MacBook Pro? No

I've seen issues with the touchbar and keyboard from all my collegues. As a long time apple user, (since forever, early 90ties) I will never buy one of these pieces of expensive shit ever. A new design with escape and functional keyboard is required to get me back...

It is mostly a list of minor annoyances, and if MacBook Pros were about half their current price, it would make sense to accept them as inevitable.

But when you're paying close to $2800 (or £2800 - about $3800 -- if you're in the UK) for a laptop you have the right to expect better. If I want a crappy keyboard and a short battery life, I can have them without paying a massive premium.

I've held off the last few years just because my current MBP has been good enough, the spec bumps haven't been large enough, and because I was unsure about the new keyboard & the lack of a hardware ESC -- and the dubious value of the touchbar, though I did find it intriguing to potentially write some code for it.

I caved and bought one in late November, and just returned in a few weeks ago -- I'm now typing this from my "new (refurbished) 2015 Macbook Pro (non-touchbar) that was delivered today. I'm much, much happier.

Perhaps a fluke, but it's the first MBP I've returned out of ~10 that I've purchased the last 10 years or so. Aside from the ESC key, the keyboard itself was awful -- the [lack of] key travel was irksome though surmountable by itself. The arrow keys were almost painful to deal with, but those too may have been OK in a vacuum. But when a KeyDown on the 'G' key was a dice roll -- 40% expected result, one 'G'; 40% two 'G' KeyDowns; and 10% of the time, no KeyDown at all.

I can't recall the last time I had a computer issue that was anywhere near as rage-inspiring -- and that, coupled with the already poor keyboard experience & the already-dubious value adds, was enough for me to return it. I will perhaps miss the fingerprint reader fluff, but frankly I'm thrilled to be back on a proven laptop platform again, and it's also great that my existing >10 chargers work for my laptop again, too.

I really, really hope that they have come to their senses & released an improved MBP in the future -- hell, keep the same form factor and just add RAM+CPU+GPU, or just let me upgrade RAM+SSD again.

I'll seriously consider a Windows laptop the next time around if there isn't a semi-decent MBP option at that point -- it's a bummer, too -- but may not be much choice.

Not sure why they removed empty space on top of left and right arrows, but this change had the biggest affect on my performance while writing code, I used that blank space to navigate my way around the keyboard, now it’s gone I keep pressing wrong keys. They did the same on the new magic keyboard as well, I hate the guts of it.

I tried hard to like the new MacBook Pro. But I could not justify the cost. Now way I went with the TB one, so I configured a FK one that was maxed out, because it costs so much money that I have to at least plan for the future. So, it's over 3k€; no way I can justify that kind of money for something that has documented issues and limitations in such key areas and in the end doesn't feel like an improvement over my late 2013 one which I got for exactly half that price tag. So I just swapped my 256GB SSD for a 1TB one, and while the lid was popped realigned the screen that was slightly offset due to a fall. It's the entry level i5, with 8GB of RAM, and battery is at 487 cycles yet 93% wear ratio, and the thing performs brilliantly. Now it's as good as new. I plan to keep it a while and with things starting to feel strange on the macOS front maybe in a few years if I feel like the OS lets me down I'll probably move to Linux (I wish it were FreeBSD but hardware compatibility just isn't there).

But for now, upgrading just didn't make sense, it just feels like a regression from 2013 hardware.