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Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

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Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#11

Post by wil421 »

djmobley wrote: post #6

£3,700 is just a monumental amount of money. You'd be much better off buying a cheaper laptop (even a MacBook, or MBP without TouchBar) and a more powerful desktop (Hackintosh if you will)

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!

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#12

Post by PerfectElement »

arrty88 wrote: post #10

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've been doing this since I switched from Windows to Mac a few years ago. The cmd is in a very awkward spot to me.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#13

Post by godzillabrennus »

fnord123 wrote: post #3
CalChris wrote: post #2

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.

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?

Battery life + Microsoft Office + iMessage integrations are the big ones but there are other niceties that Mac has.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#15

Post by jwilliams »

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#16

Post by WalterSear »

jwilliams wrote: post #15

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 _…

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'.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#17

Post by ProblemFactory »

djmobley wrote: post #6

£3,700 is just a monumental amount of money. You'd be much better off buying a cheaper laptop (even a MacBook, or MBP without TouchBar) and a more powerful desktop (Hackintosh if you will)

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#18

Post by pks2006 »

wil421 wrote: post #11
djmobley wrote: post #6

£3,700 is just a monumental amount of money. You'd be much better off buying a cheaper laptop (even a MacBook, or MBP without TouchBar) and a more powerful desktop (Hackintosh if you will)

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#19

Post by EToS »

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#20

Post by R_haterade »

arrty88 wrote: post #10

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.

I can see how this would be a problem, however.

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