I'm astonished and pleased to see they walked back the two worst things about the original Touch Bar MBPs - the lack of a physical Escape key, and the full-size left and right arrow keys.
The lack of physical function keys remains regrettable, and the Touch Bar is still no worthy substitute, but perhaps this is a sign that Apple is finally interested in listening to feedback from its long-term customer base, even if that feedback conflicts with the design team's desires.
It's hilarious to me that their own marketing image has two dongles plugged into the laptop so that the user can still use USB.
Apple please for the love of usability: please give me back USB. I AM the pro that you want to feature in every one of your marketing videos. I have a music studio in my house, I build interactive lighting installations for the biggest music festivals in the world, I build custom hardware controllers for fire effects that travel all over the country, I travel around the world teaching people how to build hardware devices, and when home I spend the majority of my time teaching and building software that people love; I use my laptop for over 10 hours a day.
All of this stuff uses USB. ALL OF IT. Having to carry around stupid dongles all the time is the biggest pain in my ass when I'm trying to do all of this stuff. PLEASE give me back USB, you can even call it the "stupid loser old crappy loser lame macbook for loser non pros". I don't care. This nonsense minimalist sleek design stuff is actually harming my productivity.
Can someone explain to me how Apple can justify only including a 720p FaceTime HD camera into the "the world’s best pro notebook"?
The last iPhone that had this FaceTime camera was the 6S, released in 2015. Since the iPhone 7 (2016) the phones have had at least a 1080p FaceTime camera. Given that FaceTime / Skype calls are such a common use case and rarely anyones uses external webcams anymore, why doesn't Apple use the existing camera system of the iPhone 11 for the MacBook?
Seriously, if I pay north of $4000 dollars for a laptop, why do I get an obsolete camera?
Would it materially harm a company with a trillion dollar market cap to offer a version of this without the touchbar (thus yielding a lower price), so people can afford to upgrade the soldered memory and NVMe drive?
Would it also harm them to make a version that didn't have soldered memory/NVMe drive?
Ultimately, this is why I switched to a Dell Latitude. Being user hostile to basic memory/disk replacement doesn't fly with me when spending $1500+ on a machine.
And if replacing either breaks the crypto chain - I don't need a black box T2 chip, I'll do my own disk encryption.
For others who might be wondering, this replaces the 15-inch MacBook Pro. There's a small increase in size (15 vs 16):
- Thickness: 1.55cm to 1.62cm (+0.7mm, +4.5%)
- Width: 34.93cm to 35.79cm (+0.86cm, +2.5%)
- Depth: 24.07cm to 24.59cm (+0.52cm, +2.2%)
- Weight: 1.83kg to 2.0kg (+170gr, +9.3%)
The display alone is ~1.3cm wider (and ~0.7cm higher), so there was a small reduction in bezel sizes, allowing the screen to grow more than the rest of the hardware.
Holy heck, they re-added a physical escape key. That's a huge improvement. a slight shame they didn't just move the touchbar up and re-add the F key row too, but it is a good compromise and improvement regardless.
This could be the one a lot of people have been waiting for if the new switches/design pans out.
PS - Although I might be an unusual demographic as I touch type and wouldn't use the touchbar regardless (since I look at the screen, not the backs of my hands while I interact with a Mac).
64GB RAM is like "hallelujah". Doing enterprise dev with Docker + Java is pretty horrible with 16GB on my 2017 MBP.
The fact that this review didn't even once mention the fact that this machine is now thicker & bigger and yet they didn't add any useful ports back in is amazing.
I still hate that the 2017 one I have has only USB-C + Headphone jack. I appreciate that it still has the headphone jack.
But at our office we all got OWC Thunderbolt 3 Docks @ $300/desk and the whole experience sucks.
This is Apple going all in on pro for this laptop.
The display is fantastic all around, 64 GB of ram, 8 GB of DDR6 VRAM, 8 cores, biggest battery FAA will allow on planes, 8 TB SSD, etc.
This will also be able to connect to Apple's upcoming 6K 32-inch display.
This is a very impressive update all around and it shows Apple putting a lot of space between their pro laptops and the MBA and iPad Pro now. The lineup is starting to make a lot of sense again.
11 years ago I bought a 15” MacBook Pro, the first model year with the unibody design. I’m still using it almost every day for web browsing, watching videos, editing documents, etc.
In 2008, it cost $2,400. The new 16” released today costs... $2,400.
Imagine they offered the same configuration with and without TouchBar, with the model with TouchBar costing $400 more - how many people would choose the model with? I bet less than 5%.
Is Apple afraid to offer this because it clearly would show that almost no one is ready to pay for it?
Even from this audience, who of you would be willing to pay the premium for the TouchBar?
And before everyone accuses him of being an Apple fanboy and biased, there is no disputing that he is very much a keyboard snob. He hated the last generation keyboard and he called it out during his initial review. He also famously still prefers an old ADB Apple Keyboard and he never bought a laptop with the old one.
