So what's the consensus on 2018?

[Viper-FFM]

Just my POV and experience: I come from a lat 2013 13'' pro which still suits me fine.

I had ordered and received the 2,6GhZ 15'' model and returned it after a few days, with trying out the new update an ordered the base version which came a week later, as performance is on paar with the mid-tier model.

I will return this aswell. Why? First of all, the battery doesnt last as long as my 5 year old MacBook does...second of all: It gets intensely hot. Working with it, laying on your couch, is nearly impossible. As soon as you hit it with the slightest workload (ONE xls file or Youtube or Safari or whatever), CPU temperature will stabilize in the 60 to 70s, which makes it uncomfortable as long as you dont have it standing on your desk. And that's the point: If i cant use this 3000$ machine in a mobile scenario im better of buying an iMac instead with an iPad as addition.

I'll wait for the "budget" MacBooks that come in September and hope for a low-powered CPU. It would still be a lot faster than my old 2013 model.

 

[Poki]

To add insult to the injury it:
- is 300$ more expensive
- runs in the background 24/7 draining the battery
- stops any programmers who use the ESC key often dead in their tracks
- cannot be turned off when you want it (eg watching a movie in the dark), being forced to wait a minute or so for the turn-off

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1". At least in German and UK layouts, no one ever uses that key, not sure about US keyboards though. This has the added benefit of giving you a much larger esc key compared to previous MacBook Pros.

Apart from that, the Touch Bar does have some invaluable advantages, like allowing you to change brightness even when you are in a game that for some odd reason doesn't allow the screen brightness to be changed by the usual function keys. Or being able to choose between controlling the current video playback or iTunes playback, whichever you prefer. There are a lot of small quality of life improvements the Touch Bar brings to the table, and I'm really starting to appreciate it.

 

[ascender]

Best laptop EVAH!

Or the worst... and Apple are doomed.

Depends who you ask really and your experience will undoubtedly be somewhere in between those two extremes. It can be difficult to get a balanced view online just after a product launch, so I guess you just need to do your own research and make a decision. There's lots of well written reviews out there and you always have the 14 day return policy if its not for you.

 

[RobbieTT]

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1". At least in German and UK layouts, no one ever uses that key, not sure about US keyboards though. This has the added benefit of giving you a much larger esc key compared to previous MacBook Pros.

Larger still as the unlit blank space to the left of the soft escape key is also a functioning escape key. Even if the 'esc' is lit on the touch bar a press on this invisible bit will cause the 'esc' to flash in acknowledgment.

 

[maflynn]

Best laptop EVAH!

My 2012 still holds that title

I do like my 2018 model, but its not perfect, temps are a little high, the keyboard has me worried a bit and that trackpad is ginormous for no reason

As I frequently said I owned a Razer (and returned it), and I happened to pop into a MS store over the weekend. I checked out the razer now that I've been back on my mac for almost a month. All I can say is the MBPs display puts the Razer's to shame. I'm really happy with my MBP

 

[ascender]

My 2012 still holds that title

It was the 11" Macbook Air for me!

 

[Ma2k5]

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1". At least in German and UK layouts, no one ever uses that key, not sure about US keyboards though. This has the added benefit of giving you a much larger esc key compared to previous MacBook Pros.

Apart from that, the Touch Bar does have some invaluable advantages, like allowing you to change brightness even when you are in a game that for some odd reason doesn't allow the screen brightness to be changed by the usual function keys. Or being able to choose between controlling the current video playback or iTunes playback, whichever you prefer. There are a lot of small quality of life improvements the Touch Bar brings to the table, and I'm really starting to appreciate it.

Remapping isn't great because of muscle memory - and then if you start working on an external keyboard, or a windows machine etc, you are now pressing "`" instead of escape. It isn't a good solution for devs.

The positives you mentioned, are what I call occasional niceties at best and trust me no one is against having occasional niceties (unfortunately most of them are "meh"), but when the cost is productivity it is really not acceptable.

If you don't need to use F keys often, I can see this having no issues at all. But even then from what I read, you have to deal with occasional crashes/glitches 2 years since implementation?

 

[afir93]

To add insult to the injury it:
- is 300$ more expensive
- runs in the background 24/7 draining the battery
- stops any programmers who use the ESC key often dead in their tracks
- cannot be turned off when you want it (eg watching a movie in the dark), being forced to wait a minute or so for the turn-off

And perhaps most importantly, even you really really try to make good use of the touch bar and master it, your skills will be totally incompatible with MacBook Air, regular MacBook, base 13'' MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, iMac Pro, Mac Pro and all existing Windows and Linux laptops and PCs.

Some of that is false though.

(1) Any source for the "$300 more expensive"? I presume you are saying this because the 2016/17 nonTB was $300 cheaper than the respective entry-level TB, but they also have a significant difference in CPU (15w vs 28w one), only one instead of two fans, no T1/T2 chip and only 2 instead of 4 ports. You can look all across the Mac lineup and will see that CPU upgrades aren't cheap than $150-200, which means the TB factors into that price difference with maybe $50-100.

