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MacBook Pro Touch reviews from actual users
- Thread starter MrRugged
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Also coming from a 2013 MBA and very concerned about the battery life issue. This was one of the most helpful posts by far about the new 13" TB, so thank you. I have both a non-TB and TB on order and will keep the one that works best for me. Looking forward to seeing how your battery life is over the next couple days.
Which CPU do you have? I ordered the i7 which if anything is going to be even worse for battery life.
I've been having this problem as well. I guess in the past I have rested my thumb sometimes below-and-left of the spacebar, which wasn't a problem on older MBPs, but now is. I really don't understand why they even made it bigger. What's the benefit?
I'm still setting mine up so I haven't put it through its paces, but yeah...
- the wide-gamut screen is amazing, build quality is better than ever, space gray is really beautiful. RIP glowing logo.
- Touch Bar is hard to get used to. So far I feel like it's making easy tasks harder (volume controls, spaces), but will make more complicated or buried tasks easier or more efficient. But it's going to take some re-learning.
- keyboard, as I've said in other threads, has been a terrible experience for me.
- I really miss MagSafe. It was a bad decision to remove it, but they'll never admit that.
- USB-C ports seem fine, my dongles have dongled successfully so far.
- Touch ID is great, and it seems more reliable than the 2nd-gen sensor on the iPhone 7. I wish there was some kind of animation/sound to accompany the unlock though. It feels bolted on terms of the Sierra UI experience.
my indexing took around 1 day...indexing is not showing up on the battery info, it isn't an app. I had in my first day around 7 hours and 22 min, and after 1 day and all the indexing setting up done, now i get every time for mail/web around 11 hours and 12 min(20min). So, let it use it until the battery reach around 10-20% and then recharge it
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next macos will activate pen input on the trackpad
I just got the base i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD.
Here's a screenshot of the energy panel from Activity Monitor this morning. I woke up (didn't have the MBP plugged in overnight) and had 2:47 remaining when I took this. Since then it's gone up to 3:31. But that is still on track for <7 hours of battery life, which is obviously a concern.
I'd really love to hear reports on battery from 15" users. I'm going to the Apple Store today and my hope is that I'll be able to live with the added weight of the 15". The dims are fairly similar to the 2013 MBA (just a bit bigger), and as I said above I've already grown quite attached to TouchID, especially with 1Password. Would hate to give that up. And, I do see potential for the Touch Bar itself, especially as developers add support.
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Now that would be pretty cool. I have a 9.7" iPad Pro and I love it.
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Here's my review and unboxing
You actually had one in your hands. Why did you make a video that so closely resembles an Apple ad or keynote? I can just go to Apple's website for that kind of content.
You could have shown us:
- How far the screen tilts back (but instead you just showed us the cosmetic improvement of the rear end's color scheme)
- How loud the keys are (a big area of dispute)
- How loud the speakers are (instead of blasting a pop song over the video's audio channel in the beginning)
- How amazingly light the machine is—so much so that apparently you were holding it atop the fingers of one hand
- All sorts of aspects of the machine (as you did in the amazing unboxing section), instead of a talking head delivering information verbally for minutes on end
- Close-ups of the TouchBar
The other aspects of your video that are completely perplexing:
- You made a high-res video, but chose to shoot it in a room with so little light that you couldn't use a depth of field that would put everything in focus (and additionally, you chose to put your face in focus, rather than the product you were reviewing!)
- Why did you spend so much time going over things that most of us already know about (the need for dongles, the fact that the AC brick doesn't come with the extension cord, the replacement of the lit-up Apple logo with a mirrored logo)?
- Reliance on short, hardware demo snippets (apparently) from Apple showing "exploded-view" aspects of functionality rather than putting your own mind, hands, creativity, and cinematography chops to work to deliver original review content
Don't listen to Sandy Santra, I (and a bunch of people on the other thread!) think your review is great. Keep it up!!Here's my review and unboxing
And Sandy, if you are going to be bitter about someone's hard work, why not do a better job yourself? You've got some good feedback, but everyone would like you a bit more if you dropped the attitude and be happy that there are people taking the time and effort to make video reviews like this
*big hug everyone*
Pretty harsh comments up there ^^ for someone who's just sitting around watching a video made by someone who bothered (for no money at all)..stop whining.........
That has to be one of the meanest posts yet on these rapidly deteriorating forums. What the hell's your problem?!
