4 month MacBook Pro Review

[Miltz]

After 4 months of using my MacBook Pro 2016 15" I felt I can share my real world use in a business setting. I have the fully loaded model. I mainly use Photoshop 2017 and some iMovie. The laptop can handle anything thrown at it. I usually keep 10-15 raw files open in Photoshop and I've never had any issues or slow downs. I'm seeing 11-33% performance increase in Photoshop over my i7 2700K windows 10 desktop. The screen is amazing although there is a color temperature difference between my iPhone 7 plus and the display. I had some graphical glitches until the latest software update, but nothing that got in the way of my work. Only when I used spotlight. The only time I hear the laptop fans is when I'm encoding in iMovie. USB-C hasn't been as annoying as people say. I did have to get a Ethernet dongle because my work place has crap wifi, and I use one more adapter for my SD card reader. I hardly ever use the touch bar which is a shame. Keyboard and touch pad is amazing, although I like the Magic Mouse 2 better for Photoshop. Overall performance is outstanding and I'm very happy with it. Speakers are great and really make a difference when showing clients finished videos. Being able to charge the laptop on either side is a blessing, very convenient. Battery life is dependent on what I'm doing but I mainly plug it in when when I'm at a job site. I've gotten between 6 to 14 hours of use. 6 hours is when using Photoshop and the AMD card at almost full brightness. My main complaints would be Apple should have included a lighting port to usb-c cable for iPhone users at no charge and a standard USB adapter in the box, Especially at these premium prices. The graphical issues although didn't stop my productivity, they did make me feel Apple didn't spend enough time testing. Now it's perfect. Since I do carry my gear with me on site, I will say that the thinner and lighter body is a huge plus for me. I hope this helps anyone who's wondering how the new MacBook Pro is working out long term in a business setting.

Update: I forgot to mention something. The fact that Apple's Safari doesn't support 4K on YouTube is criminal. I don't care who's fault it is, Google or a Apple, they need to work it out because it's completely ridiculous.

 

[Miltz]

One thing that I forgot to mention is I have a Dell 2713HM. When I connect that monitor to my MacBook Pro the image quality is better than when that monitor is connected to my PC. I loaded up the same image on both computers and did a side by side by switching between connections and the MacBook is image is sharper. Apple must be applying some sort of sharpening to the output. Anyway, it's a nice bonus.

 

[mrex]

Sounds good but the enter key doesnt seem to work at all.

If apple added an automatic sharpening when an external monitor is attached, no photographer could use it. You should check the settings from your comp...

 

[shadow82x]

What's the color temperature difference? Is your MacBook warmer/yellower?

 

[Miltz]

What's the color temperature difference? Is your MacBook warmer/yellower?

my MacBook is warmer.
[doublepost=1492448214][/doublepost]

Sounds good but the enter key doesnt seem to work at all.

If apple added an automatic sharpening when an external monitor is attached, no photographer could use it. You should check the settings from your comp...

I'm calling it sharpening... it might just be how Apple handles external displays. I don't know. But it's output it sharper than the same monitor on a PC with the same image loaded on both.

 

[thesaint024]

I'm calling it sharpening... it might just be how Apple handles external displays. I don't know. But it's output it sharper than the same monitor on a PC with the same image loaded on both.

I had the same monitor experience. My 09 MBP always looked sharper than any PC I would put on the monitor. I'm not going to begin to explain it because I have no idea. No one ever told me that either. I just noticed it across 2 MBP's and 3 PC's.

 

[Miltz]

I had the same monitor experience. My 09 MBP always looked sharper than any PC I would put on the monitor. I'm not going to begin to explain it because I have no idea. No one ever told me that either. I just noticed it across 2 MBP's and 3 PC's.

Thanks for the confirmation! It's a nice unexpected bonus.

 

[DoctorDoctor]

I have owned a late 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar since January and must admit I rarely use the Touch Bar. At first I thought it would be useful but for me it is proving useless. I can access what I want faster and easier with the Touch Pad. The only thing I have found that is better is using the calculator. I guess I could spend more time trying to customize the Touch Bar to be more useful but it seems to be it would be a waste of my time. Of course your mileage may vary. Besides that the new MacBook Pro is excellent in my opinion.

 

[robvas]

One thing that I forgot to mention is I have a Dell 2713HM. When I connect that monitor to my MacBook Pro the image quality is better than when that monitor is connected to my PC. I loaded up the same image on both computers and did a side by side by switching between connections and the MacBook is image is sharper. Apple must be applying some sort of sharpening to the output. Anyway, it's a nice bonus.

