electronics state-enforced-warranty (or whatever these particular consumer rights are called) is 6 years. That's not a typo, it is 6 years and I've used it twice for my Apple gear that was outside of manufacturer's warranty and without Apple Care. Save yourself £329 and know your rights. And dont get my word on it, check it out yourself, it's even on Apple web pages ;)
So it's a bit more nuanced than that. You can get an I-changed-my-mind full refund in the first 14 days but only if you bought the item online. You can also get a full refund in the first 30 days if the item is defective whether you bought it online or in a brick and mortar store. You can also get a full refund in the first 6 months if it is defective and cannot be repaired or replaced. After six months, you can only get a partial refund and only if the item is defective. IMHO that's still pretty good.
The rules vary a bit between England and Scotland and I am too tired to look up Wales and Northern Ireland right now.
It isn't really, because I wasn't just talking about return rights or periods, I was talking about rights when the device fails in whatever way within 6 years.
It's not like you get six years of unlimited state-mandated insurance. The 'six years' is just from the statute of limitations -- it's just the limit after which you can no longer do anything about a violation of a contract of sale. [0]
But there still has to be violation of the contract of sale. Which means it only applies to defective products. (Or ones not as described, not fit for their purpose, etc.)
So eg it doesn't apply to accidental damage. If you spill coffee on your shiny laptop, consumer law won't help you, even if you only bought it ten minutes ago (unless the product was sold as waterproof, ofc). It also doesn't apply to normal wear and tear, unless you can argue that the degree to which it's deteriorated is enough to imply that the goods weren't of satisfactory quality at the time they were sold, taking into account the context of the kind of good, how it was described, the price, etc.[1]. And so on.
Until six months, the burden of proof is on the retailer to show that anything that goes wrong with the product was not due to the product being defective. (I.e. if there's a problem, and there's no obvious cause, there's an assumption that the goods are faulty). After six months, that assumption is reversed, and the burden is on you to show that the product was defective.[2]
We have pretty good consumer protection in the UK, but it's not a replacement for insurance (e.g. applecare etc). (Whether you actually need insurance for a laptop purchase is another question. Generally if you could replace a thing without too much hardship, insurance is pointless -- the expected value is negative (ie Apple makes a profit on Applecare); you're purchasing a reduction in variance).
I never mentioned anything about accidental damage, so I am not sure why you've brought it and why you're mentioning state mandated insurance. As far as I am aware, neither Apple's warranty nor Apple Care does cover accidental damage, so when compared to free 6 years consumer right to have the device operating without faults during normal usage barring any accidents, buying Apple Care makes no sense.
> As far as I am aware, neither Apple's warranty nor Apple Care does cover accidental damage
I was going off the page you linked to[0], which describes it as: "an insurance product which provides up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage"...
Looking more closely though, it looks like AppleCare and AppleCare+ are different products (which I hadn't previously grokked), and that sentence applies to AppleCare+ only. My bad, sorry for the confusion.
As far as consumer rights are concerned, you shouldn't give a damn what the manufacturer discontinues. If the device fails within 6 years it should be fixed, replaced (happened to me, brand new iPhone 5 handed over immediately) or refunded.
An important point to note is that you get your standard 2 year manufacturer warrant and then the following 4 years is covered by the seller. so for example if you get an iPhone through Vodafone and have a problem 3 years in it's Vodafone that deals with it, not Apple. I say it's important as the standard of customer service can vary widely between Apple and some retailers so if speed of repair is a priority relying on the 6 year warranty may not be your best solution.
I don't know why I keep reading these reviews, but I do. This one seems decent, he covers everything from his real world experiences. I was kind of not surprised at his conclusion...
As it is, it feels like a little “fuck you, suckers” from Apple and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed.
I don't hear much about the display on the MBP, it's as near to perfect as any display I've ever seen, using text is beautiful, the colour depth is extraordinary - and its a laptop.
I plugged in a new external 1080p monitor and thought at first there was something wrong with it, but no it's just the difference in crispness. Not only that you can run 2 external 5K monitors! from a laptop!
