I have had 2 13″ MacBook Pros in the last 10 years. They have both been good laptops and I have had very little, if any, complaints. The last 13″ was getting old and I really needed more screen space. The new MB Pros haven’t had the best reviews, but I really couldn’t wait another year so I bought one.
I have very little bad to say about the new 15″ MB Pro and really can’t understand all of the bad reviews and complaints. Some of the Pros:
- Keyboard: the new keyboard has keys that travel very little and are very poppy. I have heard a LOT of people complain about it. I type A LOT and I really like it.
- Touch Bar: Probably the most complained about new feature. Typically referred to as a gimmick. I actually like it and expect that it will improve tremendously over time.
- Display: The new display is phenomenal. Very crisp, beautiful picture.
- Larger trackpad: This is a real improvement over the previous smaller trackpad.
- Sound: I could barely hear sound from the speaker(s?) on my last 13″. The sound has improved majorly and has plenty of volume.
- Battery Life: I haven’t done anything to measure this technically, but my experience has been that it goes all day on a charge doing development work, web browsing, streaming music, etc. No complaints.
- Weight: It’s about the same as my 13″ was. Very portable and won’t kill your shoulder from carrying it through airports all day.
- Performance: Excellent. I have several heavy apps running at the same time without so much as a hiccup.
- Color: I got the new space gray and think it looks awesome.
- Fingerprint reader: After doing an initial logon you can use the fingerprint reader at the side of the bar to log in. Not that typing a password is a big deal, but it is convenient.
Here are a few very small cons with 1 exception:
- 1 exception: The apple logo in the lid doesn’t light up anymore. This is not cool. It might be crossing a line.
- The USB-C charger is not magsafe. But none of the dozen or so windoze laptops I’ve had ever were either and I never destroyed one because of it. I thought the mag connector was a nice feature, but no major loss.
- The escape key on the touch bar is a little awkward to hit at times. I use the VI editor a lot and so I hit the escape key a lot. Probably not an issue for normal people.
- There is a key for siri in the touch bar and it’s right above the delete key. I tend to over-reach and wake siri up every few hours.