He’s also linked to a lot of articles criticizing it.
If he praises it, I think you can trust him.
Edit:
And Marco Arment’s review. He’s never pulled punches when it comes to Apple’s hardware, their development tools, or the quality of the OS frameworks. He’s gushing over the review unit.
A co-worker is really impressed with all the improvements, but they seem to mostly be improvements over previous poor ideas from Apple, that other brands already had or never abandoned.
I admit, a 16" screen in a 15" body sounds really nice. But most of this is stuff other brands already had.
I love the USB C/Thunderbolt 3 connector on my Macbook. I just have a single cable going into my mac from the display which also has the keyboard and mouse connected to it. The single cable does charging, display and peripherals.
As much as I appreciate Apple's U turn on the idiotic design of the butterfly keyboard switches, I still:
- cannot even begin to understand why these things lack an important usability feature like MegSafe: there is really absolutely no reason why it cannot coexist with the ThunderBolt I/O (4 TB ports, one MegSafe: charge it however the heck you want).
- find the presence of the castrated TouchBar an offense to users. It seems they just want to shove it down our throats whether we want it or not.
Just make it optional: I'm sure that there are certain users out there that love it but every single peer of mine [1] hates the sole idea of something like that.
It's amazing to see such a positive response to such weak sauce with the touchbar. Our expectations really have fallen through the floor. There is no reason the escape key needs to be physical that doesn't also apply to the function keys. So why has Apple admitted the touchbar doesn't work, but still forces you to use it for F keys. With this form factor it wouldn't have been difficult to have function keys as well as a touchbar- but Apple don't seem interested in actually solving this problem.
I'm very tired of having to settle for serious shortcomings in what used to be such a great product.
Am I the only one that is scared at the prospect of losing physical keys for changing volume and brightness? I do this all the time, changing volume up/down during conference calls, adjusting the brightness when working late at night. Can you even map the Touch-bar to have "keys" for these instead of the slider which seems way less precise and direct? Genuinely asking since I'm still on 2014 MBP.
I'm pleasantly surprised that Apple decided to implement a physical escape key, the inverted "T" arrangement along with redoing the keyboard.
While I don't know if we should be applauding Apple so heavily, it's good to see that they "listened" to customer feedback and made these changes. I know that I'll be looking forward to getting one after my 2015 MBP gives out.
That is quite respectable! As large battery as possible, instead of saving the few grams or cubic millimeters.
I'm comparing this to for example Lenovo, which seems to like coming up with imaginary battery life promises ("The T490 delivers up to 16.1 hours of battery life") and then cutting the actual battery to minimum.
> Featuring a new Magic Keyboard with a redesigned scissor mechanism and 1mm travel for a more satisfying key feel, the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers the best typing experience ever in a Mac notebook.
Feels like they claim "best typing experience" every time they release a new laptop.
While it's nice to see an opinionated company like Apple admit fault and revert to what people want, I wonder if this move is too late for many of those that decided to move away from Apple?
Years ago, I switched to a Surface Book, and while I'm tempted to go back for this MBP I reckon that a Surface Book update would be enough to kill any desire for the Mac range. While Apple stagnated, many of the high-end manufacturers caught up.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
throwanem|6 years ago
The lack of physical function keys remains regrettable, and the Touch Bar is still no worthy substitute, but perhaps this is a sign that Apple is finally interested in listening to feedback from its long-term customer base, even if that feedback conflicts with the design team's desires.
blhack|6 years ago
Apple please for the love of usability: please give me back USB. I AM the pro that you want to feature in every one of your marketing videos. I have a music studio in my house, I build interactive lighting installations for the biggest music festivals in the world, I build custom hardware controllers for fire effects that travel all over the country, I travel around the world teaching people how to build hardware devices, and when home I spend the majority of my time teaching and building software that people love; I use my laptop for over 10 hours a day.
All of this stuff uses USB. ALL OF IT. Having to carry around stupid dongles all the time is the biggest pain in my ass when I'm trying to do all of this stuff. PLEASE give me back USB, you can even call it the "stupid loser old crappy loser lame macbook for loser non pros". I don't care. This nonsense minimalist sleek design stuff is actually harming my productivity.
insta_anon|6 years ago
The last iPhone that had this FaceTime camera was the 6S, released in 2015. Since the iPhone 7 (2016) the phones have had at least a 1080p FaceTime camera. Given that FaceTime / Skype calls are such a common use case and rarely anyones uses external webcams anymore, why doesn't Apple use the existing camera system of the iPhone 11 for the MacBook?
Seriously, if I pay north of $4000 dollars for a laptop, why do I get an obsolete camera?
karpodiem|6 years ago
Would it also harm them to make a version that didn't have soldered memory/NVMe drive?
Ultimately, this is why I switched to a Dell Latitude. Being user hostile to basic memory/disk replacement doesn't fly with me when spending $1500+ on a machine.