The SSD's are so fast, it's also so quiet - you never hear the fan. The only negative is it gets warm when charging on my lap.
I too don't see the point of the touchbar though, it's a cute gadget to play with. The sound is remarkable, though the whole laptop vibrates when the sound is turned up (edit: though there's no audible distortion or vibration noises which is pretty unique for a laptop too).
It is without a doubt the most perfect laptop I have ever owned, like everyone I would have liked to pay less for it. I'll use it for the next three years then give it too my daughter and she'll use it for another three years like my last one. I'm very happy with my purchase.
Your points are largely moot, IMO. Nearly any laptop you can buy has super quick NVMe SSDs, super quick CPUs, and even great monitors. Heck, my Alienware 13R3 has an OLED monitor that puts the 13" MBP TB that I have to total shame.
Since everyone is running essentially commodity Intel hardware with commodity SSDs and commodity RAM and commodity GPUs with third-party sourced flat panels, the only thing that matters is the Touch Bar, keyboard and trackpad, and no matter how great the trackpad is, the Touch Bar is so bad it destroys everything else, and the keyboard and how loud it is destroys the rest.
Except that's your opinion... I love the Touch Bar and I love the new keyboard. It's no louder when I'm typing than it was when I was typing on my old Dell and yet I'm much faster on it since the keys don't wobble like they did on the Dell. The trackpad is awesome and I haven't been able to find the display that even comes close on any laptop without getting into the same price range.
While the alienware is a mighty machine, it's aesthetics and market are somewhat different. There are a number of feature points that differentiate it in my mind (weight, heat, elegance, glowing touchpad etc), I think we'll have to agree to disagree.
One thing I find odd about the display is that it somehow changes white balance occasionally depending on the content. I'm not sure if this only happens on BootCamp or not, but it's a bit surprising. Is there any setting to turn off this?
In December 2016, I purchased new the 2015 model that Apple still sells. I've never been so pleased with a computer (and it was a lot cheaper than the Touch Bar model).
One big surprise is that after nearly 3 months of using it every day for software development, I am still getting 15 hours battery life. This just amazes me and was far beyond my expectation. (Now, I mainly use emacs, clang, and terminal, but even compiling every few minutes my c++ doesn't hit the battery much at all).
Battery life seems not like a surprise. Isn't Apple only selling 2015 MacBooks without a discrete GPU? So you basically only have Intel Graphics in there which would mean a charge lasts much longer if it doesn't need to drive an NVidia or AMD card as well.
I'm inclined not to believe the 15 hour claim. I've had the 2015 MBP since it came out and get maybe 4-5 hours of battery life doing non-heavy web development nowadays. After I newly bought it I got maybe around 7 hours at most. With integrated graphics only of course - with the dedicated GPU active I get around 3 hours or so only.
Same here. I didn't believe my friend when he told me it was Chrome and, for some reason, I didn't believe the battery meter that kept telling me that Chrome was using significant power. Switched to Safari and now my battery lasts all day. If I could get Slack to play nice I think I'd have over a day of charge (1 day meaning a 12-16 hour working day, not 24 hours).
I'm not inflating my claim, but it's possible that I use really efficient apps most of the time compared to the average user. I am also not watching movies or YouTube or listening to music. Just writing code in a very efficient editor (emacs), and doing very little web browsing.
Also perhaps they improved their batteries in the most recent iteration? Just guessing because your experience is definitely different than mine.
I saw the new MacBooks in person 2 days ago and kept asking, "why would I buy one of these?" Cheap feeling keyboard, useless difference in thickness, and only 16gb. Not going back under 32 with Photoshop ever.
I'll stick with my 2013 and look at a Lenovo 2-1 next. Pretty tired of OS X too.
I was in the exact same situation. I was so tired of being forced to buy overpriced hardware from apple that I'm not even happy with just because I work with OS X.
I then bought a new Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition and was really surprised that a) the scaling doe snot even work with dells own "tweaked" Ubuntu (even the installer looked horrible) and b) "coil whine" is a thing at this price point. I was so unhappy with it that I sold it weeks later.
