16-inch MacBook Pro

Marco posted an update earlier - https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16

It's really something that one of the first promotional photos on the page is a macbook hooked up to audio gear through daisy-chained dongles and adapters instead of just a regular USB or ethernet cable like it would've been in the old days. The price of thin.

Still no LTE modem?

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.

After much deliberation, I bought a 2017 13" MBP, upspecced to 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. While I've not had a complete failure from the keyboard, it did need looking at at the Apple Store when it also had the entire display assembly replaced because the keyboard had damaged the screen - despite me looking after it well, always putting it in a soft slip case and then a laptop bag.

While I've liked some elements of the design, it's not (to me) a Pro piece of kit, and I've sine replaced it with a 2016 15" MBP which is much better built and doesn't need extra dongles to connect to everyday devices (and has magsafe, which is the best piece of design I've seen in many years).

Given this performance, I'll never buy a new Macbook again - particularly given all the issues about thermal throttling, battery life and indeed the way that macOS seems now to be going.

Don't get me wrong, there are elements of the 2017 MBP that I love - it looks amazing, the screen is fantastic and it's just so precisely made. But the lack of ports, the lack of ruggedness, the keyboard and the performance outweigh any 'look, shiny!' feeling I have about it - so much so that I've not sold it because I feel like I'm stitching the buyer up - even though they've not held their price compared to previous models, which shows that people know this to be the case, and the keyboard still has the 4 year warranty in place.