I've been messing with this 2.6/1tb/460 for a couple days.
My observations, unfettered:
- I haven't had any of the GPU or screen discolouration issues.
- This is very personal, but I love the keyboard. I have had carpal tunnel issues for many years and the low profile of the keys, the nice soft clicking and the easy travel is a huge improvement over any other keyboard Apple has produced. Logitech still makes way better keyboards for people with wrist injuries (the best, for my money), but this is the best laptop keyboard I've ever used. However, there's just one big rub about using it:
- I hate the huge trackpad so much. Hands down (pardon the pun) the worst thing about this machine. It's the one thing that has me wondering if I can really use this as my main machine. As far as I can tell my palms mustn't have the shape it's programmed to reject, because every single even minor brush causes the cursor to fly around, leaving me typing at an unnatural angle constantly to avoid it. It's just way too big. It gets in the way of everything, even Touch Bar use, since your palm can brush it when reaching up. Total garbage, and I really hope there's some software fixing incoming.
- iTunes is slow as molasses. Patently unusable. Beach ball with every click. No idea if that's my machine, something about the size of my music collection (gigantic), or what, but it's a no-go so I'm looking for a better player.
- Performance in heavy visual art tasks is absolutely astonishing. Amazing. Futuristic and actually kinda hard to believe. This machine is at least as fast as any other computer I've ever used in FCPX, Ai, Ps and Id, except it makes sooooo much less noise and heat under load. It's a dream. The SSD, the hardware acceleration, everything – Apple has absolutely nailed the performance-to-TDP ratio thing in a way I honestly figured was many years away.
- Touch bar is so buggy. It's just constantly glitching out graphically. Boxes overlapping and sliding out of place and stuff. The UX of it is an indecipherable mess, the same icon gets used in different places for different things. I haven't gotten it to do any of the fun stuff in Ps we saw in the keynote. It doesn't seem to work in CC for me yet. I just don't use it at all, except in one very important and ultra useful context: as a timeline resizing tool in FCPX. Huuuuge timesaver there. So much less clicking around. FCPX is the only app that it seems to work properly and make sense in. Anyways: touch bar; not even a beta product; still in alpha development; why the hell is this in the market for the general public? I know it's only been out for a few weeks, but FFS, Apple, did anyone over there do any real-world testing with this before it hit the market?!
- The Thunderbolt 3 ports are great. I put one cord in from my HooToo hub at my desk and suddenly my lappy turns into a full workstation with a million peripherals and a huge second screen. The TB3 haters will come around I think. It's just so slick. I don't have kids or a dog, so MagSafe has never been anything but an inconvenience for me though (stay plugged in, darn thing!), so that's an issue some may never get past.
- The design is amazing. The size and shape and build quality is super high end. It just feels like an indestructible brick from the future. It's so dense and cool. The grey is also a much better colour for a laptop than silver. It gets out of the way, and focuses your attention on the INCREDIBLE screen, which brings me to the best thing about this laptop:
- INCREDIBLE SCREEN. The colour gamut is gaaaahhhhhhhhh so nice for a laptop. Unreal.
- Conclusion: lots of wacky issues, most of which could potentially be resolved with updates (?), but in spite of the general jankiness, it's overall by far the best laptop I've ever used.
My observations, unfettered:
- I haven't had any of the GPU or screen discolouration issues.
- This is very personal, but I love the keyboard. I have had carpal tunnel issues for many years and the low profile of the keys, the nice soft clicking and the easy travel is a huge improvement over any other keyboard Apple has produced. Logitech still makes way better keyboards for people with wrist injuries (the best, for my money), but this is the best laptop keyboard I've ever used. However, there's just one big rub about using it:
- I hate the huge trackpad so much. Hands down (pardon the pun) the worst thing about this machine. It's the one thing that has me wondering if I can really use this as my main machine. As far as I can tell my palms mustn't have the shape it's programmed to reject, because every single even minor brush causes the cursor to fly around, leaving me typing at an unnatural angle constantly to avoid it. It's just way too big. It gets in the way of everything, even Touch Bar use, since your palm can brush it when reaching up. Total garbage, and I really hope there's some software fixing incoming.
- iTunes is slow as molasses. Patently unusable. Beach ball with every click. No idea if that's my machine, something about the size of my music collection (gigantic), or what, but it's a no-go so I'm looking for a better player.
- Performance in heavy visual art tasks is absolutely astonishing. Amazing. Futuristic and actually kinda hard to believe. This machine is at least as fast as any other computer I've ever used in FCPX, Ai, Ps and Id, except it makes sooooo much less noise and heat under load. It's a dream. The SSD, the hardware acceleration, everything – Apple has absolutely nailed the performance-to-TDP ratio thing in a way I honestly figured was many years away.
- Touch bar is so buggy. It's just constantly glitching out graphically. Boxes overlapping and sliding out of place and stuff. The UX of it is an indecipherable mess, the same icon gets used in different places for different things. I haven't gotten it to do any of the fun stuff in Ps we saw in the keynote. It doesn't seem to work in CC for me yet. I just don't use it at all, except in one very important and ultra useful context: as a timeline resizing tool in FCPX. Huuuuge timesaver there. So much less clicking around. FCPX is the only app that it seems to work properly and make sense in. Anyways: touch bar; not even a beta product; still in alpha development; why the hell is this in the market for the general public? I know it's only been out for a few weeks, but FFS, Apple, did anyone over there do any real-world testing with this before it hit the market?!
- The Thunderbolt 3 ports are great. I put one cord in from my HooToo hub at my desk and suddenly my lappy turns into a full workstation with a million peripherals and a huge second screen. The TB3 haters will come around I think. It's just so slick. I don't have kids or a dog, so MagSafe has never been anything but an inconvenience for me though (stay plugged in, darn thing!), so that's an issue some may never get past.
- The design is amazing. The size and shape and build quality is super high end. It just feels like an indestructible brick from the future. It's so dense and cool. The grey is also a much better colour for a laptop than silver. It gets out of the way, and focuses your attention on the INCREDIBLE screen, which brings me to the best thing about this laptop:
- INCREDIBLE SCREEN. The colour gamut is gaaaahhhhhhhhh so nice for a laptop. Unreal.
- Conclusion: lots of wacky issues, most of which could potentially be resolved with updates (?), but in spite of the general jankiness, it's overall by far the best laptop I've ever used.
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