To replace the Dell I bought an HP spectre x360 and was really happy with the hardware but could not get the thunderbolt ports to work with ubuntu. Eventually I also returned it. I "surrendered" and bought the new MBP and so far I'm quite happy with it. But it still feels very uncomfortable to be so "dependant" on one manufacturer.
Other than the thunderbolt problem (which I'm sure will be fixed soon) I was really happy with Ubuntu as my main OS. I really do hope that other manufactures step up their game so I can finally switch without too much compromises.
I did the same, bought an XPS 13 become it seemed everybody would recommend it but got many problems (battery died, wifi range is very low, suspend on disk not working, no hdmi, ...)
I then discovered Clevo, they sell very customizable laptop where you can have crazy specs (two HDD, 64gb ram, latest i7) for very reasonable prices (compared to apple). I'm waiting for mine but it seems like the perfect solution.
Also, that's what System76 and many "custom linux laptops" shops sells but under other names.
I should clarify.. I have 32 on my iMac and use my mbp for remote Photoshop. It has 16Gb I believe. I want to move to just one device vs. two with desktop monitor for home - not going to do it with current 2016 MBPs as my primary.
Fwiw I don't like the fake click on the trackpads or iPhone 7's either. Already started moving away when pine 7 came out - went with Pixel xl and couldn't be happier.
At the end of the day, it's just a so-so offering from Apple that has more than a so-so price tag attached.
But, in it's defense, I will say one thing: I thought I would hate the keyboard. I'm the guy who spends hundreds on the best mechanical keyboards, but I was left completely impressed with the new keyboard and how well it just works. Everything about is wrong on paper, but when you begin typing, the results are undeniable. The old macbooks had the best laptop keyboard bar none and this generation's is even better.
Now that I'm done praising one thing about it, I'll go back to beating the dead horse: Where's the 32GB model? :)
In terms of performance or value for money, certainly.
But it's a huge hassle keeping application settings, development environments, large datasets or VM images, etc in sync on two computers.
With a single laptop I can just unplug the monitors and keyboard, and go to a client meeting or a hackathon without checking that everything is set up on the laptop.
Planning on doing the same. Just refreshed my desktop and plan to get a refurb MBP or wait another year.
Hell its almost worth it to do a hackintosh laptop and desktop but I don't want to have to deal with supporting it. I like at least one of my machines to "just work" and Apple hardware is nice.
Regardless I'm not buying new until the price goes back down!
I have built a Hackitosh on i5 SandyBridge CPU and a cheap $35 GPU to support a 2K monitor. I integrated this with the Korean 2K monitor (YAMAKASI) and added a Ducky Mechanical KB and Logitech MX anywhere mouse. Its a solid machine, occationally crashes due to some GPU drivers but otherwise a very dependable machine.
On other hand, tried to convert a Dell laptop to Hackintosh. The first thing that felt very weird is the trackpad. What makes MacBook a great laptop is the awesome integration of the trackpad with the MacOs. None of the other OS or HW have come close to this quality of integration.
So not much of an option out there that offers a stable, portable yet powerful and a awesome trackpad. Dell XPS series is serious contender in this area but I am not sure how well it plays with having Linux natively installed. I hope it is as good as the rave it gets on the Windows 10.
> The keyboard has suffered so much criticism that I have to wonder: who of those who condemn it, have actually used it for a sustained period?
I got a 2015 Macbook as soon as it shipped. Within a few months, the butterfly mechanism had collapsed on several keys. A couple Apple Store repairs later, they're still breaking often enough that the 2015 Macbook is mostly collecting dust and shame.
When I saw what they'd done with the MBPr for 2016, I decided to overhaul pre-2016 ones indefinitely, because it's pretty much that or Dell XPS13 hackintosh. That keyboard is proof that the devil is not only real, but has subverted Apple's once-rigorous design process.
"It’s way too easy to accidentally activate something"
Despite author's belief in haptic feedback, it cannot actually fix this problem. Touch bar is always going to be like that, always slower to use than physical keys.
I have no end of problems with the ESC key. The touch bar ESC key has no tactile feedback. It has no haptic feedback. I can't tell if I hit it or not. Literally, what used to be a completely unconscious use of a heavily used key (vim, Command-Tab change mind, drag & change mind, etc.) now is literally a 2-3 second mental interrupt every time I want to use it, because now I have to make sure I hit it, and that the hit registers.
