The most interesting review I found:
As a developer myself, I can only add my voice to his views. These days I write Go (compiled) and Ruby (interpreted) code, fully within Terminal (no GUI like him) with Vim and tmux (dotfiles). Backend services so no browser client either. And this rMB is perfect for my use.
Keyboard: I'm efficient with the new keyboard, feedback clicks are more satisfying and it feels more accurate (less misses) than the old MacBook Pro/Air/Bluetooth keyboards and typing feels faster now that I get quicker feedback from each press. I would never have anticipated this part to be this MacBook's strong point, such a good surprise. Huge improvement where I thought Apple had already reached perfection.
Display: At stock scaling, 13 pt font in Terminal, there's enough space to split the screen horizontally evenly enough to have an 80 column text editor on one side. Cramped vertically in Safari but I get by toggling the bookmarks bar as needed. Not disappointed by the contrast ratio, to say the least. Blacks are eye-soothingly deep, just right for my white on black themes.
CPU: No struggle while writing text, obviously. Snappy enough that I don't wait while compiling my code (small code bases). I did feel the CPU struggle when pegged at 100% for long periods of time while compiling a bunch of packages I depend on via Homebrew but those were one-offs anyway.
SSD: Not a throughput champion despite the 4 lanes of PCIe (at 2.0 speeds) at just 750 MB/s reads, 450 MB/s writes. But not too shabby and wasn't the bottleneck while compiling programs chock-full of small source files. Grepping through huge numbers of directories, git log navigation and CtrlP refreshes feel instant.
Battery: I run the bare minimum number of processes, check that everything that should idle actually does, switch to Safari while on battery, manually fixed brightness to the minimum acceptable and wow do these pay off. Spent a full night of coding (at 50% brightness in a dark room) with SoundCloud in a Safari tab, it lasted 8 hours with that one tab being the most power hungry. Without Safari like today at the library (at 75% brightness in a bright room), 30% went away in 3 hours so I'd guess 9-9.5 hours total mitigating the initial stuck-at-100%. Even better at 50%:
Audio: I had high expectations with all the reviews praising them. Well, wow, they blew me away when I heard the man's voice during the install process. I prefer them over those of the 15" rMBP, the frequency range sounds wider, most notably the bass. Now I can actually enjoy music not feeling the need to plug in headphones.
Ergonomy: Enough said about the form factor and exemplary build-quality. In cruising use, keyboard and bottom stay at ambient temperature, not even slightly warm. Silence really is golden and I'm reminded of it now that I don't fear an upcoming fan noise, no matter how quiet. Any non-0 dB reaction to my actions is enough to make me self-conscious about what I do and their consequences noise-wise. Concern gone.
A hacker's dream notebook IMO (not everybody's opinion). Apple nailed it, plain and simple, I don't know of another way to put it.
As a developer myself, I can only add my voice to his views. These days I write Go (compiled) and Ruby (interpreted) code, fully within Terminal (no GUI like him) with Vim and tmux (dotfiles). Backend services so no browser client either. And this rMB is perfect for my use.
Keyboard: I'm efficient with the new keyboard, feedback clicks are more satisfying and it feels more accurate (less misses) than the old MacBook Pro/Air/Bluetooth keyboards and typing feels faster now that I get quicker feedback from each press. I would never have anticipated this part to be this MacBook's strong point, such a good surprise. Huge improvement where I thought Apple had already reached perfection.
Display: At stock scaling, 13 pt font in Terminal, there's enough space to split the screen horizontally evenly enough to have an 80 column text editor on one side. Cramped vertically in Safari but I get by toggling the bookmarks bar as needed. Not disappointed by the contrast ratio, to say the least. Blacks are eye-soothingly deep, just right for my white on black themes.
CPU: No struggle while writing text, obviously. Snappy enough that I don't wait while compiling my code (small code bases). I did feel the CPU struggle when pegged at 100% for long periods of time while compiling a bunch of packages I depend on via Homebrew but those were one-offs anyway.
SSD: Not a throughput champion despite the 4 lanes of PCIe (at 2.0 speeds) at just 750 MB/s reads, 450 MB/s writes. But not too shabby and wasn't the bottleneck while compiling programs chock-full of small source files. Grepping through huge numbers of directories, git log navigation and CtrlP refreshes feel instant.
Battery: I run the bare minimum number of processes, check that everything that should idle actually does, switch to Safari while on battery, manually fixed brightness to the minimum acceptable and wow do these pay off. Spent a full night of coding (at 50% brightness in a dark room) with SoundCloud in a Safari tab, it lasted 8 hours with that one tab being the most power hungry. Without Safari like today at the library (at 75% brightness in a bright room), 30% went away in 3 hours so I'd guess 9-9.5 hours total mitigating the initial stuck-at-100%. Even better at 50%:
Audio: I had high expectations with all the reviews praising them. Well, wow, they blew me away when I heard the man's voice during the install process. I prefer them over those of the 15" rMBP, the frequency range sounds wider, most notably the bass. Now I can actually enjoy music not feeling the need to plug in headphones.
Ergonomy: Enough said about the form factor and exemplary build-quality. In cruising use, keyboard and bottom stay at ambient temperature, not even slightly warm. Silence really is golden and I'm reminded of it now that I don't fear an upcoming fan noise, no matter how quiet. Any non-0 dB reaction to my actions is enough to make me self-conscious about what I do and their consequences noise-wise. Concern gone.
A hacker's dream notebook IMO (not everybody's opinion). Apple nailed it, plain and simple, I don't know of another way to put it.
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