Really dislike the new keyboard, thinking of going to the 2015 model

[freelancer27]

Hi there,

I received my 2016 15 inch MacbookPro yesterday. The machine overall looks great (though I really do not get why they saw the urge to make the body even thinner) though what really bothers me is the keyboard.

It feels like a piece of garbage. Travel is too minimal, it is loud and just gives me a horrible experience.

How are others dealing with this?


Now in my desperation I have been looking at refurbished models that have the old body.


How would the following configurations compare:

2015:

• 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 (Crystalwell)
• 16GB of Onboard 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM
• 512GB PCIe-Based Flash Storage
• AMD Radeon R9 M370X Graphics (2GB GDDR5)
• 15.4" LED-Backlit IPS Retina Display
• 2880 x 1800 Native Resolution
• 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Thunderbolt 2, USB 3.0, HDMI
• Force Touch Trackpad
• Mac OS X El Capitan or macOS Sierra
  
  
  

2016:


• 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
• 16GB 2133MHz memory
• Radeon Pro 460 with 4GB memory
• 256GB PCIe-based SSD
• Four Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Touch Bar and Touch ID
• Force Touch trackpad
• FINAL CUT PRO 065-C171 NONE
• LOGIC PRO 065-C172 NONE
• Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
• Accessory Kit



I would be willing to take a 10-15% hit in CPU and GPU performance in order to have a better keyboard, more usable ports etc.


Thoughts?

 

[jerryk]

I have the 2015 15" model that you speced. It works well and has the classic keyboard which I find OK. I tried a rMB 12 and hating the keyboard.

With that said, it takes some time to get used to a keyboard. Maybe you should hang on for a week or so before deciding what to. Do a large amount of typing and see if you envision using the keyboard day after day.

 

[freelancer27]

I would be interested to understand the performance gap.

It is not just the keyboard itself it is a couple of other things:
* The bigger trackpad looses the little gap between the keyboard and the track pad. That was a perfect area to rest your thumbs, now your cursor moves around
* just have USB-C ports: requires one to buy and bring adapters which is cumbersome and can be expensive
* Missing mag charger, that is an awesome feature to avoid accidentally throwing your machine off the table

 

[xb2003]

The GPU should be quite a bit stronger in the 2016, but we don't know what kind of issues may be involved, such as throttling or even failure. CPU performance between the two are very similar. The 2016 has more peripheral bandwidth and can better drive 5k monitors (the 2015 uses both miniDPs, while the 16 puts both DP streams through a single TB3 connection).

The SSD is faster in the 2016, but it was already so fast in the 2015 that I really don't see why that makes much difference. The RAM is clocked higher, but again you'll never notice the difference.

I bought my 2015 a few months ago knowing full well I might regret it, but as of now I don't. I have not used a 2016, so it's possible I could fall in love.. but I'm not, at this point, going to spend the money to find out.