Hands-On With Apple's New 16-Inch MacBook Pro

[JappleUser25]

Looks like this will be the best version of the MBP since the 2015 model, which I am still using now. It has been the best computer I've ever owned and the 16-inch looks like, finally, a viable upgrade path for people that live by portability in their main computer. Video, music, virtual machines are part of my workflow. I think the sweet spot will be the 8GB GPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD for me.

If you're complaining about SD card slot after 4 years - as William Shatner would say - "Seriously... Get a life!" There are hundreds of options to solve that problem now. Click-baity troll drivel.

 

[0x0x0x0]

If this is truly a pro machine, most pro cameras are moving to XQD.

But it's a moot point, we're going to have USB-C only, and maybe a headphone jack (which surprised me that it's still there).

Because, obviously, "Pro" in an Apple universe (or at least your perception of it) is limited to photographers, right?..

 

[gugy]

Please speak only for yourself and not for „us all“.
I don’t need removable RAM and if I need more storage I plug in a tb or usb drive.

Like what I am asking is such bad thing. This is something Apple used to offer few years back.
if any of two components fail, can be easily replaced by the user and at much lower cost or if the user want to improve the laptop performance too. These updates were simple and done by the user. Now everything is soldered and you need to take to an authorized service at much higher cost and time.
You are indeed the minority if you can’t see that and clueless as well. Smh.

 

[MarkB786]

The Satechi adapter is small and fits in my laptop bag next to my AC adapter.

Reviews seem to say that USB blacks out intermittently on this adapter. Has that beem your experience too?

 

[Plutonius]

Reviews seem to say that USB blacks out intermittently on this adapter. Has that beem your experience too?

I wasn't aware of any issues and I have not had any problems (blackout or otherwise) with mine.

That's not saying an issue might not exist. Satechi makes many versions and I have the USB-C Pro adapter with ethernet.

I'm also using Mojave so I don't know about how it works with Catalina.

 

[lyngo]

Ye
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In the last 25 years if you tried to match every component that is in the Mac and matched it, the pc would be the same price or more. Mac's costing more is a myth with the quality of components and the speed or space.

Especially with how long they last (at least with many of my friends.)

 

[jhack]

It's funny... there are many cameras that have two SD card slots.

While Apple's laptops have zero...

Such a strange turn of events...

Weird comparison. Bit like saying my Mac has an SSD but my cameras have none. They just both need storage.

I think the problem you are trying to solve is transferring data between devices. Good news is macs and latest cameras both have wifi so transfer is easy. Or get a wifi SD card for older cameras.

Apple is not in the business of looking backwards for new products.
Who really wants to transfer physical media?

 

[theorist9]

The only benefit of upgrading your own RAM is saving money buying third-party RAM. But people who can afford a $3k+ computer are unlikely to want to tear open their own computer to save maybe 5% of the purchase cost. On the other hand, those same people place a premium on the slimmest, lightest laptop possible, which is precisely what soldering RAM allows.

Nope, that's a broad mischaracterization -- it's only true in some cases. Many pro users do not use the upgrdadability that way. We make the best judgement we can about what we need, and buy based on that. But then, a couple years later, if your needs change (e.g., you move to a different project that requires more RAM or storage), then you upgrade (if the equipment allows it). Furthermore, even those purchasing expensive computers still have budgets. Just because you can buy a $3K laptop doesn't mean you can buy a $5K one.

I am not arguing for or against upgradable RAM/storage -- I understand the tradeoffs. I am merely arguing against your mischaracterization.

 

[redpandadev]

Am I the only one that is not impressed by this machine at all?

I went to see one in person and the additional size and weight compared to the 15" it is replacing is significant. The additional thickness is particularly noticeable to me making the design of this machine feel like a step backwards to the 2015 era retina MacBook Pro.

There is virtually no spec bump at all aside from additional CTO options in the high end. The 1 hr of battery doesn't mean anything to me and isn't going to translate to more than a few minutes extra for the Pros that are using these.

As far as the keyboard is concerned - I know that many people have had issues with the butterfly keyboard, but I never did. I actually quite liked the feel of the butterfly keyboard. While the new keyboard doesn't bother me at all, I do feel it contributes to the additional thickness found in the 16", which does bother me.

There are upgrades they could and should have made that they did not. No WiFi 6 and still a pathetic front camera, for example.

All in all, my personal preference would be for the 2019 15" MBP vs this new 16" MBP. I think that it would have gone quite a bit further if they made this new machine a 17", retained the thinness of the 15" by spreading out the components, and increased the base specs. Sell it for something like $2799. This way they could retain the 15" for those that might want the power but not the size.

