I just got a 13" MBP and I love it. It's not perfect, but I've scanned the market and I don't know of any other laptop that I'd rather have. Some random thoughts:
I wasn't expecting to be bothered by the ports situation, but I must say even just a single USB-A port would have made a world of difference. I have a multi-adapter so it's not a problem exactly, just would have been a nice-to-have.
I wasn't expecting to like the TB, but I'm fine with it now. However, the lack of a physical escape key is a clear negative.
The keyboard, while not being how I would have designed it, it's still fine and I can type very fast on it.
The T2 chip means you can't dual boot Linux on it. I hadn't considered this before I got it. I would have installed Linux if I could have, but it's not exactly a problem. I'll run it in a virtual machine instead. Dual booting Windows is perfectly fine.
One of my programming projects that builds in two minutes on my desktop, builds in three minutes on the MBP. It's significantly slower, although that's as expected.
Graphics performance is absolutely fine for anything that doesn't require graphics performance. For anything else it's just not up to modern standards. I ran 3DMark on it, and the score was by far the lowest that I had ever seen on any computer.
It's the i5 model, and it still throttles under load. But oh well. I could try to repair it, but I don't know if it's worth the trouble.
Then again.... I didn't get it to be a 3D graphics workstation. I didn't get it to be a CPU performance monster. For incremental project builds you actually don't really notice the lack of performance so much. It's fast enough. If I had wanted something that won the specs race I wouldn't have gotten the MBP.
The speakers are amazing! I do use my laptop for a fair bit of video playback, so it's something I certainly appreciate. The screen and the trackpad are both also really good. And the form factor is perfect. I was considering getting the 15", but I'm really glad now that I didn't. I guess I'll go against the crowd that say that I really appreciate how thin and light Apple have made this generation of MBP. It's a real win for me.
The main kicker though, the main reason why I picked this over a higher spec Windows laptop, is that it boosts my productivity significantly. And I've used enough Windows laptops through the years to know exactly what I'm talking about. If I can get more work done in the same time, then specs, price, ports, performance, throttling, etc etc. all fade far into the realm of very little significance. This won't be the case for everyone, but it is for me.
I wasn't expecting to be bothered by the ports situation, but I must say even just a single USB-A port would have made a world of difference. I have a multi-adapter so it's not a problem exactly, just would have been a nice-to-have.
I wasn't expecting to like the TB, but I'm fine with it now. However, the lack of a physical escape key is a clear negative.
The keyboard, while not being how I would have designed it, it's still fine and I can type very fast on it.
The T2 chip means you can't dual boot Linux on it. I hadn't considered this before I got it. I would have installed Linux if I could have, but it's not exactly a problem. I'll run it in a virtual machine instead. Dual booting Windows is perfectly fine.
One of my programming projects that builds in two minutes on my desktop, builds in three minutes on the MBP. It's significantly slower, although that's as expected.
Graphics performance is absolutely fine for anything that doesn't require graphics performance. For anything else it's just not up to modern standards. I ran 3DMark on it, and the score was by far the lowest that I had ever seen on any computer.
It's the i5 model, and it still throttles under load. But oh well. I could try to repair it, but I don't know if it's worth the trouble.
Then again.... I didn't get it to be a 3D graphics workstation. I didn't get it to be a CPU performance monster. For incremental project builds you actually don't really notice the lack of performance so much. It's fast enough. If I had wanted something that won the specs race I wouldn't have gotten the MBP.
The speakers are amazing! I do use my laptop for a fair bit of video playback, so it's something I certainly appreciate. The screen and the trackpad are both also really good. And the form factor is perfect. I was considering getting the 15", but I'm really glad now that I didn't. I guess I'll go against the crowd that say that I really appreciate how thin and light Apple have made this generation of MBP. It's a real win for me.
The main kicker though, the main reason why I picked this over a higher spec Windows laptop, is that it boosts my productivity significantly. And I've used enough Windows laptops through the years to know exactly what I'm talking about. If I can get more work done in the same time, then specs, price, ports, performance, throttling, etc etc. all fade far into the realm of very little significance. This won't be the case for everyone, but it is for me.