notebook review up.."Apple MacBook Pro Review (2016): Touch of Class and Not Much Else"

[magbarn]

This review confirmed my suspicions about my 2016 TB MBP...
http://www.notebookreview.com/noteb...ok-pro-review-2016-touch-class-not-much-else/

QUICK TAKE
The new MacBook Pro has gone from a high-end notebook for working professionals to an overpriced family PC.

harsh..
12.2.2 did not improve my battery life, and it still doesn't sleep properly after reinstalling macos.

As we prepared this review for publication Apple released a new update to macOS Sierra (10.12.2) which actually removes the “time remaining” estimate from the new MacBook Pro. We ran several new battery life tests and there is no clear improvement in battery life. At the time of this writing Apple seems to have fixed the issue with poor battery life and a wildly fluctuating battery life indicator by removing the visual indication of your remaining battery life. That’s not what our editors call a “fix” but that’s the closest thing to a solution that Apple has offered so far.

This is exactly what I feel about my >$3000+ 2016 rMBP after over 4 weeks of use:

the Apple MacBook Pro feels less like a “professional” tool and more like an overpriced MacBook. That is perhaps the biggest failing of this notebook; the MacBook Pro line is supposed to be feature-packed and notably superior to the standard MacBook because it’s designed for working professionals. This isn’t supposed to be a glorified family PC … but that is exactly what the MacBook Pro has become.

Thanks Apple for taking so long to deliver my 2016 that it falls in your holiday return period. It's going back this weekend...

 

[Adergaard]

Ouch!

 

[spacebro]

3 out of 5 stars, not bad.

 

[Carilyn]

As a professional photographer, I'm loving my new MBP. Wouldn't change a thing actually.

 

[MareLuce]

How I feel about my >$4000 2TB 2016 rMBP after using it since Nov 19:

I totally agree with all of the reviews Pros:

Pros:

• Beautiful Retina screen
• Large touchpad and Touch ID are convenient
• Thinner and lighter
• Good built-in speakers
• Reasonably speedy performance for normal tasks

I either disagree or do not care about the cons cited.

Cons:

• Poor battery life
• Touch Bar gets in the way (Function keys are better)
• Limited ports (USB Type-C only)
• No built-in SD card reader

For example:
- I love the USB-C ports. So much bandwidth. They can be anything I want them to be. USB-C = USB-Chameleon. Truly brilliant!
- I bought the 2TB version so I don't need the built-in SD card reader for extra storage. I'm not a photographer so I don't need it for that reason.
- I don't care too much about poor battery life, though of course I'd prefer it be better.
- I like the Touch Bar.


However, what's killing me is Mac OS.

This is my first MacOS laptop. As a Thinkpad / Windows user, the critical thing I perceived to be true about Mac OS "it just works" is not at all true. I've had multiple "panics", the mouse cursor disappears and hibernates, lots of app crashes.

Moreover, it's not handling anything too "strenuous" yet, because it's not my main machine yet, because I can't do a Time Machine backup yet , because of the disappearing mouse cursor.

It's been eons since my main work Thinkpad running Windows showed any instability whatsoever. I literally can't remember when was my last blue screen or problem.

Gah!

 

[keysofanxiety]

The same review confirmed my thoughts on the MBP haters: that a lot of their points are recycled garbage and only demonstrates their stubbornness to change.

'limited ports' and no SD Card reader. Well that's odd, because if you had an SD Card reader, that's all it's good for. Just wasting space if you don't use it. Instead you've now got an extra port that can be transformed into whatever you want. So frankly that's far less limiting.

Plus just one of the TB3 ports can power your entire workstation — external monitors, instruments, DACs, and charge the machine at the same time. All with one cable being plugged in, not 10. Yet they say it's now an overpriced family PC. Funny, as they also gripe that you can't charge an iPhone natively without a dongle. I wonder which of the above two situations would apply to a professional.

And finally, this sealed the deal: "While the ability to secure your laptop with your fingerprint is extremely useful, Windows PCs have been using fingerprint scanners for more than a decade." As if they're vaguely comparable.

An absolute toilet of a review, full of inconsistencies and contradictions. They're trying to mould the nMBP into something it isn't (a 17" 2011 MBP) and reviewing based on that. Though if you begin to think differently and use it as the hub for a static workstation you have, as was demoed in the keynote, then it all makes sense and it's much better at doing that than any previous gen. I believe that time will agree with Apple's choice and it will prove to be the right one for professionals.

 

[HiMarkus]

This review confirmed my suspicions about my 2016 TB MBP...
http://www.notebookreview.com/noteb...ok-pro-review-2016-touch-class-not-much-else/



harsh..
12.2.2 did not improve my battery life, and it still doesn't sleep properly after reinstalling macos.