 

[Akrapovic]

What difference does moving the arrow keys back to an invert T shape bring? Just aesthetics?

 

[pshady]

Picking up the i9/16GB/1TB SG version from Best Buy this afternoon to supplement my 13" MBP. The 13" is just too small as a desktop computer for me, so that smaller MBP will be my on-the-go laptop. Looking forward to the more immersive 16" screen (and the improved speakers/mic).

why don't you just use an external monitor with your 13" MBP?

 

[0x0x0x0]

What difference does moving the arrow keys back to an invert T shape bring? Just aesthetics?

Violates POLA: virtually all keyboards have that arrangement of arrow keys, and messing with that just messes up people who touch-type (unless the only computer you ever touch is one with that layout)!

 

[Seb4d]

Can anybody tell me what's the benefit of Apple now using a 16" screen instead of 15.4"?

As far as I can tell there is absolutely no benefit. The footprint of the device has only gotten bigger and heavier. The screen has exactly the same work space scaling resolution. So no benefit there. So basically, content will appear slightly bigger on this 16" display than on the 15" version.

For me it seems they f'd themselves with keyboard and cooling issues in the past. Needed a bigger case. Didn't want huuuge bezels when using a 15.4" screen. So decided to make the screen a bit bigger instead of shrinking the chassis...

nobody?

 

[Howard2k]

Probably justified by their marketing dep't---most people will find 256GB rediculous so they'll pay an Apple Premium to upgrade. Voila!

the target market are almost certainly not using the internal storage as primary. The Mac Pro is a workstation. You can obviously use it to surf the Net and check your email but that’s not the target audience.
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Maybe Apple have thought about the pros and cons too. I think wireless is the future and Apple obviously do too.

But according to Apple Insider (who of course might be wrong) this is Apple’s slowest implementation of 802.11ac, on par with the Air.

 

[0x0x0x0]

the target market are almost certainly not using the internal storage as primary. The Mac Pro is a workstation. You can obviously use it to surf the Net and check your email but that’s not the target audience.

"Pros" on a mac use external because of the way Apple forced them to do so, not because that's how they prefer for the simple reason that external is less reliable than internal (think someone bumps cable and you drop your external storage mid-write, for example! Best case scenario, your application will eventually time out on write, more realistically it will hang and crash or you will force-quit it, worse, as write-to-disk is a kernel task, your kernel crashes and you need to reboot your machine!) cf. that with non-mac workstations, *all* have a ton of internal storage! Recall that old Mac Pros too, had a ton of room for internal storage!

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

You don't need to use the Touch Bar, and a one-ounce dongle doesn't "negate ... portability."

But feel free to avoid it based solely on principle.

One dongle for a card reader. Another for an HDMI connector that may or may not work with a particular projector when giving a presentation. So you always bring two different ones. Plus a DisplayPort adapter because projectors are starting to go that way now. A third dongle for a Logitech USB mouse because all Bluetooth mice are either way to small or large for real graphics work. By the time you’ve added a 4th to read legacy USB drives, you have to decide between using a device or the power cord.

And then you get to school, or a meeting, and you realize that you forget one or all of these effing dongles someplace. making you pine for the days when every port you needed was built in to your Apple laptop And you could carry it around without a bag full of accessories most of the time.

 

[0x0x0x0]

One dongle for a card reader. Another for an HDMI connector that may or may not work with a particular projector when giving a presentation. So you always bring two different ones. Plus a DisplayPort adapter because projectors are starting to go that way now. A third dongle for a Logitech USB mouse because all Bluetooth mice are either way to small or large for real graphics work. By the time you’ve added a 4th to read legacy USB drives, you have to decide between using a device or the power cord.

And then you get to school, or a meeting, and you realize that you forget one or all of these effing dongles someplace. making you pine for the days when every port you needed was built in to your Apple laptop And you could carry it around without a bag full of accessories most of the time.

Spot on, the thing is, I suspect, most of the people who can't figure out why Pros are complaining about the lack of expandability/upgradability/maintainability of MBPro line are the target audience of MBAir line, they just have way more money than sense.

 

[PickUrPoison]

<snip>
But I'm wondering how they can justify 256 Gb SSD in the $6000 Mac Pro then...

This is utterly ridiculous.

In a corporate/enterprise desktop environment—but really most anyone in the target market, including one person shops and freelancers—it’s common to use network-based storage or directly attached storage like a RAID array.