(2) Actually not true. The Touch Bar dim after 60 seconds of inactivity and turn off after 75 seconds of inactivity (which is, ironically, one of my biggest gripes with it so far as I wish we could adjust that time to something longer). So if you don't use your MBP for even just a few minutes, it won't run in the background anymore.

Also, the energy consumption of the Touch Bar is very low to begin with. Think of how comparatively little energy the MBP screen itself consumes (compared to CPU/GPU/etc.), then think of 1/30 of that value to compensate for the height of the TB, then think of 4/5 of that to compensate for the width of the TB, then think of maybe 1/3 of that because a lot of the TB is usually black or very darkish (where OLED doesn't consume as much energy), then put another 1/2 or so behind that because the TB dims much faster than the screen. That's not an awful lot of energy consumption you are left with.

(3) As Poki and some others pointed out, it's easy to remap the escape key to a physical button on the keyboard, for example the one right below the digital escape one which barely requires any retraining for touch typists. (That said, I went into my purchase expecting to be annoyed at the digital escape key because so many people said so, but the reality is that I got used to it very fast. It feels different, sure, but barely any worse than a physical one.)

(4) Plays into my second point. Personally I don't think it's an issue for it to be visible for one minute before the turnoff when watching a 2 hour movie, seeing as how subtle it is, but that's up to personal preference I suppose. I'm rather annoyed by the converse – that you cannot have the TB remain on during the entirety of a movie or video. It'd be nice to always see the position and remaining time without them having to obstruct what's on-screen.

(5) About your last point I totally agree, you make a great point here why the Touch Bar should come to desktop Macs aswell sooner or later in the form of a "Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar" or something along those lines. When I'm on my iMac, there are a number of situations where I now actually miss having a Touch Bar.

 

[maflynn]

Apple could have integrated a display into the trackpad (activated by the Fn key or similar) instead and left the keyboard alone; THAT would have been far, far better than this half-baked emoji bar trash.

Another computer make did that, and while that implementation seems half-baked, I think an apple produced version would have been better. But Apple has hitched its ride on the touchpad, so we'll not see this on a mac.

 

[redheeler]

Oh, you're one of those ones who doesn't understand how "good enough" resolution works.


It's not an embarrassment at all. It's a case of Apple prioritising things that matter (contrast ratio, brightness, colour accuracy, etc.), rather than spec sheet racing on numbers that people understand easily, but don't actually matter.

Wanting a 3360x2100 physical resolution at $2,399 isn't unreasonable. Pixel count isn't everything, but it does make a difference.

I'll bet you want 4k on your phone display too, right?

Since when is 3360x2100 considered 4K?

 

[throAU]

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1".

You realise that the tilde key is actually ALSO used a LOT in unix (which is what MacOS is running on top of) yes? Both ~ (shortcut for "home directory") and ` (shell scripting) are used a lot by people like web developers and unix system administrators - along with ESC (in vi).

Certainly a LOT more than frickin' EMOJI characters.
[doublepost=1534296610][/doublepost]

Wanting a 3360x2100 physical resolution at $2,399 isn't unreasonable. Pixel count isn't everything, but it does make a difference.

Since when is 3360x2100 considered 4K?

2880x1800 on a 15 inch screen is probably higher pixel density than the 5k screen in the 27" imac, and is likely used at similar viewing distance when the 5k screen is on a typical desk.

Are you telling me that the 5k imac screen is not good enough?

Apple put more money into the things that matter with their displays (contrast, refresh rate, colour balance, etc.), and less on meaningless marketing numbers like pixel count above and beyond what you can see. There's plenty to dislike about the current macbook lineup, IMHO display is definitely not one of those things.

 

[redheeler]

2880x1800 on a 15 inch screen is probably higher pixel density than the 5k screen in the 27" imac, and is likely used at similar viewing distance when the 5k screen is on a typical desk.

The assumption is usually the smaller (or more portable) the display, the closer people tend to sit to it. Hence smartphones typically have much higher pixel densities, followed by tablets, followed by laptops, followed by desktops.

Regardless, Apple already admitted that 2880x1800 isn't enough, by shipping MacBook Pros with the 3360x2100 scaled resolution selected by default. It's sad the physical resolution was never improved to match.

A 3360x2100 MacBook Pro would be the Retina display equivalent of the 15" high-res MacBook Pro from 2010. So given that it's now 2018 and these machines are being sold for $2,399+, trying to justify 2880x1800 just seems absurd to me.

Apple put more money into the things that matter with their displays (contrast, refresh rate, colour balance, etc.), and less on meaningless marketing numbers like pixel count above and beyond what you can see. There's plenty to dislike about the current macbook lineup, IMHO display is definitely not one of those things.