This is exactly what I feel about my >$3000+ 2016 rMBP after over 4 weeks of use:



Thanks Apple for taking so long to deliver my 2016 that it falls in your holiday return period. It's going back this weekend...

What a nonsense! It's really impressive how easy it is to manipulate people with unobjective garbage information like this. Please open your eyes and make yourself your own opinion. Go to the next Apple store or take a look at the benchmarks of the new Macbook Pro 15". If these benchmarks belong to family-notebooks, then I would like to see a professional notebook:

https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

 

[skids929]

Author lost me once he said that Lenovo 710 (and 910 for that matter) were making significant improvements with each generation. The 710 and the 910 were the same EXACT machine from gen to gen with the exception of processor update and a small screen bezel update. Whhoooopy!

Article is rubbish..And unless you've spent time with this machine and didn't just review it for a day or two, should refrain from commentary.

 

[Macalway]

Is this a Windows guy?

It's like the election. (did he mention hackers? )

 

[thesaint024]

Trying to be objective, but I have to agree with some of the posts. The reviewer is clearly a PC guy and thinks like one. More ports = more pro. Power means complexity. Battery life, no idea how he's testing. Like a lot of people on MR, he's looking for things to dislike and repeating the same ignorant, legacy loving comments I've already read. They place no value on experience or details, clear by his comparison of fingerprint ID features between WinPC and MBP.

MBP is expensive, and it's not for everyone. If he's writing for PC people looking to switch, he's highlighting some pain points. The battery life comment is unfair given my experience with PC battery life. Touch ID and touchbar comparisons to PC's? It's like talking about touch ID on the iPhone. Samsung and others may have come out with the features first, but frankly, they sucked. I've used touch ID on PC's. They weren't integrated at all, and they didn't work very well. He's missing the point about why Macs are so good. All the parts equal a greater whole. There's no extraneous spec sheet list features that have no use. There are always several on Win laptops. In the end, he's a PC guy. I have no problem if he doesn't want to change. Not my loss.

The best reviews are from people like me. People who regularly move between OS's for whatever reason. At that point, you can clearly see benefits to different platforms. Windows PC's have their uses and benefits. This guy is seeing things through a strictly WinPC viewpoint.

 

[Chase085]

I returned a non TB 13 for a TB13. Could the battery life be better? Yes.

However, the TB3 IS a real game changer. The ability to have effectively a universal port is amazing. A port that can provide power, act as a regular USB 3 PORT or connect a display. Finally, this port has given Macs a very powerful docking solution something they never really had.

Crying about the ports is BS, crying about dongles is BS.

 

[Z3man]

They got it wrong about the speaker grills as well, if they read the iFixit teardown they would know that they are not speaker grills, the holes don't even go right through the chassis, except for one small part at the bottom of the grill that has a small tweeter (or something similar). Most of the sound comes out of the air vents on the side of the MacBook.

 

[jerryk]

USB-C/TB-3 is the future. Right now people are going through the growing pains that comes with any new technology. But in a year or two people will wonder what the fuss was all about.

 

[tubeexperience]

The new MacBook Pro has gone from a high-end notebook for working professionals to an overpriced family PC.

MacBook Pro feels less like a “professional” tool and more like an overpriced MacBook. That is perhaps the biggest failing of this notebook; the MacBook Pro line is supposed to be feature-packed and notably superior to the standard MacBook because it’s designed for working professionals. This isn’t supposed to be a glorified family PC … but that is exactly what the MacBook Pro has become.

The things that make the new MacBook Pro appealing are the things that casual users looking for a family PC might like; a pretty screen, good speakers, snappy overall performance, and a design that’s thinner and lighter than the previous MacBook Pro. In short, Apple made a slightly better MacBook … and a worse MacBook Pro.

Pretty much the general feelings around here.

 

[Chase085]

USB-C/TB-3 is the future. Right now people are going through the growing pains that comes with any new technology. But in a year or two people will wonder what the fuss was all about.

It just an excuse to create stories nothing more. If this were some proprietary Apple port I could get the gripes, however this is a ports that now found on many phones now and many windows laptops and ultrabooks produced within the last year.

 

[skids929]

Trying to be objective, but I have to agree with some of the posts. The reviewer is clearly a PC guy and thinks like one. More ports = more pro. Power means complexity. Battery life, no idea how he's testing. Like a lot of people on MR, he's looking for things to dislike and repeating the same ignorant, legacy loving comments I've already read. They place no value on experience or details, clear by his comparison of fingerprint ID features between WinPC and MBP.

MBP is expensive, and it's not for everyone. If he's writing for PC people looking to switch, he's highlighting some pain points. The battery life comment is unfair given my experience with PC battery life. Touch ID and touchbar comparisons to PC's? It's like talking about touch ID on the iPhone. Samsung and others may have come out with the features first, but frankly, they sucked. I've used touch ID on PC's. They weren't integrated at all, and they didn't work very well. He's missing the point about why Macs are so good. All the parts equal a greater whole. There's no extraneous spec sheet list features that have no use. There are always several on Win laptops. In the end, he's a PC guy. I have no problem if he doesn't want to change. Not my loss.