The rest of the touch bar is similarly problematic. Using interactive debugging? I used to rest my fingers on F5-6-7 for step-over, step-into and continue, then I could just wiggle one finger to keep stepping. Well, no longer. I can't rest my fingers, I have no tactile feedback when I hit one of these things, and I have to look at the keyboard to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
I haven't looked at a keyboard since 1982, and probably earlier. (Well, maybe except when I was learning my way around my Symbolics keyboard.)
Use WINE? Too bad - you can't force the touch bar to always be F1-12 in System Preferences. Sucks for huge numbers of games. Which, even if you hit Fn-F-key, still suffers from the problem that it does a 2-3 second mental interrupt and glance at the keyboard. Essentially the Mac is no longer suitable for keyboard gaming.
My wife generally goes to sleep an hour or two before me. I very often will take my laptop and do some recreational coding at night as she likes it when I'm there with her while she falls asleep. Well, not anymore. This keyboard is so loud that several nights a week she tells me to leave. I finally gave up and bought an Alienware 13R3 so at least I can play some games while in bed. (That OLED display is the most amazing display I've ever had, parenthetically.) On top of this, several keys have started to "squeak." I don't know how better to describe it, but several of the keys definitely make odd high pitched sounds when you hit them. Not all the time, but if you hit them off center.
Absolute disaster. I will never buy another Apple computer until they get rid of this.
Please give me a non-Touch-Bar model ASAP!
The track pad, however, is excellent.
I don't use the Touch ID. I really don't want the police getting into my stuff without my authorization.
> Apple have increased the native resolution/scaling in comparison to my previous MBP. It’s now practical to work with two half-width, adjacent windows on this laptop’s display. Something that never seemed workable on its predecessor.2 This fact alone makes for some serious productivity wins.
You could actually always set it to do this; they've just changed the defaults. A surprising number of users seem to be unaware of this, though.
When the laptop gets warm some keys' key-up sound change. I have the issue on the N (worst), X, B, and caps lock keys, but it seems to be different keys for everybody.
I hope that you will be able to have it fixed in-store soon, don't want to wait days for a replacement laptop especially if it's likely to have the same issue.
Now, admittedly it's quite a minor annoyance. But it's such a basic "feature" that keys sound the same that I don't want them to get away with it, if that makes sense.
I've also been a Mac user for 20 years and can totally relate to the conclusion he made: I felt betrayed by Apple's pricing on this machine. I decided to not get a Mac for the first time since 1996 and so far haven't regretted the move.
I accidentally dropped my MacBook Pro and after looking at the price of a Retina repair, I found myself in the market for a new MacBook. However, instead of the MBP, I downgraded to the Air.
I do not miss Retina and I would have missed USB. The Air was $800 all up since I got an exceptionally good Presidents' Day deal.
I miss, dearly, being able to throw more RAM and bigger SSDs in my retina -- especially since the machines last so long that prices fall substantially over course of ownership.
My eyes would hate me for going back in DPI though -- I even had to switch my desktop monitors out, its just that much less eye strain for me.
Retina on my iPhone SE is a major plus because it has a smaller screen and I hold it closer, 8" away. On a laptop, I'm reading 24" away. I'm not saying Retina on the MBP isn't nice. But price/USB/retina/weight/memory/storage in totality came out in the Air's favor. If Apple had kept USB and not jacked the price, I probably would have bought another MBP.
Do you use any OS X desktop programs (that wouldn't be trivially replaced on another OS) or is it just a UNIX with good battery life and correctly functioning sleep?
"In cognitive science, choice-supportive bias or post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected"
I can't imagine many people would say many negative things about their $3700 laptop, even if it has multiple issues.
The version that is referred to has to be the 15" with extra SSD and more expensive CPU.
Before taxes Apple's prices varies around 10% with Japan and USA consistently being the cheapest. (Excluding "special" cases like Venezuela or mainland China with has either special import taxes or a failing currency.)
