MacBook Pro Touch reviews from actual users

[jmebbk]

I currently have a 13" base model Touch Bar and will be returning it. In its place will be the 13" non-Touch Bar model that I ordered from Amazon today. My biggest complaint with the TB model is the battery life. I can't manage more than 6 hours of light use at 75% brightness before I hit 10% and it slows to a crawl. That's so far off the mark from the claimed 10 hours that I feel ripped off if I keep this thing.

The Touch Bar is cool, but in the week I have had it I haven't felt it's significantly innovative enough for me to really care. And Touch ID is pretty useless to me as I only seem to use it for login, and the Apple Watch can do that pretty quickly too. (Plus, the sensor has glitched out a few times requiring me to enter my password anyway.)

I'll take the better battery life, slightly better speakers and $400 lower price (with $100 off on Amazon) with the non TB model - I don't need the extra horsepower or ports.

What specs will you get?
Why don't you get the 2015 model?

 

[wherewuz]

My brother summarized it well as being the kind of flashy option on a car that isn't really that necessary, and the purists would not opt for. ie. Idrive on Bmw or something.

Totally respect your decision and your lucid explaination, but claiming it makes you a "purist" is a bit rich.

Users who opted not to go for the Touch Bar model this year are no more traditionalists than people who, say, opt for a non-Retina MacBook Air. There are many good reasons to go that route, but sentimentality or purism aren't among them.

 

[pbasmadj]

Totally respect your decision and your lucid explaination, but claiming it makes you a "purist" is a bit rich.

Users who opted not to go for the Touch Bar model this year are no more traditionalists than people who, say, opt for a non-Retina MacBook Air. There are many good reasons to go that route, but sentimentality or purism aren't among them.

Not really meaning it like that, I mostly mean that I am relatively indifferent on it. If given the option to have it or not have it, I would choose no. +lower cost. Which was great for the 13" MBP., because they made the one that I wanted. Is it a bad feature? no. I do think they should have provided both variations of the 15" as well however.

 

[RobinInOR]

After using this for a week, still loving it. I'm running into some sleep/wake issues that are annoying, but I think these are known issues with Sierra. Part of the problem was Duet, so I uninstalled that. Better after that, but this morning when I woke it up the LG monitor didn't display. Had to unplug/replug in the monitor. That always fixes any issue, even if it's locked in a beachball loop. We'll see if things improve on 10.12.2 update when that is released Only other quirks are all Sierra related, so I don't put those against the MBP.

The sleep/wake issues are 'funny' to me because our XPS13 with Ubuntu had the same type of problems - couldn't sleep it by closing the lid, could only sleep it via menu. A couple other graphics issues as well, mostly software as well.

Still love the touchbar for its usefulness. I have:
Sleep button on the extended bar
Screen print
Finder: get info
Man page in terminal was very useful. If I started typing a command and realized I didn't really know the parameters, I could just touch the button instead of backing up and typing man. I don't know the key shortcuts in terminal.

Battery life - last Sunday I kept it on battery and was setting up homebrew and apache/php and setting up a local website - along with browsing, twitter with it auto refreshing. I got 7.5 hours out of it so this meets my needs, but I'm more texted based than video/image based when I'm using a computer. I can understand why people who are FB/Twitter/YouTube/Video streaming type people wouldn't be as pleased.

 

[cult hero]

Thanks Cult Hero for your personal take on your new MacBook. I agree that "discovery" and full screen apps will be the best use cases initially for the Touch Bar. In time, the TB will become part of everyone's daily use just like predictive texting and keyboard shortcuts.

We'll see. I do think it's going to need to appear on more devices. I just can't see smaller dev teams supporting something that's so niche at the moment.

On top of that, I'm only mobile with my laptop maybe 10-15% of the time. It's more of a mobile workstation so although I've put in extra time these last few days (new toy) I won't be using the Touch Bar much beyond screen lock in my normal work day (which is minor interaction but it's more convenient than the hotkey combo because I usually remember to lock the screen after standing up.)

I'm actually seeing a lot of people complain about how loud the keyboard is. It's funny to me because I hadn't even thought of that. My main keyboard is a Filco mechanical with blue Cherry MX switches. It sounds like a typewriter, lol.

 

[monkeydax]

Why is battery life so bad

????

 

[Beavix]

Why is battery life so bad

Because they made the batteries smaller. A stupid decision.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I'm testing now. First thing I notice is that this opening hatch and the back of the hinge are sharp enough to cut through skin. The corners of opening hatch can cut you if you were to accidentally push your hand across them.

 

[cult hero]

After another full day on the laptop by itself I gotta say, I find myself using the Touch Bar more and more for little things. I don't think anyone out there is going to be able to give an honest assessment of this thing for a little while. I don't think anyone outside of Apple has had access to this hardware long enough to really have an understanding of how it integrates into their workflow.