Sorry, but that's not possible. An image is going to be exactly the same on a Mac as it a PC. I could take a screenshot of your Mac, and put it on a monitor using your PC, you'd never know the difference.

 

[Miltz]

Sorry, but that's not possible. An image is going to be exactly the same on a Mac as it a PC. I could take a screenshot of your Mac, and put it on a monitor using your PC, you'd never know the difference.

Something isn't possible unless you see it with your own eyes I guess. I'm glad @thesaint024 saw them same thing I'm seeing.

 

[Sanpete]

Sorry, but that's not possible. An image is going to be exactly the same on a Mac as it a PC. I could take a screenshot of your Mac, and put it on a monitor using your PC, you'd never know the difference.

If there's scaling involved, images will differ.

 

[jacg]

After 4 months of using my MacBook Pro 2016 15" I felt I can share my real world use in a business setting. I have the fully loaded model. I mainly use Photoshop 2017 and some iMovie. The laptop can handle anything thrown at it. I usually keep 10-15 raw files open in Photoshop and I've never had any issues or slow downs. I'm seeing 11-33% performance increase in Photoshop over my i7 2700K windows 10 desktop. The screen is amazing although there is a color temperature difference between my iPhone 7 plus and the display. I had some graphical glitches until the latest software update, but nothing that got in the way of my work. Only when I used spotlight. The only time I hear the laptop fans is when I'm encoding in iMovie. USB-C hasn't been as annoying as people say. I did have to get a Ethernet dongle because my work place has crap wifi, and a I use one more adapter for my SD card reader. I hardly ever use the touch bar which is a shame. Keyboard and touch pad is amazing, although I like the Magic Mouse 2 better for Photoshop. Overall performance is outstanding and I'm very happy with it. Speakers are great and really make a difference when showing clients finished videos. Being able to charge the laptop on either side is a blessing, very convenient. Battery life is dependent on what I'm doing but I mainly plug it in when when I'm at a job site. I've gotten between 6 to 14 hours of use. 6 hours is when using Photoshop and the AMD card at almost full brightness. My main complaints would be Apple should have included a lighting port to usb-c cable for iPhone users at no charge and a standard USB adapter in the box, Especially at these premium prices. The graphical issues although didn't stop my productivity, they did make me feel Apple didn't spend enough time testing. Now it's perfect. Since I do carry my gear with me on site, I will say that the thinner and lighter body is a huge plus for me. I hope this helps anyone who's wondering how the new MacBook Pro is working out long term in a business setting.

For me, with a similarly speced machine, I am liking the reduced weight and size, making more use of the touch bar than most (apparently), finding TouchID useful and loving the big sound. However I dislike aspects of the build (this one has a tinny rattle and the keyboard makes cheap noises), graphics glitches seem to be back in the latest MacOS version, and I still get crashes, slow-downs and glitches which make me miss my rock-solid non-retina 2013 MBP. Also, battery can die very quickly depending on the demands of the apps in use. Had to buy a second power supply pretty quickly for work.

 

[Sanpete]

I still get crashes, slow-downs and glitches which make me miss my rock-solid non-retina 2013 MBP. Also, battery can die very quickly depending on the demands of the apps in use. Had to buy a second power supply pretty quickly for work.

Wonder if these are related. What are you doing that drains the battery so fast (faster than your 2013, if I understand you)? Have you been checking your Activity Monitor to see what's using the CPU and Energy?

 

[thesaint024]

Sorry, but that's not possible. An image is going to be exactly the same on a Mac as it a PC. I could take a screenshot of your Mac, and put it on a monitor using your PC, you'd never know the difference.

Man I don't know. I haven't ever mentioned this on this forum or claimed this as a benefit of a Mac. I can't do that if I don't even know why this is the case. A number of factors can theoretically be causing this. As @Sanpete says, it could be scaling. Maybe PC's have a different native resolution in the OS? Also, I see that we are both using Dells as external monitors. Maybe it's unique to Dells. No idea, but with so many factors that go into the final output you see, it is quite possible. I won't argue it any further, I just know what I see. I wasn't even looking for it. And I don't care enough to research this phenomenon.

 

[mrex]

I'm calling it sharpening... it might just be how Apple handles external displays. I don't know. But it's output it sharper than the same monitor on a PC with the same image loaded on both.

check the settings from your pc. It should be the same whether you use pc or mac. Im quessing you are running wrong scaling with your external display - if you have win10, you can setup each external display to the right scaling separately.

