Hi,
Thought I'd do a mini-review of my new 2017 13" Touchbar MBP from the perspective of someone who doesn't upgrade very often! Clearly, people like me will have a different perspective to someone who gets a new machine every year or two.
My old machine was only my second Apple laptop. My first was a 2006 Core Duo 15" MBP (straight after the Intel switch). The one I've just replaced was a Late 2010 15" with the high-res screen, upgraded to 8GB RAM, a 120GB SSD and a 2TB HD in the Optical bay. I'd also upgraded the bluetooth/wifi module to one which allowed AirDrop/Continuity via a software patch.
The new machine was from the Apple Refurb store. It's a 13" 2017 4x Thunderbolt 3, 3.1GHz i5 with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD.
Firstly, the screen size. Looking through the refurb options, it was clear that to keep the cost acceptable whilst getting a reasonably beefy machine, I'd need to go for the 13" over the 15". I'd never owned a sub 15" laptop before, but thought I'd give it a go. It's actually fine for my use. I mainly write technical docs and code (Xcode, VSCode). Plus, the extra portability is great, particularly compared to the old 2010 model.
Next, the keyboard. Now, this had put me off during the odd minutes I spent noodling on the display models in the Apple Store. I loved the 2010's keyboard to the point that I bought an Apple keyboard for my work PC to replicate the feel. It did take an hour or two to adjust, but I'm finding it works well. I'm a touch-typer who's a bit sensitive to positioning and pitch changes, but adjusted fine. What I do still struggle with is finding the correct arrow keys with my right-hand little finger. Because there's no space around the keys, the arrow cluster isn't in the usual 'inverted-tee' shape, and I'll often hit the up arrow instead of the down. I'll adjust!
The Touch Bar. It's quite nifty. I like how dialog buttons are replicated in the bar, since the bar is often closer to my fingers than the space or enter keys. I love the ability to define which apps should automatically switch the bar to F-key mode -- made great use of that for my coding IDEs. It's also great for scrubbing video, even in QuickLook. The only issue I have is that I'll occasionally brush the bar accidentally when Cmd-Tabbing between apps with my thumb/left-pinkie. I have big hands! Again, I'll adjust.
Performance. It's quick! I mean, my 2010 model with the SSD was no slouch in general usage, but this thing flies. The PCIe SSD is noticeably quicker, and 16GB RAM helps with multiple VMs. I wrote a service-based platform in Python which is best tested with multiple Linux VMs running different sets of services, so it's great to fire up 5 or 6 2GB-RAM Linux VMs for testing. I'll get around to setting up Docker soon!
More Nice Things: The BT/Wifi upgrade on my old 2010 was less than optimal. The patch to enable Continuity was a bit flaky and the machine only had 2 aerials, whilst the card wanted 3. It is superb to have full 802.11ac speeds! Running iperf3 tests to my gigabit-wired server gives a reliable ~75 megabytes/sec. I occasionally see the Wifi running at > 1000mbit/sec, which is phenomenal. To get between 75% and 100% of gigabit speeds over the air is really very nice. It's also great to have Continuity/Hand-Off/Clipboard Sync/Unlock with Apple Watch working reliably. Oh, and TouchID is great -- I wish it worked with 'sudo' prompts in Terminal!
Not So Nice Things: I had to put the 2TB drive from my old machine into a USB-C enclosure, so I often have that hanging off the side of the laptop. But cloud-based Photos and iTunes storage means I don't need it all that often. And with the quick WiFi, I can stick more stuff on the server for use over NFS. I've bought a couple of USB-C-to-A adapters. Only needed to use them once so far this week, so not much of a problem. It's really rather nifty to have 4 ports that do anything and everything. Me from 10 years ago would be amazed that one port is used for power, 5K monitors, VGA output, hard-drives, flash drives, Ethernet, etc. 3rd-party dongles are getting more varied and cheaper every day, and are available in a variety of form-factors. And having ports on both sides is great.
So, yeah -- pretty happy with the machine. I hope my mini-review's been handy!