I really enjoyed your review, high quality. It was more of an initial hands on, and I would love you to do another after a few weeks with the device.
Could someone with the 13" TB model do a fan speed test for me? Do anything that taxes the GPU and CPU max (such as a game) for a few minutes, then note down max temp and fan speed? Struggling to choose between the TB and the non TB model, due to the different cooling setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I will say I'm starting to get used to the trackpad now and haven't noticed as many glitches where the cursor jumps from one place to another. Maybe I've unconsciously altered my hand position. In any event, it seems like it won't be a problem.
I'm also adjusting to the keyboard. I probably still prefer the keyboard on the 2013 MBA as well as the Magic Keyboard I use with my iMac, but it's fine and as I said before I can imagine preferring it in the future.
I just got the base i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD.
Here's a screenshot of the energy panel from Activity Monitor this morning. I woke up (didn't have the MBP plugged in overnight) and had 2:47 remaining when I took this. Since then it's gone up to 3:31. But that is still on track for <7 hours of battery life, which is obviously a concern.
I'd really love to hear reports on battery from 15" users. I'm going to the Apple Store today and my hope is that I'll be able to live with the added weight of the 15". The dims are fairly similar to the 2013 MBA (just a bit bigger), and as I said above I've already grown quite attached to TouchID, especially with 1Password. Would hate to give that up. And, I do see potential for the Touch Bar itself, especially as developers add support.
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Now that would be pretty cool. I have a 9.7" iPad Pro and I love it.
I just picked mine up today. 3.3 / 512 / 16. Most concerned about battery life. I think I'll be able to live with it if it's decent, like 8 hours, but not much below that. I have a non-TB on order as well and I'll just keep that one if the battery life really is that much better. No way I can move to a 15", I saw one at the store today and they're just still too big for me.
I run with "Activity Monitor" (under Utilities folder in the Applications folder) locked into my dock. You can have it set up to show the CPU use on the icon in the dock because sometimes there are apps running that take up CPU.
If you look at the CPU tab, you might see the mds_stores or something like that taking CPU activity for indexing.
I'm heading to an Apple Store today, and I think I'm going to feel the same way as you unfortunately.
I say unfortunately because I really love TouchID and it will be hard to give up now that I've used it a bunch.
That said, I've gotten this far without it, and it's not worth 3-4 hours of battery life to me.
Maybe the Kaby Lake updates will enable longer battery life with the TB. I'll probably go with a non-TB version, and then sell that in a year or so when/if the new TB models can get 9-10 hours reliably.
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I used Activity Monitor last night and there were no processes consuming significant CPU, other than Safari (which was open). I will keep testing, but I'm afraid the battery life is just not good with these.
I just got the base i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD.
Here's a screenshot of the energy panel from Activity Monitor this morning. I woke up (didn't have the MBP plugged in overnight) and had 2:47 remaining when I took this. Since then it's gone up to 3:31. But that is still on track for <7 hours of battery life, which is obviously a concern.
I'd really love to hear reports on battery from 15" users. I'm going to the Apple Store today and my hope is that I'll be able to live with the added weight of the 15". The dims are fairly similar to the 2013 MBA (just a bit bigger), and as I said above I've already grown quite attached to TouchID, especially with 1Password. Would hate to give that up. And, I do see potential for the Touch Bar itself, especially as developers add support.
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Now that would be pretty cool. I have a 9.7" iPad Pro and I love it.
You have to look at the CPU tab and see the background processes running. If you're not doing anything there should be little CPU consumed. When I do a fresh install (as I just did with 10.12.1), the mds_stores (or whatever) indexing service is running at high CPU and on multiple processes running in parallel.
Got my 13" last night. A maxed out one. I'm coming from a 2009 iMac on Snow Leopard.
First impression - I could open it easily! Now that sounds weird, but I've been working with my husbands XPS13 and I find it almost impossible to open it up. It's not balanced well and you have to dig your fingers in to get the screen open. The Macbook is balanced perfectly and it's easy to open it up without having the laptop move. Funny how something small makes all the difference.
Keyboard is fine. I'm used to the keyboard from the iMac (the one with the batteries), and while it's less travel, it feels about the same - a bit stiff, not 'squishy' like our XPS13.
Showing it to people at work, I keep touching the screen I'm used to using my iPad Pro at work, and this looks enough like it (basically the same size) that I automatically touch the screen.