VAT (sales tax) in Europe is in general around 20%; for a company this tax is fully deductible.
Could you explain the VAT tax deduction? When I was in Europe I purchased one expensive thing, and I got a refund for VAT at the airport. This was nice and made sense. But otherwise I don't understand it.
I waited for over a year for the new MBP to come out, but in the end I shelled out a bit more money for a Surface Book.
Since then, I've used the new MBP, and while it's a great machine I don't regret my purchase for a second. My only gripe with the Surface Book is that installing Linux is a bit of a nightmare (not sure if this is still the case), but I'm happy enough with running Ubuntu on a virtual machine.
And Windows Subsystem for Linux! While all my server and development stuffs are based on Linux, I wasn't particularly a fan of the Linux GUIs. The reason MacBook was attractive was that it runs POSIX. But now Windows can do that too thanks to WSL. It's not complete but even the current partial support does enough for me. It's a cheap, lightweight alternative to Linux VMs. I guess I would go with a Windows-based laptop next time. It is truly a game changer.
I'm considering this too, Windows 10 still has some annoying UI inconsistencies but its getting there, and with the Ubuntu subsystem its viable for Linux based dev's without setting up a VM. I mean technically its closer to my target production environment than macOS is.
I haven't spent that long trying it out but managed to get a Rails 5 app up and running without much fuss, I'm with you on it being a game changer.
> I mean technically its closer to my target production environment than macOS is.
Huh, I didn't think about that, but you're right. Yeah, I won't have to deal with slightly different shell tools that are bundled with macOS. I'm not saying those tools are bad, it's just that I'm so used to GNU tools. Also, the directory structures and the kernel interfaces will exactly be the same as Ubuntu. Good point.
Similar experience here. The killer feature for me is that the screen is detachable and can be flipped, it has served me very well both as a dev laptop and a tablet.
Agreed about Linux too, I didn't even try (yet). But WSL is nearly there, I think the next update will be able to launch windows executables from bash (they say it's in the insiders build).
My work recently offered to replace my 2013 retina MBP, at no cost to myself, as it went out of (extended) warranty. I declined. I'd rather wait and see if they improve the offering later this year.
It's a well written review, but I can't think of it as anything else than a "loyal Apple customer" trying to convince himself that his £3,700 toy is not that bad.
I wish there was more acknowledgement of how NOISY the keyboard is on the new MacBook Pros. It's not possible to use it in a quiet environment without being embarrassed.
That is a nice addition that should be used more often. On this site the abbreviations were common, but many articles use obscure, domain-specific, or non-standard abbreviations, where the full name "tool-tips" would be extremely useful in making the info accessible to a wider range of readers.
Most of the time the full name is something I recognize. Problems arise because abbreviated names frequently collide, a short identifier can apply to several different things especially across fields.
Even a list at the end of the piece would be better than having to hunt around trying to find out what was meant in a particular context.
Those SSD speeds are very impressive indeed. When I bought my 27" iMac in late 2013, I splurged on the top-of-the-line 1TB PCIe SSD, half expecting it to remain competitive for years to come.
Having just downloaded the AJA System Test Lite from the App Store and run it, I was slightly disappointed to see how far it's fallen behind: 703 Write 709 Read
On the other hand, I haven't ever felt slowed down by my disk, while the maxed-out 32GB of RAM have been very useful...
Unless you're reading/writing massive files to disk (like in video editing), pretty much only IOPS/latency matter. Even the cheap SSDs are fast enough at linear reads/writes.
> In general, I expect to get three years of service out of each computer I buy. With the new MBP I know that in twelve months — maybe even fewer — the specifications of this machine are not going to hold up as well as they have with previous iterations.
Spot on how I feel about it. Every MBP I've had to date felt like there was room to grow. The new one... meh, feels like a placeholder.
I've been using mine since december. I love the way the keys feel but I have started developing some painful CTS in my left thumb due to hitting the cmd key a lot (coding, terminal stuff, etc). It pains me even now writing this.
So i started remapping everything to fn + control so my pinky can start doing the heavy lifting (like on windows) and vow to never use the cmd key again.