The internal drive is basically relegated to being a boot drive, maybe also used for applications software and swap, but maybe not.

 

[0134168]

I guess to me, a small card reader does not sound like a big inconvenience.

I carry a portable USB-C BluRay / DVD player with my laptop which is a much bigger inconvenience .

I also carry a Satechi adapter that supplies USB-A, HDMI, ethernet, and SD card functionality.

The Satechi adapter is small and fits in my laptop bag next to my AC adapter.

I highly recommend it.

View attachment 877527

Those pictures with adapters makes me sad. So, you spend such money in a laptop, and have to spend more to have the ports you need, and converts a beatifuful piece of Macbook in a horrible thing , much wider and ugly.

 

[0x0x0x0]

In a corporate/enterprise desktop environment—but really most anyone in the target market, including one person shops and freelancers—it’s common to use network-based storage or directly attached storage like a RAID array.

The internal drive is basically relegated to being a boot drive, maybe also used for applications software and swap, but maybe not.

Sure, because every Pro would prefer ~110 MBps write speeds (assuming GigE) (if you're lucky to have a monopoly on the packet path to your RAID box) instead of NVMe or at least native disk speeds that are nowadays exceeding 200 MBps on SAS/SATA and the problem with direct-attach RAID in busy environements have already been described above 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 Reminds me of people who think RAID is BACKUP...

 

[Akrapovic]

Violates POLA: virtually all keyboards have that arrangement of arrow keys, and messing with that just messes up people who touch-type (unless the only computer you ever touch is one with that layout)!

But it doesn't mess with touch typing, because nobody would be tapping the empty space anyway? Extending it to fill that space shouldn't have a negative effect. The only negative I can think of is if you're hitting the edge of a key, it doesn't feel as good as the centre of a key. But the Apple keyboards tend to not be too bad at this, so I'm not sure it's that.

If you're creating a space where a key normally is, then I totally get it. But the change of filling the gap shouldn't make a difference to touch typing.

 

[0x0x0x0]

But it doesn't mess with touch typing, because nobody would be tapping the empty space anyway? Extending it to fill that space shouldn't have a negative effect. The only negative I can think of is if you're hitting the edge of a key, it doesn't feel as good as the centre of a key. But the Apple keyboards tend to not be too bad at this, so I'm not sure it's that.

If you're creating a space where a key normally is, then I totally get it. But the change of filling the gap shouldn't make a difference to touch typing.

You feel the key, not look at it, and left/right have a distinct feel when they are upside-down T, when you can't feel them, you have to look, that wastes time. You need to know where abouts on the keyboard you are (that's why F and J keys have notches underneath them---to make the keyboard landscape uneven), when you fill all of the space with uniform and non-distinct keys you literally have no way of figuring out where abouts your little finger is save for looking down ;-)

 

[Howard2k]

Sure, because every Pro would prefer ~110 MBps write speeds (assuming GigE) (if you're lucky to have a monopoly on the packet path to your RAID box) instead of NVMe or at least native disk speeds that are nowadays exceeding 200 MBps on SAS/SATA and the problem with direct-attach RAID in busy environements have already been described above 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 Reminds me of people who think RAID is BACKUP...

"Pros" on a mac use external because of the way Apple forced them to do so, not because that's how they prefer for the simple reason that external is less reliable than internal (think someone bumps cable and you drop your external storage mid-write, for example! Best case scenario, your application will eventually time out on write, more realistically it will hang and crash or you will force-quit it, worse, as write-to-disk is a kernel task, your kernel crashes and you need to reboot your machine!) cf. that with non-mac workstations, *all* have a ton of internal storage! Recall that old Mac Pros too, had a ton of room for internal storage!

110MB/s? Gigabit Ethernet? No, I’m talking about high end professionals, not home use.

 

[0x0x0x0]

110MB/s? Gigabit Ethernet? No, I’m talking about high end professionals, not home use.

Yup, go into your high end profesionals environement and measure the bandwidth to RAID, especially in multi-user environment, even on 10gigE (the best performance I got out of 16 disk RAID6 off a hardware controller with 4GB battery-backed cache on a 10gigE was about 400MBps sustained write and I had a monopoly on the data-path), and good luck finding 40gigE dongles for TB3... If you want to go out and buy a TB3 RAID box, then you have my sympathy!

 

[tekmoe]

I really want one of these. Eyeing the i9 with 1TB storage. They are in stock at the Apple store near my house. Been using my mid-2010 MacBook Pro 17" for almost the last 10 years. Think it's time for an upgrade 🤗