Touchbar - I think I'll like it once I get more of my apps set up. I like it for Safari, though most of my favorites just show as their first letter - they don't have an image to make it look different. So it's hard to remember that the first A is my Amazon favorite. If sites in your favorites don't show up with a custom icon, it's not as useful. I still have to train myself not to touch the screen. If I click the search in the Safari touchbar, the touchbar shows the favorites AND the favorites window opens up as well. Since my finger is on the touchbar I naturally try to touch the favorite on the screen, since that's what I do on my iPad.
Battery. It came @ 75%. I had it hooked to my new LG 4K monitor (which is awesome), so I don't know how the battery fared. This morning I'm starting out at 80%, and have been working on it downloading apps for 1.5 hours. At 75% it tells me that I've got 7:46 remaining. Which is an assumption of 10 hours.
My biggest learning curve is macOS Sierra. I'm coming from Snow Leopard.
Love the large trackpad. Very similar to the external trackpad I was using on my iMac.
Setting up the LG 4K monitor took a little bit of thinking - it wouldn't display anything even though the laptop saw it. Had to restart the laptop. Wow! Love it. I was expecting it to be a similar size as my iMac 2009, but it's a different ratio - much less height. Just surprising since I'm coming from old hardware.
So far I've set up Dropbox, Scrivener, and am now downloading Office from my Office365 account (had got that so I could have an editable Office on my 12.9 iPad). Next will try Duet with my iPad as second monitor.
This is a solid machine. Compared it to my husbands XPS13 - my screen is way better, his keyboard is a bit nicer, but the machine itself feels more 'sloppy' in the build if that makes any sense. Macbook Pro is precision.
First impression - I could open it easily! Now that sounds weird, but I've been working with my husbands XPS13 and I find it almost impossible to open it up. It's not balanced well and you have to dig your fingers in to get the screen open. The Macbook is balanced perfectly and it's easy to open it up without having the laptop move. Funny how something small makes all the difference.
Keyboard is fine. I'm used to the keyboard from the iMac (the one with the batteries), and while it's less travel, it feels about the same - a bit stiff, not 'squishy' like our XPS13.
Showing it to people at work, I keep touching the screen
I'm used to using my iPad Pro at work, and this looks enough like it (basically the same size) that I automatically touch the screen. Touchbar - I think I'll like it once I get more of my apps set up. I like it for Safari, though most of my favorites just show as their first letter - they don't have an image to make it look different. So it's hard to remember that the first A is my Amazon favorite. If sites in your favorites don't show up with a custom icon, it's not as useful. I still have to train myself not to touch the screen. If I click the search in the Safari touchbar, the touchbar shows the favorites AND the favorites window opens up as well. Since my finger is on the touchbar I naturally try to touch the favorite on the screen, since that's what I do on my iPad.
Battery. It came @ 75%. I had it hooked to my new LG 4K monitor (which is awesome), so I don't know how the battery fared. This morning I'm starting out at 80%, and have been working on it downloading apps for 1.5 hours. At 75% it tells me that I've got 7:46 remaining. Which is an assumption of 10 hours.
My biggest learning curve is macOS Sierra. I'm coming from Snow Leopard.
Love the large trackpad. Very similar to the external trackpad I was using on my iMac.
Setting up the LG 4K monitor took a little bit of thinking - it wouldn't display anything even though the laptop saw it. Had to restart the laptop. Wow! Love it. I was expecting it to be a similar size as my iMac 2009, but it's a different ratio - much less height. Just surprising since I'm coming from old hardware.
So far I've set up Dropbox, Scrivener, and am now downloading Office from my Office365 account (had got that so I could have an editable Office on my 12.9 iPad). Next will try Duet with my iPad as second monitor.
This is a solid machine. Compared it to my husbands XPS13 - my screen is way better, his keyboard is a bit nicer, but the machine itself feels more 'sloppy' in the build if that makes any sense. Macbook Pro is precision.
I'm so perplexed by these varying reports of battery life. How is it possible that the Verge units (2 of them) and mine get less than 7 hours, but others are seeing 10 hours? The only thing I've done is use Safari, Polymail, Slack, and basic productivity apps. I have only 2 hours remaining and I've used it for less than 5 hours.
Here's a screenshot of Activity Monitor. I've seen this "kernel_task" and window server consuming between 6-18.5% of CPU over the past hour, not sure if it was there all along. WindowServer is also consuming between 6-12% of CPU. Not sure if that is normal or may be affecting the battery? Maybe someone that knows more about these tasks can comment.
