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Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

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Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#31

Post by khaledtaha »

jp555 wrote: post #28
WalterSear wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Bret Victor tweeted that the TouchBar took 8 years of work to go from conception to production. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848 You sure it was a reaction to MS?

Yes, but that can also mean that during that it was shelved as a bad idea only to be revived as a scrambled attempt to have a one-more-thing moment.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#32

Post by hellofunk »

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).

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#33

Post by dbg31415 »

> 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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#34

Post by tromp »

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...

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#35

Post by dbg31415 »

richardking wrote: post #26

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…

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#36

Post by olegkikin »

swat17 wrote: post #7

His conclusion doesn't match up at all with the rest of the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias

"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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#37

Post by imaginenore »

tromp wrote: post #34

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, whil…

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.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#38

Post by Theodores »

bluedino wrote: post #14
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)

My PowerBook G3 cost that much in 1999 dollars...

...and it was a crazy price to pay then, and now!

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#39

Post by gnat »

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 _…

+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."

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#40

Post by codeisawesome »

olegkikin wrote: post #36
swat17 wrote: post #7

His conclusion doesn't match up at all with the rest of the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias "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.

It's actually £3700, so approximately $4650 (US).

Eye watering indeed.

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