I generally go alternating hands and use my thumbs, e.g. copy and paste is (right thumb) command + (left middle) c; (right thumb) command + (left index) v.
There's a little overhead switching back and forth if you go (pinky) ctrl on a windows machine, but I generally find that my subconscious picks up on the context and finds the right pattern.
One of my team got a new MBP in December. He turned it on yesterday and the hard drive isn't recognized and the machine refuses to boot. The Apple store can't do anything but exchange it, there's no way to get to the disk short of taking it to a data recovery shop, which is a dicey proposition at best. I haven't seen many reports of this particular problem elsewhere, but I've had a feeling that apple's quality has been falling, and this is yet another point of anecdata. I think he'll return it and get a Thinkpad, and go full Linux. The MBPs are sexy, but, imho, the price:value ratio has tipped.
Sometimes this behavior is just flaky boot sectors. Try Target Disk Mode [1] to see if the unit's drive can be mounted on another Mac. If you can mount, then perform an immediate SuperDuper! backup before attempting any other recovery, of course.
The thumb, in this scale metaphor, is requiring an Apple computer to create software for the iPhone. From what I've seen, there is little to correct this. Even remoting into a Mac Mini won't help, it just makes things harder. So if you need to tap that particular segment, you have to have an Apple computer, and it will probably be a MBP due to convenience.
This may be the Apple fanboy in me talking, but I think Apple was in a tough spot- seems like the tMBP has supplied-constrained components (I think it was hard to get in-store even 3 months after the launch), so their options were- delay it until they had a large number of laptops built already, charge an "acceptable" price and have people wait months for one, or charge more and have the price keep demand down. They went with the last option because, well, they can. I'm guessing the price should go down soon now that supply has somewhat caught up with demand.
They don't often lower prices. Their justification for that is, "Well we don't raise prices either..." but I don't expect them to drop prices at any point before announcing the next gen of MBP. This has been their model forever.
Never raise prices? Ha! Try living overseas. Apple regularly raises and lowers prices to match local currency to USD exchange rates. They also seem quicker to raise them in response to exchange rates than to lower them. I can't blame them for the adjustments themselves but the raise fast, lower slow, behaviour is irritating and stinks of profiteering.
Wow, until this article I had no idea BetterTouchTool now supported touch bar customization. This is huge. Next to the crazy price, the touch bar was my only other gripe about my 15" tMBP - I absolutely love the keyboard, the huge touch pad, and everything else about it. But now with this tool (I've been tinkering around with it for a bit now), that last complaint is entirely gone.
The touch bar is finally useful now - contextual, customizable, visual shortcuts for anything I'd want to do on the Mac. Super powerful.
I'm a huge fan of BetterTouchTool. I even bought a SiriRemote ($99!) just to tinker with it after BTT implemented support.
However the TouchBar is just a UI deadend. We are trained to not look down at our keyboards. My BTT shortcuts for the trackpad and MM are completely memorized so my eyes keep focus on the screen and work in front of me. I can't not do the same for the Touchbar with its changing contextual visual shortcuts. I have to glance down to confirm the context and the shortcuts. Glancing down at the touchbar means breaking concentration. Even if Apple adds haptic feedback in V2 it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of glancing away from my main screen to a tiny touchstrip. T
he touchbar is simply a crutch until the iPad wins or Apple makes a full touchscreen Mac. It's a waste of time. I'd much rather Apple have continued to implement the trackpad haptic feedback controls into the rest of their apps.
> Best of all is the distinct click each key makes when pressed. I have spent hundreds of pounds on mechanical keyboards in the past to get such a click. I love the positive feedback from this keyboard and find myself typing more assuredly on it than I did on its predecessor...
This is only best if you type by yourself in a soundproofed room.
In a business workplace where everyone has the prior model MacBook Pro, when you start typing on this one, the sounds of your 'assured' typing become the topic.
If they dropped the "Pro" and the price, it would totally make sense to me. However, with the lack of recent investment in OS X, dropping of Thunderbolt line (i still hope this isn't real) and way too much over focus on the apple watch, its clear apple just wants another iphone/ipad style product, and they're running serious risk of losing power users at a point where microsoft has massively upped their game.