Got my 13" last night. A maxed out one. I'm coming from a 2009 iMac on Snow Leopard.
First impression - I could open it easily! Now that sounds weird, but I've been working with my husbands XPS13 and I find it almost impossible to open it up. It's not balanced well and you have to dig your fingers in to get the screen open. The Macbook is balanced perfectly and it's easy to open it up without having the laptop move. Funny how something small makes all the difference.
Keyboard is fine. I'm used to the keyboard from the iMac (the one with the batteries), and while it's less travel, it feels about the same - a bit stiff, not 'squishy' like our XPS13.
Showing it to people at work, I keep touching the screen
Touchbar - I think I'll like it once I get more of my apps set up. I like it for Safari, though most of my favorites just show as their first letter - they don't have an image to make it look different. So it's hard to remember that the first A is my Amazon favorite. If sites in your favorites don't show up with a custom icon, it's not as useful. I still have to train myself not to touch the screen. If I click the search in the Safari touchbar, the touchbar shows the favorites AND the favorites window opens up as well. Since my finger is on the touchbar I naturally try to touch the favorite on the screen, since that's what I do on my iPad.
Battery. It came @ 75%. I had it hooked to my new LG 4K monitor (which is awesome), so I don't know how the battery fared. This morning I'm starting out at 80%, and have been working on it downloading apps for 1.5 hours. At 75% it tells me that I've got 7:46 remaining. Which is an assumption of 10 hours.
My biggest learning curve is macOS Sierra. I'm coming from Snow Leopard.
Love the large trackpad. Very similar to the external trackpad I was using on my iMac.
Setting up the LG 4K monitor took a little bit of thinking - it wouldn't display anything even though the laptop saw it. Had to restart the laptop. Wow! Love it. I was expecting it to be a similar size as my iMac 2009, but it's a different ratio - much less height. Just surprising since I'm coming from old hardware.
So far I've set up Dropbox, Scrivener, and am now downloading Office from my Office365 account (had got that so I could have an editable Office on my 12.9 iPad). Next will try Duet with my iPad as second monitor.
This is a solid machine. Compared it to my husbands XPS13 - my screen is way better, his keyboard is a bit nicer, but the machine itself feels more 'sloppy' in the build if that makes any sense. Macbook Pro is precision.
Which device has better screen quality? Ipad pro 12.9 or this MBP?
It's ridiculous. This place has been deteriorating badly in recent times and the mean, downright asinine people are being allowed to populate here like rats. C'mon moderators, are we going to do anything to set a better tone around here? Or is it just a free-for-all?
gross.
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How's the battery life? :O
I'm so perplexed by these varying reports of battery life. How is it possible that the Verge units (2 of them) and mine get less than 7 hours, but others are seeing 10 hours? The only thing I've done is use Safari, Polymail, Slack, and basic productivity apps. I have only 2 hours remaining and I've used it for less than 5 hours.
Here's a screenshot of Activity Monitor. I've seen this "kernel_task" and window server consuming between 6-18.5% of CPU over the past hour, not sure if it was there all along. WindowServer is also consuming between 6-12% of CPU. Not sure if that is normal or may be affecting the battery? Maybe someone that knows more about these tasks can comment.
Try rebooting the computer. kernel_task is < 1-2%, WindowServer is generally <1%. You might see momentary increases in CPU, but if you watch for a couple of minutes, it will stabilize.
When you have the new computer there is the indexing of mds_stores for Spotlight and a couple of indexing services for the photo library.
I just did reboot about an hour ago. I'll try rebooting again.
Is there any other reason for these tasks to be so high? Just checked a few more times and they're fluctuating a lot, but WindowServer has ranged from 3-10% and kernel_task from 2-5%.
They're very similar to my eyes. Brightness similar. Fonts a bit smaller on the MBP, but very easy to read. Since the screens are different sizes that throws off your perception - the 12.9 width is less, but the depth is more - that aspect ratio thing. Makes the 12.9 look funny. The glare on the MBP is a little bit less in the lights at the office (if I tilt it to the same plane as the 12.9).
I just ran Duet on both, with my 12.9 as a second monitor. Played with all the different resolutions available. 12.9 can run macOS Sierra no problem, so that's one way to get a touch Sierra
But not as nice a display going through all that. Once I quit out of Duet, and started looking at the 12.9 vs the MBP, the MBP is crisper. But I've only looked at web pages for comparison, I haven't done any graphics testing.
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