 

[Miltz]

check the settings from your pc. It should be the same whether you use pc or mac. Im quessing you are running wrong scaling with your external display - if you have win10, you can setup each external display to the right scaling separately.

I already did that. I'm not scaling. I'm using full resolution on both. I was surprised to see it as well... anyway it's something that is a plus in my book, so I won't complain.

 

[MrGuder]

After 4 months of using my MacBook Pro 2016 15" I felt I can share my real world use in a business setting. I have the fully loaded model. I mainly use Photoshop 2017 and some iMovie. The laptop can handle anything thrown at it. I usually keep 10-15 raw files open in Photoshop and I've never had any issues or slow downs. I'm seeing 11-33% performance increase in Photoshop over my i7 2700K windows 10 desktop. The screen is amazing although there is a color temperature difference between my iPhone 7 plus and the display. I had some graphical glitches until the latest software update, but nothing that got in the way of my work. Only when I used spotlight. The only time I hear the laptop fans is when I'm encoding in iMovie. USB-C hasn't been as annoying as people say. I did have to get a Ethernet dongle because my work place has crap wifi, and a I use one more adapter for my SD card reader. I hardly ever use the touch bar which is a shame. Keyboard and touch pad is amazing, although I like the Magic Mouse 2 better for Photoshop. Overall performance is outstanding and I'm very happy with it. Speakers are great and really make a difference when showing clients finished videos. Being able to charge the laptop on either side is a blessing, very convenient. Battery life is dependent on what I'm doing but I mainly plug it in when when I'm at a job site. I've gotten between 6 to 14 hours of use. 6 hours is when using Photoshop and the AMD card at almost full brightness. My main complaints would be Apple should have included a lighting port to usb-c cable for iPhone users at no charge and a standard USB adapter in the box, Especially at these premium prices. The graphical issues although didn't stop my productivity, they did make me feel Apple didn't spend enough time testing. Now it's perfect. Since I do carry my gear with me on site, I will say that the thinner and lighter body is a huge plus for me. I hope this helps anyone who's wondering how the new MacBook Pro is working out long term in a business setting.

Nice review but can you edit your post and break that up into 2 or 3 paragraphs? That is one long paragraph. Lol

 

[robvas]

check the settings from your pc. It should be the same whether you use pc or mac. Im quessing you are running wrong scaling with your external display - if you have win10, you can setup each external display to the right scaling separately.

Yup. Probably has one at 1080p

 

[appleofmyibook]

After 4 months of using my MacBook Pro 2016 15" I felt I can share my real world use in a business setting. I have the fully loaded model. I mainly use Photoshop 2017 and some iMovie. The laptop can handle anything thrown at it. I usually keep 10-15 raw files open in Photoshop and I've never had any issues or slow downs. I'm seeing 11-33% performance increase in Photoshop over my i7 2700K windows 10 desktop. The screen is amazing although there is a color temperature difference between my iPhone 7 plus and the display. I had some graphical glitches until the latest software update, but nothing that got in the way of my work. Only when I used spotlight. The only time I hear the laptop fans is when I'm encoding in iMovie. USB-C hasn't been as annoying as people say. I did have to get a Ethernet dongle because my work place has crap wifi, and a I use one more adapter for my SD card reader. I hardly ever use the touch bar which is a shame. Keyboard and touch pad is amazing, although I like the Magic Mouse 2 better for Photoshop. Overall performance is outstanding and I'm very happy with it. Speakers are great and really make a difference when showing clients finished videos. Being able to charge the laptop on either side is a blessing, very convenient. Battery life is dependent on what I'm doing but I mainly plug it in when when I'm at a job site. I've gotten between 6 to 14 hours of use. 6 hours is when using Photoshop and the AMD card at almost full brightness. My main complaints would be Apple should have included a lighting port to usb-c cable for iPhone users at no charge and a standard USB adapter in the box, Especially at these premium prices. The graphical issues although didn't stop my productivity, they did make me feel Apple didn't spend enough time testing. Now it's perfect. Since I do carry my gear with me on site, I will say that the thinner and lighter body is a huge plus for me. I hope this helps anyone who's wondering how the new MacBook Pro is working out long term in a business setting.

Love your review. I am also loving my 2016 Pro although I just got the baseline 15 model. I never had any battery or graphics problems and still don't. In terms of performance, it is very similar to my 2015 Pro, which I sold at the price I bought it (before Apple hiked up the prices in Australia). I do find that Final Cut is snappier and it takes longer for the fans to kick in. I really just am a sucker for a design and while a lot of people can't understand it, the ergonomics of this laptop made it easy for me to justify the purchase. Yes being thin and light has been great, but the real standout for me has been the keyboard. I simply don't think any other keyboard comes close. My typing speeds have improved so much that my mind can't keep up with my fingers half the time! lol. The Touch Bar for me has also been excellent. I use it mostly in Finder, Safari, Mail, Final Cut and Office, but hands down the best use of it I have seen is with Da Vinci Resolve.

