Thinking of Returning What can we expect later this year?

[wolfaaron]

I bought a MacBook Pro 13" with a touchbar after my MacBook Pro 15" 2011 died on me back in January (it is with Apple but am not sure if it will be fixed). I bought it back in January 26 and have been using it daily ever since. There have been several issues that are making me want to return it and waiting for the next one to come out later into the year.

1. The battery life is disappointing and it never seems to go beyond 5 hours even when I'm just listening to music and writing/testing some code on Xcode.

2. The storage upgrade options were very expensive and so I got 256 gb because that's the most affordable one offered through Amazon.

3. The same issue with the RAM, I got 8gb because the upgrade options were too expensive and Amazon only offered the base specs.

Is anyone out there waiting to upgrade their Macs but have decided not to upgrade to this model? I have only owned two Macs in my life (Late 2011 and Late 2016) so I'm not familiar with the way Apple introduces new Macs. Can I expect the next lineup of Macs to be more affordable and more powerful? Or will I be even more disappointed if I return this Mac and get the next gen?

 

[lambertjohn]

New MacBooks are coming later this year. Hopefully they'll get all the bugs worked out with round two of this laptop. If it was me, I'd wait for the next generation. But I'm not a big fan of the 2016 Macbook Pro--crappy keyboard, no legacy ports, bad battery life, expensive--so take my advice with a grain of salt. Either way, it's your hard-earned money!

 

[wolfaaron]

New MacBooks are coming later this year. Hopefully they'll get all the bugs worked out with round two of this laptop. If it was me, I'd wait for the next generation. But I'm not a big fan of the 2016 Macbook Pro--crappy keyboard, no legacy ports, bad battery life, expensive--so take my advice with a grain of salt. Either way, it's your hard-earned money!

Thanks for that input. I'm not a fan of the keyboard either but you get used to it after a couple hours of use. The lack of legacy ports was a little frustrating as well but luckily I don't use them a lot but I got a hub anyway in case I ever find myself needing one.

I agree that it's up to me because it's my hard earned money. But I need a Mac to be able to use Xcode so I thought I'd ask the community since a lot of you are more knowledgeable about these things. And the community is a lot more likely to be conservative with their money when it comes to upgrading. I just upgraded because my old MacBook died so I would have bought anything really.

 

[bjet767]

But I'm not a big fan of the 2016 Macbook Pro--crappy keyboard, no legacy ports, bad battery life, expensive-

OK the elephant is this, Apple's not going to change those things you two aren't fans of. So the only reason to wait is for the possibility of more memory and slightly faster GCU speeds the next processor will support. The price isn't going to come down on the new models.

My suggestion is to either live with an older model or move to a Surface.

 

[wolfaaron]

OK the elephant is this, Apple's not going to change those things you two aren't fans of. So the only reason to wait is for the possibility of more memory and slightly faster GCU speeds the next processor will support. The price isn't going to come down on the new models.

My suggestion is to either live with an older model or move to a Surface.

Yea, I didn't think Apple would bring them back considering that they're trying to make their laptops as thin as the laws of physics allow. So as for the legacy ports and keyboard, I'm not holding back for those because I don't think that they'll come back. Which is why I didn't list them as a reason as to why I'm thinking of returning the laptop.

Is there any realistic expectation for Apple to offer more storage/ram in the next generation coming out later this year? And any expectations for prices to be lower? How about battery life, should I expect the same as now or more or less?

 

[Apple 26.2]

Is there any realistic expectation for Apple to offer more storage/ram in the next generation coming out later this year? And any expectations for prices to be lower? How about battery life, should I expect the same as now or more or less?

More storage and RAM, yes, but as you already suspect, very likely at similar or higher cost. I expect batteries to be better in the rumored 2017 MBPs.

 

[Sanpete]

Read this and you'll know as much as anyone else. We're talking about rumors, not announcements, so keep in mind rumors are often wrong, even from the source cited in this piece:

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/16/kaby-lake-macbooks-ming-chi-kuo/

Xcode can easily be a battery hog, so I'm not surprised at your battery life. A 32 GB MBP would probably not be an improvement, could be worse. It would have to use desktop RAM.

There's a sticky thread ostensibly about the topic of your OP, but it's mostly not about that.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mbp-kaby-lake-cannonlake-coffee-lake.1984045/

 

[Mindinversion]

The real big reason to wait would be for Kaby Lake, providing it were any sort of an upgrade to Skylake. Unfortunately, from what we've seen so far, Kaby lake is a complete waste of an upgrade cycle. If you google "Kaby Lake Vs Skylake" you'll find a bunch of [admittedly Desktop PC] reviews, and many of those show that, when clock speeds are set identical between the two, the performance difference is nonexistent. Granted, it's not entirely the same with a notebook CPU, so you may get 1-200 Mhz out of it, but frequency clocks don't mean what they did 10 or more years ago.

As far as ports go, I laugh every time someone complains about them not being legacy 3.0 ports.... but I own a Razer Core and have an understanding of just how amazing Thunderbolt 3 can be. [of course, I also have a few adapters from my wife's 2015 New MacBook. . so that helps as well]

The big game changer would be Nvdia 10 series graphics, but my understanding is that Logic Pro X is so optimized for AMD GPUs at this point they probably won't switch. [well, that and the fact that Nvidia GPUs need more than 35w]

 

[ZapNZs]

It sounds like you would be happier with a 2015. You could afford one with higher specs than the 2016, and it would likely address your concerns (especially if you do not like the keyboard and need more battery life than what you are currently getting.) Apple will probably not change the keyboard. I do not personally think the next upgrade cycle will see massive improvements in terms of performance gains, with the exception of the 32GB RAM option, and possibly a slightly faster RAM speed.