I really want to get one of these, but I can't get myself to. I have a 2015 Macbook and I hate the keyboard. I thought I'd get used to it but never did, the one in an older Air is so much more comfortable to me. I went to the Apple Store twice to try out the new keyboard and, while it's better, I can't imagine being happy with it. Does anyone else feel the same way or is it just me?
I didn't think I'd like the new keyboard but I was forced to use it as it's a work-supplied machine. After less than a month of using it, it's my favorite keyboard of any machine I own, including my mechanical keyboard. The travel is nice, the keys feel solid, it's got a nice click, and I can type faster. Took a bit of getting used to, but it's awesome, imo.
I've had my 2016 MBP for about ten days. Just used my air for the first time since then and couldn't believe how spongey and rattley the old keyboard felt. I know a few other people who feel the same way. Personal preference and finger habits are a big factors with these keyboards, and seem to be something people adapt to at different rates, or not at all.
I'm currently running a late-2015 15-inch Macbook Pro, with all specs maxxed out, and have no plans to upgrade until probably next year. Still, even in 2015 the 16GB RAM limit annoyed me because I often run OSX and Windows side-by-side with Parallels. Whilst SSD is fast, it still ain't no RAM, and with 2 x VS instances, different versions of SQL Server, Couchbase, Oracle, and Tibco all running at the same time I'd really like to be able to give my Windows VM at least 16GB to work with.
The other big rub with the new MBP for me is that smaller battery. As mentioned I run Parallels which is just awful for sucking CPU (even when Windows itself appears to be using none; see their support forums). It's actually turned into a really crappy and aggravating product across a number of fronts but this is by far the biggest problem because it absolutely canes the battery. I often find myself having to work disconnected, so it's a real issue when running Windows.
I also don't much appreciate the non-user-upgradeable SSD. I've enjoyed (and used) the option to swap out the stock drive in previous MBP incarnations, to great effect (and cost savings), so the fact that you can no longer do so and are forced to pay Apple's prices for storage (albeit very fast storage), is frustrating.
The other changes don't really bother me too much. I can actually see the touchbar being much more useful than function keys in many cases because it'll reduce the need to remember keyboard shortcuts. Instead custom rendering will make it obvious what the widgets are for. I agree with the author's point about haptic feedback though.
For me, thinness and lightness are not fundamental driving factors. Sure, I appreciate a lighter laptop - and I don't want to return to the bad old days of massive, heavy laptops with giant power supplies (I'm looking at you, Dell) - but not if that means compromising in other important areas. I'd prefer a slightly heavier machine with more (user-upgradeable) RAM, a bigger battery (especially to compensate for the extra RAM), and upgradeable storage. I've said it before but I feel like, despite the machine's name, Apple are somewhat disregarding the needs of the "pros" who use it.
For sure, but too often to make it something I could rely on unfortunately. I run Windows enough that I've considered buying a second laptop just to run it but it's things like the trackpad and the generally decent battery life that make the MBP such a joy to use, and I really don't want to carry two laptops around with me all the time.
I mostly agree with the author regarding the escape key, the touch bar isn't really a problem in that regard, it still works and I got used to "pressing" it on the touchbar really quickly.
I really really miss physical F keys though. I spend a lot of time debugging (either in the Chrome debugger or in IDEs) where pressing F-Something seems to be the norm to step into / step over. The lack of feedback makes it a lot harder to use these keys repeatedly (in my experience anyway). I know I could change the keys but...
To be honest, that's the one thing that really bothers me about the new machine, I got used to everything else pretty quickly. I should note that I was forced to switch to the new model (my 2014 MBP was stolen). I didn't want a new machine, wasn't happy about getting one and started using it in the worst circumstances which probably didn't help me "learn to love the touchbar". Insurance paid for the new machine so price wasn't an issue for me.
I don't think it's an abomination or anything, I just never find it better than a normal keyboard with F keys (I don't do video editing or anything where a timeline might help me).
Other developers who use the touchbar MBP, do you not miss the F-Keys ? Have you changed the keys you use to debug ?