If people are thinking of getting this but are turned off by all the negative YouTube reviewers (who make more money when they hate on Apple thanks to the Windows trolls), I would say not to listen to them. They bashed the 12 inch MacBook so much when it was first released and now a lot have gone on to say it's one of the best machines they've used.

 

[Sanpete]

There's scaling (or some analog to it) anytime you're driving a monitor at a resolution other than the native resolution of your laptop, or (I suppose) showing some input like a video or image at other than its native resolution. Sometimes it's better with a Mac, sometimes worse, depending on the monitor resolution, I suppose. The resolution of the Dell monitor in question here happens to be exactly half (linearly) of a 5K, so the Mac may have some optimization for it.

 

[Miltz]

Love your review. I am also loving my 2016 Pro although I just got the baseline 15 model. I never had any battery or graphics problems and still don't. In terms of performance, it is very similar to my 2015 Pro, which I sold at the price I bought it (before Apple hiked up the prices in Australia). I do find that Final Cut is snappier and it takes longer for the fans to kick in. I really just am a sucker for a design and while a lot of people can't understand it, the ergonomics of this laptop made it easy for me to justify the purchase. Yes being thin and light has been great, but the real standout for me has been the keyboard. I simply don't think any other keyboard comes close. My typing speeds have improved so much that my mind can't keep up with my fingers half the time! lol. The Touch Bar for me has also been excellent. I use it mostly in Finder, Safari, Mail, Final Cut and Office, but hands down the best use of it I have seen is with Da Vinci Resolve.

If people are thinking of getting this but are turned off by all the negative YouTube reviewers (who make more money when they hate on Apple thanks to the Windows trolls), I would say not to listen to them. They bashed the 12 inch MacBook so much when it was first released and now a lot have gone on to say it's one of the best machines they've used.

Thank you so much! Yeah, you get more attention when you bash Apple these days. Just look at these forums. Yes the keyboard is amazing, I love it!

 

[iKnowMr.Jobs]

Love your honest take. Really haven't had any issues with my machine at this point. I am curious if you've ever made conscious attempts to incorporate the TouchBar in your workflow, specifically with Photoshop. I don't do anything editing professionally, I just use Pixelmator about a half dozen times a week and I found it to be invaluable.

 

[Miltz]

Love your honest take. Really haven't had any issues with my machine at this point. I am curious if you've ever made conscious attempts to incorporate the TouchBar in your workflow, specifically with Photoshop. I don't do anything editing professionally, I just use Pixelmator about a half dozen times a week and I found it to be invaluable.

To be honest no. It just fades away. Most of my work is done on the Magic Mouse 2. I'm in a high pressure environment and things need to get done fast and quality and I haven't had the time to fiddle with it. I think Apple's idea although cool, isn't really all that amazing. Atleast not yet. Perhaps when I have some free time I can customize it, but at the same time I want it to work out of the box. I do love Touch ID, and I find it very useful. The new iMovie update is supposed to make better use of the touch bar, I'll try it tomorrow at work and report back.
[doublepost=1492486426][/doublepost]

Thank you! To be honest no. It just fades away. Most of my work is done on the Magic Mouse 2. I'm in a high pressure environment and things need to get done fast and quality and I haven't had the time to fiddle with it. I think Apple's idea although cool, isn't really all that amazing. Atleast not yet. Perhaps when I have some free time I can customize it, but at the same time I want it to work out of the box. I do love Touch ID, and I find it very useful. The new iMovie update is supposed to make better use of the touch bar, I'll try it tomorrow at work and report back.

 

[osnola ibax]

Just on the display output thing. Is it possible you were using hdmi on Windows machine and display port on Mac?
[doublepost=1492497364][/doublepost]Or maybe the Mac supports hdmi 1.4+ and the windows an earlier version.

The cable can be a limiting factor on the definition of the output

 

[Miltz]

Just on the display output thing. Is it possible you were using hdmi on Windows machine and display port on Mac?
[doublepost=1492497364][/doublepost]Or maybe the Mac supports hdmi 1.4+ and the windows an earlier version.

The cable can be a limiting factor on the definition of the output

I'm using display port for the MacBook Pro and DVI for windows. I don't think it's the cable.