And if replacing either breaks the crypto chain - I don't need a black box T2 chip, I'll do my own disk encryption.
Ambroos|6 years ago
- Thickness: 1.55cm to 1.62cm (+0.7mm, +4.5%)
- Width: 34.93cm to 35.79cm (+0.86cm, +2.5%)
- Depth: 24.07cm to 24.59cm (+0.52cm, +2.2%)
- Weight: 1.83kg to 2.0kg (+170gr, +9.3%)
The display alone is ~1.3cm wider (and ~0.7cm higher), so there was a small reduction in bezel sizes, allowing the screen to grow more than the rest of the hardware.
Someone1234|6 years ago
This could be the one a lot of people have been waiting for if the new switches/design pans out.
PS - Although I might be an unusual demographic as I touch type and wouldn't use the touchbar regardless (since I look at the screen, not the backs of my hands while I interact with a Mac).
charleshan|6 years ago
The 2015 model was the best MacBook Pro. Perhaps the best laptop yet.
andy_ppp|6 years ago
ben7799|6 years ago
The fact that this review didn't even once mention the fact that this machine is now thicker & bigger and yet they didn't add any useful ports back in is amazing.
I still hate that the 2017 one I have has only USB-C + Headphone jack. I appreciate that it still has the headphone jack.
But at our office we all got OWC Thunderbolt 3 Docks @ $300/desk and the whole experience sucks.
pwthornton|6 years ago
The display is fantastic all around, 64 GB of ram, 8 GB of DDR6 VRAM, 8 cores, biggest battery FAA will allow on planes, 8 TB SSD, etc.
This will also be able to connect to Apple's upcoming 6K 32-inch display.
This is a very impressive update all around and it shows Apple putting a lot of space between their pro laptops and the MBA and iPad Pro now. The lineup is starting to make a lot of sense again.
snowwrestler|6 years ago
In 2008, it cost $2,400. The new 16” released today costs... $2,400.
ses1984|6 years ago
"I would buy a dell xps but only if it had a touchbar"
things no one ever said.
insta_anon|6 years ago
Is Apple afraid to offer this because it clearly would show that almost no one is ready to pay for it?
Even from this audience, who of you would be willing to pay the premium for the TouchBar?
scarface74|6 years ago
https://daringfireball.net/
And before everyone accuses him of being an Apple fanboy and biased, there is no disputing that he is very much a keyboard snob. He hated the last generation keyboard and he called it out during his initial review. He also famously still prefers an old ADB Apple Keyboard and he never bought a laptop with the old one.
He’s also linked to a lot of articles criticizing it.
If he praises it, I think you can trust him.
Edit:
And Marco Arment’s review. He’s never pulled punches when it comes to Apple’s hardware, their development tools, or the quality of the OS frameworks. He’s gushing over the review unit.
https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16
mcv|6 years ago
I admit, a 16" screen in a 15" body sounds really nice. But most of this is stuff other brands already had.
shadykiller|6 years ago
For work, I have this display: LG 5K2k (https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-34WK95U-W-ultrawide-monito...)
For a cheaper setup at home: LG 27inch USB C Monitor(https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27UK850-W-4k-uhd-led-monit...)
saintx|6 years ago
meed|6 years ago
- cannot even begin to understand why these things lack an important usability feature like MegSafe: there is really absolutely no reason why it cannot coexist with the ThunderBolt I/O (4 TB ports, one MegSafe: charge it however the heck you want).
- find the presence of the castrated TouchBar an offense to users. It seems they just want to shove it down our throats whether we want it or not. Just make it optional: I'm sure that there are certain users out there that love it but every single peer of mine [1] hates the sole idea of something like that.
[1] I'm a software guy in the Valley
Traster|6 years ago
I'm very tired of having to settle for serious shortcomings in what used to be such a great product.
heipei|6 years ago
maz1b|6 years ago
While I don't know if we should be applauding Apple so heavily, it's good to see that they "listened" to customer feedback and made these changes. I know that I'll be looking forward to getting one after my 2015 MBP gives out.
rmsaksida|6 years ago
alvern|6 years ago
* 2.4GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
* 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
* AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory
* 8TB SSD storage
for $6099USD. I wonder how it will handle the thermals.
jpalomaki|6 years ago
That is quite respectable! As large battery as possible, instead of saving the few grams or cubic millimeters.
I'm comparing this to for example Lenovo, which seems to like coming up with imaginary battery life promises ("The T490 delivers up to 16.1 hours of battery life") and then cutting the actual battery to minimum.
chinhodado|6 years ago
Feels like they claim "best typing experience" every time they release a new laptop.
EnderMB|6 years ago
Years ago, I switched to a Surface Book, and while I'm tempted to go back for this MBP I reckon that a Surface Book update would be enough to kill any desire for the Mac range. While Apple stagnated, many of the high-end manufacturers caught up.