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Reviews are out for the Macbook Pro with Touch Bar

maflynn said:
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.
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Yes it is upsetting, I have been waiting for this revision a long time. I am sure it will be more than capable as a machine, but at that price, and with very good Windows alternatives out there, it makes it a no-brainer for me not to invest in the touch-bar models, perhaps in a year or two. The thought of the experience being worse than my 2014 MacBook would hurt too much. Especially as my work flow is more CPU intensive, running VM's etc, the battery hit is likely to hit hard and the touch-bar is even less useful when using VM's.

I may still go ahead with the purchase of the non-touch, which although has nothing particularly exciting about it and I am probably better off with an alternative Windows system as I actually don't mind Windows 10, having an iPhone/Apple Watch sync with it easily could be worth it anyway.
 
Not to be presumptuous about your needs @Ma2k5, but that 13 non-touch is not much for performance. I went down to the Apple store the other day and commandeered one for some testing (loaded some 4K video into FCPX and went to town on render-heavy tasks). While I was quite impressed with it for the size, it still didn't strike me as much of a serious work machine.

It probably would have been cool for them to have the 13" touch specs and upgrades available in the non-touch. But such is the way of the Apple.
 
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I swear these tech reviewers don't actually know anything about computer technology.

Most of them don't even mention performance, and when they do it's some kind of vague comment like, performance was OK.

Like do a damn test! Run up the GPU and see if it chugs. Max out the processor on a render or something. Geeeeez.

EDIT: ahhh, Ars to the rescue
 
My GOD the Verge makes me cringe so bad. I don't know why I even click their links anymore. The other early reviews are at least readable, and Ars to the rescue as usual. But the Verge one sounds like it was written by a hipster who knows nothing about tech. I mean, had the reviewer even used a 13" MBP before? Performance is poor doing thins that the 13" was always bad at doing? Shocker...
 
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But there does seem to be a fairly consistent view forming on most of these features from the reviews I've read. Is underwhelming the right word though? They all seem to like the new keyboard, screen, weight, performance, the trackpad (albeit is more of the same).

The new ports are a good thing in terms of future-proofing but a legacy port or two would have been a much better idea. Nobody likes to see magsafe disappear....

The touchbar seems to be what we expected from new tech like this as well doesn't it? Some good, some bad, you can see the potential but its not quite there yet and its going to take some getting used to.

Are laptops and phones, tablets all at the same point now where there's nothing groundbreaking being released just now because current technology has been pushed as far as it can be in terms of making things as thin, light and powerful as they can be. Are we just treading water a bit waiting for some groundbreaking new technology to be developed?

I know the Surface Book has the detachable screen, but its not exactly cheaper and check the size of it in those pics where its sitting on top of the MacBook and looks like its twice as thick!
 
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jackoatmon said:
Not to be presumptuous about your needs @Ma2k5, but that 13 non-touch is not much for performance. I went down to the Apple store the other day and commandeered one for some testing (loaded some 4K video into FCPX and went to town on render-heavy tasks). While I was quite impressed with it for the size, it still didn't strike me as much of a serious work machine.

It probably would have been cool for them to have the 13" touch specs and upgrades available in the non-touch. But such is the way of the Apple.
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To be honest, due to me doing more coding/dev work rather than video editing etc, a 15w CPU is actually powerful enough for my needs. Sure the compile times might be slightly longer, but the effects aren't similar to having a laggy mess as it is when you do 4K video editing etc.

My main reason for considering the higher end models was, for longevity, value for money and touch ID if I am honest. More CPU power is always welcome of course, especially when I work with large data-sets, but it isn't the be all and end all. But for me, good battery life is very important I guess and I can't deal with such a price increase when coupled with lower battery capacity.

So right now, I am deciding between the 13" non-touch and those in similar league to that (XPS 13, Spectre x360, Surface Book?), or perhaps wait on a refresh of the XPS 15 which would likely come equipped with KL Quad cores and a 10 series GPU, but I am tired of waiting so, it is going to be one of the former by the end of the week.

JL are doing a really good deal of £1070 for the base XPS 13 with 3 year warranty + 3 year accidental cover, which is pretty insane if you think that I can just go to a retail store for any issues (rather than wait on Dell), which is a bit cheaper than a rMB 13" non-touch with Applecare after student discount coming to ~£1420. With the FHD model, I think I would probably get real world usage of 12+ hours easily on the XPS 13, which is quite enticing. 1080p is probably fine for what I do at that screen size and MATTE screen is a nice touch.
 
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iMore has their review out, quite in depth. Rene has done a great job at providing a lot of details. Not surprising (for iMore), its an overly positive review. I'm not knocking it, but pointing out that Rene rarely criticizes Apple. Still I like what he had to say for the most part.
 
