Thoughts on my new MacBook 13" quad core

[bulldoze]

I got a 13" quad to replace my 2011 MacBook Pro 13"

To be honest I am not that impressed.

+ Seems nice and fast
+ Very quiet ie no fan noise
+ I like Touch ID
+ Battery life is awesome

- Screen seems worse to my eyes. Everything is smaller and harder to read
- Damn brightness can't be set to not dim - first thing I do when I turn on is to turn up the brightness
- Noisy keyboard with poor feel
- 7 years on and my ram and disk space is the same?? 8GB and 256GB
- lack of ports will annoy me at some point
- Magsafe was a real selling point on older models - bring it back!
- Build quality seems inferior - this is too damn small. Quality items need a little heft, a feeling of substance - this feels cheap and the keyboard sounds cheap and nasty.

 

[Closingracer]

I got a 13" quad to replace my 2011 MacBook Pro 13"

To be honest I am not that impressed.

+ Seems nice and fast
+ Very quiet ie no fan noise
+ I like Touch ID
+ Battery life is awesome

- Screen seems worse to my eyes. Everything is smaller and harder to read
- Damn brightness can't be set to not dim - first thing I do when I turn on is to turn up the brightness
- Noisy keyboard with poor feel
- 7 years on and my ram and disk space is the same?? 8GB and 256GB
- lack of ports will annoy me at some point
- Magsafe was a real selling point on older models - bring it back!
- Build quality seems inferior - this is too damn small. Quality items need a little heft, a feeling of substance - this feels cheap and the keyboard sounds cheap and nasty.

They will never bring back MagSafe. As much as I liked it USB C is just a better overall option

 

[casperes1996]

- Screen seems worse to my eyes. Everything is smaller and harder to read

System Preferences -> Display - >Scaled
Pick a larger scale factor. The screen is objectively a hell of a lot better.

- Damn brightness can't be set to not dim - first thing I do when I turn on is to turn up the brightness

In System Preferences as well, uncheck "Automatically Adjust Brightness"

- 7 years on and my ram and disk space is the same?? 8GB and 256GB

Capacity may not have altered if you got the high end back then, but the speed has dramatically.

 

[TechGod]

I got a 13" quad to replace my 2011 MacBook Pro 13"

To be honest I am not that impressed.

+ Seems nice and fast
+ Very quiet ie no fan noise
+ I like Touch ID
+ Battery life is awesome

Let's go through this list

- Screen seems worse to my eyes. Everything is smaller and harder to read

-(Screen has not gotten any smaller at all and actually it has a higher resolution. If you want UI elements bigger just go to System Preferences ---> Displays ---> Do "Scaled" instead of ""Best for Display" --->Then choose larger text )

- Damn brightness can't be set to not dim - first thing I do when I turn on is to turn up the brightness
- I find this hard to believe. Why not just turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness in the Display settings?
- Noisy keyboard with poor feel
- That's preference but I think I agree
- 7 years on and my ram and disk space is the same?? 8GB and 256GB
-What? I'm sorry but the speed is completely different. I had a 2011 MBP, it had a slow spinning HDD!! These use NVME PCIE SSDs which are blazing fast plus now you have a quad core processor too
- lack of ports will annoy me at some point
-Actually no, the world is moving to USB C and in a few years you'll be glad you have all USB C
- Magsafe was a real selling point on older models - bring it back!
-Yep, it was awesome and I want it back too
- Build quality seems inferior - this is too damn small. Quality items need a little heft, a feeling of substance - this feels cheap and the keyboard sounds cheap and nasty.
-I do not equate portability with cheapness. I for one love the new design.

Answers in red and bold.

 

[bulldoze]

Thanks for the advice guys. Scaled was what I needed! everything is more readable now.

The brightness thing was an issue because I always adjusted via the Touch bar .. Doh! I now realise that I needed to do it in settings - I had already turned off the automatic adjustment.

With regards the 8GB and 256GB. I was concerned about the capacity not the speed - speed is awesome. I realise that a lot of Apple revenue comes from pushing us to higher specced Macs so I know why they do it.

 

[Cryates]

4GB RAM and 128GB SSD (which itself was an upgrade, HD was standard) would have been the baseline in 2011, so you are not making a direct apples-to-apples comparison here.

 

[bulldoze]

4GB RAM and 128GB SSD (which itself was an upgrade, HD was standard) would have been the baseline in 2011, so you are not making a direct apples-to-apples comparison here.

This is true, I had forgotten I had upgraded the ram and put a SSD into my 2011.

 

[macintoshmac]

I bumped my 2011 15" to 16GB and 256GB SSD. My current 13" 2016 has 8GB and 256GB, but blazing fast. Overall this is an upgrade, and the retina display is definitely a huge plus. True Tone should be even better on this.