Pixel count isn't meaningless, even on a Retina display. The MacBook Pro is not yet at the point where the human eye can't distinguish the individual pixels at a typical viewing distance (though obviously it varies from person to person).

Also, the refresh rate is still 60 Hz. 120 Hz would be a worthwhile improvement, but so far it hasn't happened.

 

[SDColorado]

It was the 11" Macbook Air for me!

2011 17" MacBook Pro for me. The darned thing still looks great and runs well and I still like the matte display, but I have a hard time adjusting back to that display after the retina. I will always have a soft spot for it

 

[throAU]

The assumption is usually the smaller (or more portable) the display, the closer people tend to sit to it. Hence smartphones typically have much higher pixel densities, followed by tablets, followed by laptops, followed by desktops.

Regardless, Apple already admitted that 2880x1800 isn't enough, by shipping MacBook Pros with the 3360x2100 scaled resolution selected by default. It's sad the physical resolution was never improved to match.
Also, the refresh rate is still 60 Hz. 120 Hz would be a worthwhile improvement, but so far it hasn't happened.

You're confusing UI element size with physical resolution.

Just because you need/want more desktop space, you do not need more resolution if the pixels are already small enough.

 

[bevsb2]

Best laptop EVAH!

My 15" 2018 is my best laptop EVAH. Love the speed, beautiful screen with True Tone, sound and keyboard.

 

[redheeler]

You're confusing UI element size with physical resolution.

Just because you need/want more desktop space, you do not need more resolution if the pixels are already small enough.

As I already said, the MacBook Pro is not yet at the point where the human eye can't distinguish the individual pixels at a typical viewing distance (though obviously it varies from person to person). Switching to 3360x2100 as the native resolution would make the display noticeably more crisp.

 

[groove-agent]

I'd wait at least 3-6 months to see how the new keyboard holds up.
[doublepost=1534393170][/doublepost]My best MBP was my 2012 cMBP. I could upgrade the RAM, swap out the HD for an SSD, and pull out the optical drive and put in a second HD. Plus it had an antiglare screen which was way easier on the eyes. It even boots faster than my 2015 retina.

Best laptop EVAH!

Or the worst... and Apple are doomed.

Depends who you ask really and your experience will undoubtedly be somewhere in between those two extremes. It can be difficult to get a balanced view online just after a product launch, so I guess you just need to do your own research and make a decision. There's lots of well written reviews out there and you always have the 14 day return policy if its not for you.

 

[SBruv]

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1". At least in German and UK layouts, no one ever uses that key, not sure about US keyboards though. This has the added benefit of giving you a much larger esc key compared to previous MacBook Pros.

Apart from that, the Touch Bar does have some invaluable advantages, like allowing you to change brightness even when you are in a game that for some odd reason doesn't allow the screen brightness to be changed by the usual function keys. Or being able to choose between controlling the current video playback or iTunes playback, whichever you prefer. There are a lot of small quality of life improvements the Touch Bar brings to the table, and I'm really starting to appreciate it.

My favourite Touch Bar implementation yet is the displaying of navigable waveforms when Quick Looking audio files in Finder. For the music producer auditioning through folders full of samples, this is really handy.

 

[afir93]

My favourite Touch Bar implementation yet is the displaying of navigable waveforms when Quick Looking audio files in Finder. For the music producer auditioning through folders full of samples, this is really handy.

I was actually decently surprised by how well the Touch Bar reacts to QuickLook. The waveform is great, the movie-timeline on the TB can be handy (especially in full-screen where you want the on-screen movie-controls to disappear), and the QuickLook implementation I like the most is having miniatures of the photos/pages there when viewing a document with multiple pages and stuff like that. When scrubbing through long PDFs, these off-screen previews can actually come in really handy, and I'm baffled why Apple only implemented them in QuickLook (and not in Preview for example).

 

[RobbieTT]

The esc key can be easily remapped to the key left to the "1" ....not sure about US keyboards though.

You realise that the tilde key is actually ALSO used a LOT in unix (which is what MacOS is running on top of) yes? Both ~ (shortcut for "home directory") and ` (shell scripting) are used a lot by people like web developers and unix system administrators - along with ESC (in vi).

He probably realises that the key to the left of his 1 key produces either a § or shifted to produce a ±.

By the way, you are also driving on the wrong side of the road.

 

[throAU]

He probably realises that the key to the left of his 1 key produces either a § or shifted to produce a ±.

By the way, you are also driving on the wrong side of the road.

Drive on the same side as you mate. Check my location.

 

[haralds]

Moved from a fully decked out mid 2012 (upgrade during the life cycle - 1TB disk an updated WiFi BLE card) to an I9/32/4TB. Ended up with the first one bricked due to a T2 issue, but more careful about bringing this one up step-by-step. Mainly using B7 Mojave now with a smaller container with High Sierra.
I really am beginning to like it. I think, even the ports are a good long term solution. Need to just ditch the old stuff.