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I think adding touchID is the most important feature of the touchbar as it should mean a lot more consistency in Apple's password & security model. Its always been frustrating that iTunes Store doesn't integrate with keychain and so you'd either have to store a secure password somewhere & copy/paste it or just have a simple password. If it wasn't for the touchbar I'd have expected to see some sort of new power button with it integrated on all their laptops and its still a bit strange they haven't.
 
NoWayBehind said:
Holy crap, Ars Technica says the MacBook Pro 15 with dGPU deactivated lasts 15 1/2 hours on Wifi with 200 nits. That's insanely good and should be the case for most scenarios like office, PDF and browsing (I think) About half that time with dGPU always on.
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One thing I found interesting about the ArsTechnica review was about the 15w vs 28w comparison:

Theoretically, the 28W processor may be less prone to throttling under load than the 15W processor, but in practice that will depend heavily on how you’re using the system. If you’re only stress testing the CPU and not the GPU, both systems are able to maintain their peak clock speeds pretty much indefinitely—both laptops maintained their peak dual-core Turbo Boost speeds of 2.9GHz and 3.1GHz under 100 percent load for 30 minutes. It was only when I also fired up a GPU benchmark that I saw signs of the 15W model throttling more heavily than the 28W model, and even then the differences were small.
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Another case for the non-touch perhaps?
 
As so often, the only really useful review is the Arstechnica one. Most of the others I saw are just lazy write-ups, without any technical details or in-depth tests. But even in the Arstechnica case, I would have liked to see some more detailed exploration of the GPU (using Windows of course).
 
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yeah i don't think these reviewers actually do anything with computers that requires this kind of componentry

it's like, wow, yet another laptop that's perfectly suitable for web browsing and mail and whatever else journalists use

just like every laptop for the past 15 years

and here are some abstract meaningless geekbench numbers wow!

we're so disappointed in the CPU even though we haven't shown you its limitations in any meaningful context, and probably have no idea what the numbers even mean


ok dudes, but like, what happens when you actually do real stuff in the real world that taxes the components?
like, turn on some programs and play around with high-intensity features and tell us if it works or not!

guess we just gotta wait for it to get in the hands of the target demographic, and see reviews done by 3D animators and indie film directors and stuff
 
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So I've watched and read a few more reviews and Ars Technica seems to be the best, yet.
Still not as in-depth as I would like to, but way better than most of the other reviews telling you basically what you could've found out in a 5 minute Google search without even touching the machine.

edit: Hahahaha, what the f is up with the WIRED review. There is literally no real content at all, he could've made the video right after the event.
 
NoWayBehind said:
Holy crap, Ars Technica says the MacBook Pro 15 with dGPU deactivated lasts 15 1/2 hours on Wifi with 200 nits. That's insanely good and should be the case for most scenarios like office, PDF and browsing (I think) About half that time with dGPU always on.
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so without dGPU activated, the 15" can last 10 hours or not?
 
Regarding the Ars Technica review, it gives the 13" w/o TB as a Cinebench score of 35.75 FPS and the 13" w/ TB as 33.21 FPS.

Given the iris 550 is meant to be above the 540 how is this happening?
 
From Engadget:
I think the reason some of these use cases work is that many of the things I just mentioned -- picking emoji, accepting spellcheck suggestions -- are things we're already used to doing on touchscreens. Using iPhones for as long as nine years has prepared loyal Apple fans well for this moment. At the same time, I can understand why Apple didn't go all in with a full touchscreen: macOS simply wasn't designed to be finger friendly. Still, that didn't stop me from poking the screen in vain several times, with the expectation that the Mac would behave the same as any Windows laptop I've tested recently.
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So, after admitting that he tried tapping the screen and noting that smartphone users have been using touchscreens for nine years, the reason Apple didn't go 'all in' with a full touchscreen is that MacOS wasn't designed to be finger friendly.

Then design MacOS to be finger friendly!

In my opinion, when Macs are touchscreen, we'll look back on this touch bar and all question why Apple tried this odd little strip.
 
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geachy92 said:
Regarding the Ars Technica review, it gives the 13" w/o TB as a Cinebench score of 35.75 FPS and the 13" w/ TB as 33.21 FPS.

Given the iris 550 is meant to be above the 540 how is this happening?
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That is bizarre.

To be honest the 13" touch bar isn't looking like it is worth the upgrade over the base non-touch, especially when it's battery capacity got neutered all the way down to 49kW.

I think the 15" could still be a decent buy.
 
NoWayBehind said:
Holy crap, Ars Technica says the MacBook Pro 15 with dGPU deactivated lasts 15 1/2 hours on Wifi with 200 nits. That's insanely good and should be the case for most scenarios like office, PDF and browsing (I think) About half that time with dGPU always on.
Click to expand...
Sweet! Even 7.5 hours with the dGPU running is impressive!
 
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