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The verge review is 95% touchbar and doesn't really focus on the hardware differences between the touchbar and no TB. :(
 
Yes, but then that's really the big thing people really want to see.

The verge confirms my apprehension, in that the touch bar can add complexity and doesn't always make your workflow simpler.

I think that is what most people think though. I really wish they would have compared the difference between the 13" no TB and 13" TB. Battery, Power, etc. I think a large group of us care about that the most. That is a pretty poor review to just say, "we already talked about the hardware in our 13" no touchbar review." Sure they did, but it is totally different hardware.
 
Doesn't sound much like a review when it even fails to mention what the battery life is like - noise/heat etc. No real comparisons to others on the market - tbh you don't learn anything you didn't already know, reading this review.

On top of that, the Verge video thingy was too hipster for me to stomach. But I'm old school, so I'll let you younger guys be the judge on that. :rolleyes:
 
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On top of that, the Verge thingy was too hipster for me to stomach. But I'm old school, so I'll let you younger guys be the judge on that. :rolleyes:
At least the Verge did add some battery life metrics, which was my main concern surrounding the new systems. It doesn't look that good?

I think the problem is, although the display using 30% less energy helps battery life, by cutting the battery capacity so much - battery used by applications (think CPU/GPU) rather than the display, will eat through the battery just as fast (minus a few % for efficiency of new CPU's).

I think this was Apples mistake, when it came to cutting battery capacity. Displays usually are a huge battery drain, but when you are in productivity mode, sometimes having a larger capacity is more important, as the display's energy saving isn't going to matter when your CPU is on high load due to calculations or what not.

So I am sure when it comes to battery bench marks, it will probably meet the hours standard on display-based tests (think running just a video and very light browsing). But I am guessing, for anything a bit more CPU heavy, it will be quite a lot worse than last years model.
 
Well I appreciate AppleInsider's review, because it certainly describes the pros and cons of the trackpad, keyboard and the touchbar.

I look forward to reading more reviews like this including from folks here.
 
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Haha the guy on the Verge says it's no good for 4K but he's using the 13" with the dinky little GPU and dual-core processor. What the hell was he expecting?

I'd love to see some reaction to the top-spec models for video work.
 
Those metrics seem all over the place, even by their admission

They will be all over the place depending on whether you are doing actual CPU intensive tasks or just display tasks - all in all, i think I will find it a downgrade in battery life from previous generations by a very noticeable margin.

I'll be honest, having read a few reviews, it seems somewhat disappointing on a whole - very much a beta-type product. I am sure it will be a great machine in a couple of years time, but right now, I would probably recommend a base rMBP 13" if someone had to buy one. Not sure the touch-bar models are worth it, yet...
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Haha the guy on the Verge says it's no good for 4K but he's using the 13" with the dinky little GPU and dual-core processor. What the hell was he expecting?

I'd love to see some reaction to the top-spec models for video work.

They have a section on the article of the performance on the 15" too, not that great either.
 
so yes, like 3d touch, the touchbar is in the beginning, probably in 1 year the touchbar will be a more "must have" feature than it is now. I really hated since 5 function keys were not uses for years, like esc and all 4 lightning buttons that for me and others are in most of the time useless since Apple has a perfect brightness sensor. So i love to have something customisable and not fix
 
the battery life from the new 15" MBP is better than late 2013 haswell 15" MBP, even in web i never could rich over 8.30
[doublepost=1479131355][/doublepost]reading some reviews, same deal like 2012 model, the display was gorgeous but lack for optical drive, for ethernet etc etc dongles dongles, and after some time was the best mac
 
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It seems the 13in is roughly averaged at 6-8 hours of battery life. I'm kind of upset by this, I may look into the new surface book which is getting up to 10-12 hours from what I'm reading in the surface Reddit.

We'll see.
 
They have a section on the article of the performance on the 15" too, not that great either.

Yeah but they don't even mention the specs. Obviously it's not going to work for 4K if they didn't put the Radeon 460 in it. I mean if it's the 450 or 455 she used, who cares. Those aren't made for that. But if the 460 wasn't adequate for 4K, Apple's got a problem.

Also I'm pretty suspicious when a reviewer says it was good for "short videos". The length of the video isn't really what impacts the performance lol. It's what you're doing in there – effects, opacities, overlays, motion graphics, titles, colour correction – that impacts the performance.
 
Battery life or the machine?

I think the machine on the whole.

- Battery life being worse is probably a huge factor in my thinking of the above statement.
- The keyboard, I am sure I can get used to, but it isn't really best in market I think and still too noisy. In previous years, MacBooks were universally acclaimed for great keyboards. Now we have to settle for Marmite.
- When I used the track pad of the non-touch, I think it is so large that it actually becomes an uncomfortable rest place for the hands. I thought I was the only one but I noticed other reviewers comment on this, when reviewing the non-touch.
- The Touch bar on the whole seems "meh". I mean even when reviewers mention when it had some use, it was on something so trivial that it didn't make up for all the times it was actually either a hassle, or just completely unused

I am happy with the ports, the screen and form factor and so fourth generally, just those above points really hit home for me. Battery life, keyboard, trackpad and screen were some of the main reasons I used a MacBook in the first place, and I feel everything bar the screen got worse or at best, stayed the same.
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Yeah but they don't even mention the specs. Obviously it's not going to work for 4K if they didn't put the Radeon 460 in it.

I am not sure that going from 450 to 460 will make that great of a difference. Wouldn't a task like this be very much CPU heavy - I mean the reviewer goes on to say that the task was easily managed by her desktop apple computer, which, unless I am wrong, doesn't have a great GPU either?
 
I think the machine on the whole.
I would agree with that assessment. I didn't want to put words in your mouth.

I've read/watched reviews from The Verge, Engadget, cNet and there seems to be a level of underwhelming experience.
The performance is good, but that's to be expected, but as a complete package I'm getting a ho hum vibe. I forget which review I read, but they basically said the new MBP is not for them.
 
they don't seem to be raving.

there's this feeling of "Apple could have done way better". and I guess they're right.
 
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Yeah but they don't even mention the specs. Obviously it's not going to work for 4K if they didn't put the Radeon 460 in it. I mean if it's the 450 or 455 she used, who cares. Those aren't made for that. But if the 460 wasn't adequate for 4K, Apple's got a problem.

Also I'm pretty suspicious when a reviewer says it was good for "short videos". The length of the video isn't really what impacts the performance lol. It's what you're doing in there – effects, opacities, overlays, motion graphics, titles, colour correction – that impacts the performance.

An iPad Pro can edit 4K video!! As advertised by APPLE! So if a machine as expensive as this one is without a 4K screen can't handle 4K video, it's an underpowered overpriced POS.
 
I am not sure that going from 450 to 460 will make that great of a difference. Wouldn't a task like this be very much CPU heavy - I mean the reviewer goes on to say that the task was easily managed by her desktop apple computer, which, unless I am wrong, doesn't have a great GPU either?

The desktops have pretty great GPUs for video editing if you upgrade them to top spec.

The GPU has a larger impact on video editing than CPU, in any program that's well programmed. And that dynamic will only increase over time as Avid and Adobe start to catch up with Apple in terms of hardware resource allocation.

The 460 is twice as powerful as the 450. That's going to make an enormous difference.
 
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