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MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

theverge.com

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Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#21

Post by tbrock »

Fine, it has a new keyboard thing that you may or may not like, we are going to buy it anyway. But how does the verge not address what everyone really cares about: the CPU!

The MacBook without the touchbar has a MacBook Air class CPU while the one with a touchbar is in another class.

How do the non touchbar models compare with the previous air models and how do the touchbar models compare with the previous pro generation?

If the CPU is mostly the same performance wise as the last generation you are better off going for a refurb of the last gen if you don't care about the keyboard thing or having the new new.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#22

Post by slantyyz »

guitarbill wrote: post #11
blauditore wrote: post #6

It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just because Steve Jobs once said they're bad. For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

I love tablets but hate touch screens on laptops. More often than not, it doesn't work that well (edit: although last time I tried a touch laptop is now 1.5 years ago). And, oh god, the smudging. It frustrates me that almost every Windows laptop with a nice screen is now touch. I assume you can turn it off, but you do pay more for a touch screen. This just reenforces my (outdated?) notion that it's a consumer, not pr…

>> It frustrates me that almost every Windows laptop with a nice screen is now touch.

As someone who's just started researching to buy my next laptop, I don't find that to be very true at all unless you're only looking at ultrabooks.

One of my almost-gotta-haves is a touch screen, and for any models with an HQ/HK level processor plus a discrete GPU, there only seem to be a handful of models with touch screens (and when they are there they are usually optional) at the highest end configurations.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#23

Post by nailer »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #18
blauditore wrote: post #6

It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just because Steve Jobs once said they're bad. For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac line. The touchbar as a design decision makes a lot more sense when the brief is "Add touch to the Macbook Pro line... but under no circumstances step on the toes of the iPad Pro"

> Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac line.

I think it's more that retrofitting touch to a desktop OS - any desktop OS - is painful. Microsoft started it with Windows 8 and it's nearly - but not completely - done years later with Windows 10.

I suspect Apple has probably started retrofitting OS X privately, but released the touch bar as an interim solution.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#24

Post by slantyyz »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #18
blauditore wrote: post #6

It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just because Steve Jobs once said they're bad. For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac line. The touchbar as a design decision makes a lot more sense when the brief is "Add touch to the Macbook Pro line... but under no circumstances step on the toes of the iPad Pro"

As far as I can tell, Apple has never been afraid of cannibalization within their product lines - I've always admired them for that.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#25

Post by rayiner »

I think the touchbar is the way to go for desktops and laptops. You can imagine Apple rolling out a touch bar enabled desktop keyboard. But touch screens are totally impractical for use when your computer is docked, which means you can't really incorporate them into your workflow.

The battery life point is really depressing. Every MacBook since the original has been improving on that front and this is such a huge regression. If I wanted just 5-6 hours of battery life I'd buy a PC.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#26

Post by Ralfp »

AdventurerSen wrote: post #5

I didn't want to make a new thread. Appleinsider's review is a lot more in-depth. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/14/review-apples-late...

Ars's one with benchmarks:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2016/11/macbook-pro-touch-bar...

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#27

Post by wh0rth »

mafro wrote: post #20

Steve (quite probably imo) wouldn't have allowed this to happen! I have little doubt that in a couple years, the technology Apple has been waiting for will arrive and this vision, or something closer to it, will be complete. Apple just released this machine too soon, or was too aggressive in the decisions it made.

While I agree with you here, I do think that using Steve Jobs as a consistent counterpoint to new Apple developments isn't always useful. Sometimes we forget that Steve was behind the Lisa and the original Apple TV. And the Magic Mouse original.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#28

Post by slantyyz »

laumars wrote: post #17
kennysmoothx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the power users, those of us who learn and have hotkeys streamlined into our work environment, the Touch Bar doesn't add much to us, except perhaps a new medium of fine controls (think sliders) However to the users who aren't savvy, or who don't know hotkeys, this brings controls that would otherwise be in deep within the menu bar, right in front of the user. I think that could be incredibly useful to a lot of pe…

While that's probably true, there used to be a time when the MacBook Pro was specifically aimed at power users. Which is likely why these features are being viewed from that perspective.

The hardest pill for a lot of people to swallow with the latest generation is that Apple has moved on from these "power users" and are selling premium mass market computers while keeping the "Pro" suffix.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#29

Post by blauditore »

guitarbill wrote: post #11
blauditore wrote: post #6

It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just because Steve Jobs once said they're bad. For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

I love tablets but hate touch screens on laptops. More often than not, it doesn't work that well (edit: although last time I tried a touch laptop is now 1.5 years ago). And, oh god, the smudging. It frustrates me that almost every Windows laptop with a nice screen is now touch. I assume you can turn it off, but you do pay more for a touch screen. This just reenforces my (outdated?) notion that it's a consumer, not pr…

I was a bit afraid of smudges too, but it's really not an issue. Under normal conditions, they're not visible while the screen is on. And when it gets too dirty, a touchscreen is much easier and safer to clean than a standard one.

As a power user, you probably use the keyboard most of the time and occasionaly a single mouse operation (like moving focus somewhere). For that, it's quite intuitive to tap.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#30

Post by Fluid_Mechanics »

tbrock wrote: post #21

Fine, it has a new keyboard thing that you may or may not like, we are going to buy it anyway. But how does the verge not address what everyone really cares about: the CPU! The MacBook without the touchbar has a MacBook Air class CPU while the one with a touchbar is in another class. How do the non touchbar models compare with the previous air models and how do the touchbar models compare with the previous pro genera…

Arstechnica has a more comprehensive review:

http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inch...

A relatively marginal increase in Single-Threaded CPU performance in the touchbar model.

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