The best reviews are from people like me. People who regularly move between OS's for whatever reason. At that point, you can clearly see benefits to different platforms. Windows PC's have their uses and benefits. This guy is seeing things through a strictly WinPC viewpoint.

Well said. And I agree the best reviews are from those who use both systems. Those who've laid down their own money and made a choice to invest both.

 

[tubeexperience]

About the battery life

Apple officially claims that the new MacBook Pro will deliver “up to 10 hours” of battery life while connected to Wi-Fi, but we couldn’t get more than about six hours of battery life out of this notebook even when we lowered the screen brightness to the minimum setting. The “time remaining” estimate that appears in the Touch Bar after you press the battery icon fluctuates far more wildly than any previous MacBook we’ve reviewed in recent memory. We’re not sure if this is due to the significantly brighter backlight in the new Retina Display or the way that the Intel processors scale power up and down based on current activity requirements … or if there is a much bigger problem with power management inside the latest MacBook Pro series.

As we prepared this review for publication Apple released a new update to macOS Sierra (10.12.2) which actually removes the “time remaining” estimate from the new MacBook Pro. We ran several new battery life tests and there is no clear improvement in battery life. At the time of this writing Apple seems to have fixed the issue with poor battery life and a wildly fluctuating battery life indicator by removing the visual indication of your remaining battery life. That’s not what our editors call a “fix” but that’s the closest thing to a solution that Apple has offered so far.

 

[Naimfan]

Unfortunately, I think the review is mostly correct.

Having lived with one now for a while, and it doesn't work for me. (15" base.) While I appreciate that USB-C may be the future, there's a lot of work I (and many others) have to do NOW. And let's not forget Apple said the same thing about Thunderbolt, and we're still waiting.

I can't stand the keyboard - it feels awful to me. And I came to hate the large trackpad - it did not reliably exclude "input" from my wrists.

The other fatal flaw for me was the lack of an SD slot. I keep my iTunes library on a Transcend Jetdrive Lite, and the lack of a slot would have required me to bump up to the 512 GB SSD for another $200, which I'm not willing to do since I think it's grossly overpriced for the value on offer to start with.

 

[Rafterman]

Function keys are better? Since when? I haven't seen an app use a function key since the 1990s.

 

[tubeexperience]

The 2016 MacBook "Pro" is now MacBook XL rather than MacBook Pro.

 

[thesaint024]

The 2016 MacBook "Pro" is now MacBook XL rather than MacBook Pro.

Get over yourself. "Pros" like yourself find this completely inadequate because you routinely use 64gb of ram. Yes, I've heard it already. This MBP is made for 95% of people, not a tough decision on who Apple should try to cater to. You self proclaimed "power users" can lament the loss of ports and power, but I highly doubt you or anyone else used the ports and the power to max capacity in past MBP's anyway. Go buy a Razer Blade (just in case you need the power) and be happy about it.

 

[tubeexperience]

Get over yourself. "Pros" like yourself find this completely inadequate because you routinely use 64gb of ram. Yes, I've heard it already. This MBP is made for 95% of people, not a tough decision on who Apple should try to cater to. You self proclaimed "power users" can lament the loss of ports and power, but I highly doubt you or anyone else used the ports and the power to max capacity in past MBP's anyway. Go buy a Razer Blade (just in case you need the power) and be happy about it.

Your strawman doesn't impress me.

I have never claimed that I "routinely use 64gb of ram".

 

[thesaint024]

Your strawman doesn't impress me.

I have never claimed that I "routinely use 64gb of ram".

Pretty sure you're the last person I'd want to impress. Why are you complaining about a neutered MBP that doesn't deserve the "Pro" moniker as if you can decide what that means. I make money on my MBP. Am I not a Pro too, or are you a marketing pro who thinks you know more than Apple on such a trivial naming convention? Why are you making snarky comments about the MBP? Please humor me and elaborate.

 

[magbarn]

For those who are happy for the new rMBP, the macbook AIR was perfect for your uses. Apple should've made these new MBP the new Air line and kept a separate Pro line . Now that Apple has decided to give us a new Macbook Air with higher MBP prices, they've essentially taken away that choice if we want to continue using MacOS.

 

[keysofanxiety]

For those who are happy for the new rMBP, the macbook AIR was perfect for your uses.

You can't be making silly statements like that, just because you don't personally like it.

What about the people who bought the 15" model with a 4GB dGPU, 16GB RAM, quad-core processor, and 2TB SSD with 3GB/s speeds? A MacBook Air wouldn't touch what they need to do. And there are plenty of satisfied customers who bought the top-spec BTO 15".