Thought I'd do a mini-review of my new 2017 13" Touchbar MBP from the perspective of someone who doesn't upgrade very often! Clearly, people like me will have a different perspective to someone who gets a new machine every year or two.
My old machine was only my second Apple laptop. My first was a 2006 Core Duo 15" MBP (straight after the Intel switch). The one I've just replaced was a Late 2010 15" with the high-res screen, upgraded to 8GB RAM, a 120GB SSD and a 2TB HD in the Optical bay. I'd also upgraded the bluetooth/wifi module to one which allowed AirDrop/Continuity via a software patch.
The new machine was from the Apple Refurb store. It's a 13" 2017 4x Thunderbolt 3, 3.1GHz i5 with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD.
Firstly, the screen size. Looking through the refurb options, it was clear that to keep the cost acceptable whilst getting a reasonably beefy machine, I'd need to go for the 13" over the 15". I'd never owned a sub 15" laptop before, but thought I'd give it a go. It's actually fine for my use. I mainly write technical docs and code (Xcode, VSCode). Plus, the extra portability is great, particularly compared to the old 2010 model.
Next, the keyboard. Now, this had put me off during the odd minutes I spent noodling on the display models in the Apple Store. I loved the 2010's keyboard to the point that I bought an Apple keyboard for my work PC to replicate the feel. It did take an hour or two to adjust, but I'm finding it works well. I'm a touch-typer who's a bit sensitive to positioning and pitch changes, but adjusted fine. What I do still struggle with is finding the correct arrow keys with my right-hand little finger. Because there's no space around the keys, the arrow cluster isn't in the usual 'inverted-tee' shape, and I'll often hit the up arrow instead of the down. I'll adjust!
The Touch Bar. It's quite nifty. I like how dialog buttons are replicated in the bar, since the bar is often closer to my fingers than the space or enter keys. I love the ability to define which apps should automatically switch the bar to F-key mode -- made great use of that for my coding IDEs. It's also great for scrubbing video, even in QuickLook. The only issue I have is that I'll occasionally brush the bar accidentally when Cmd-Tabbing between apps with my thumb/left-pinkie. I have big hands! Again, I'll adjust.
Performance. It's quick! I mean, my 2010 model with the SSD was no slouch in general usage, but this thing flies. The PCIe SSD is noticeably quicker, and 16GB RAM helps with multiple VMs. I wrote a service-based platform in Python which is best tested with multiple Linux VMs running different sets of services, so it's great to fire up 5 or 6 2GB-RAM Linux VMs for testing. I'll get around to setting up Docker soon!
More Nice Things: The BT/Wifi upgrade on my old 2010 was less than optimal. The patch to enable Continuity was a bit flaky and the machine only had 2 aerials, whilst the card wanted 3. It is superb to have full 802.11ac speeds! Running iperf3 tests to my gigabit-wired server gives a reliable ~75 megabytes/sec. I occasionally see the Wifi running at > 1000mbit/sec, which is phenomenal. To get between 75% and 100% of gigabit speeds over the air is really very nice. It's also great to have Continuity/Hand-Off/Clipboard Sync/Unlock with Apple Watch working reliably. Oh, and TouchID is great -- I wish it worked with 'sudo' prompts in Terminal!
Not So Nice Things: I had to put the 2TB drive from my old machine into a USB-C enclosure, so I often have that hanging off the side of the laptop. But cloud-based Photos and iTunes storage means I don't need it all that often. And with the quick WiFi, I can stick more stuff on the server for use over NFS. I've bought a couple of USB-C-to-A adapters. Only needed to use them once so far this week, so not much of a problem. It's really rather nifty to have 4 ports that do anything and everything. Me from 10 years ago would be amazed that one port is used for power, 5K monitors, VGA output, hard-drives, flash drives, Ethernet, etc. 3rd-party dongles are getting more varied and cheaper every day, and are available in a variety of form-factors. And having ports on both sides is great.
So, yeah -- pretty happy with the machine. I hope my mini-review's been handy!
