
Apple 13" MacBook Pro review: the best computer you shouldn’t buy - noir-york
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/12/apple-macbook-pro-review-the-best-computer-you-shouldnt-buy
======
econnors
Before this generation of Apple products, I found their product shortcomings
so minor that I wouldn't consider switching. I think I'll always favor apple
products but I'm definitely loving them less than I always have.

\- If you buy a new macbook and a new iPhone, you can't physically connect
them

\- If you buy standard aux headphones, you have to keep track of the tiny
dongle

\- You can't charge your iPhone while using wired headphones

\- No more Macsafe chargers which have saved me so many times

\- A touchbar that I'm sure I could get used to, but haven't seen a compelling
use case yet

Unlike some others, I'm not pushed to the point of leaving Apple. I just don't
want to buy the new gen and hope that they can refocus on creating great
experiences that doesnt involve friction like the above changes do.

~~~
ohyoutravel
Agreed on all of this, but magsafe for sure. I was disappointed that they
removed that feature. It saved me many times, through things that weren't even
my fault like someone at the coffee shop tripping over the cord or my dog
running past and snagging it. I shudder to think of my macbook likely flying
to the ground in those situations.

~~~
Merad
It amazes me that they so eagerly ditched magsafe. As a long time and
generally quite happy PC owner/user, magsafe was one of the few Apple features
that I looked at with envy.

~~~
ReverseCold
I know magsafe is probably a lot better than this, but my type c charger also
comes right off when I trip over the cable.

Granted it's because the port got wrecked, but it works (kinda).

------
JimmyAustin
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple will never back down on
USB-C.

Not now, not ever.

In a perfect universe, any plug will fit into any port, you wouldn't need to
worry about adapters, and you wouldn't need to worry about interoperability.

That's the future that Apple is counting on, and they think that they can
bring it about by making every customer who buys the single most popular
laptop on the planet a forced user.

~~~
lmm
> In a perfect universe, any plug will fit into any port, you wouldn't need to
> worry about adapters, and you wouldn't need to worry about interoperability.

That's the goal, but at the moment USB-C is a step backwards. "Any cable that
fits in the port will work properly" is something we have today; USB-C is a
regression from that.

------
electic
I have to say, looking back, this is the first year, in close to 8 years,
where I have not bought anything made by Apple. I decided this year to not buy
the iPhone 7. I usually upgrade every year and buy the phone outright. But
with the headphone jack issue and artificially low throughput on the modem, I
decided not to.

I also usually get every new refresh of the Macbook Pro. This year, I decided
not to do that either because of the bad specs. I hope Apple can refresh the
Macbook Pro with Pro specs so it is a viable purchase again.

~~~
dbbk
You buy a brand new MacBook Pro every time it's updated? Isn't that a bit
excessive. The performance gains between each update would be almost
negligible.

~~~
bryanlarsen
By "updated" I assume he means a new generation, which has happened about 4
times almost 11 years. Updating your computer every 3 years doesn't seem
unreasonable if you use it for professional purposes:

original: Jan 2006, unibody: Oct 2008, retina: Jun 2012, touch bar: Oct 2016.

Kind of puts things into perspective: the jump from original to unibody was
pretty significant, and the jump to retina was also a massive change.

~~~
dbbk
That would be reasonable, I interpreted his comment as every update (every
9ish months)

------
andrewfromx
"The 13in MacBook Pro could be a wonderful computer, but it isn’t. Is it great
to use? Absolutely, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, it’s almost everything
Apple said it was, I absolutely love it … until it runs out of battery. Or you
have to dig out yet another dongle to use a sodding USB flash drive, or a card
reader, or attach a display." that's the exact opposite way I feel. I already
was using a MacBook with USB-C so I'm used to the port issues. The battery
life is great. The processing power is amazing. Don't listen to people telling
you dongles and USB-C is bad. It's not bad. It's just the future.

~~~
lmm
It may or may not be the future - Apple hasn't always picked the winners.
Remember DisplayPort? Thunderbolt? FireWire? PERCH?

~~~
mitchty
USB, and now USB-C. Also dropping things like RS232, parallel, floppy drives,
cd/dvd drives, VGA ports.

~~~
slantyyz
When the parent argues that "Apple _hasn 't always_ picked winners" he already
conceded that Apple has picked winners.

~~~
mitchty
It is a bit of a pointless statement then. You could say that about any
hardware company really.

------
jpkeisala
I waited new MacBook Pro for 2 years. Once it came out I was ready to buy it
but then I hesitated on the checkout flow and paused. I waited another 4 weeks
reading reviews and slowly moved out of the Mac world where I have been since
2006. Today I received Dell’s XPS 13 so I am back to Windows now. It will be
interesting to see if Apple is able to lure me back in to their world in 2017
but right now I am very excited with my new XPS.

~~~
matthewking
Curious what stack you use for development? how do you find working on
Windows?

~~~
ciokan
I really tried myself but switched my XPS on linux after 1 hour. I placed all
my hopes on that Ubuntu on Windows thing but it's full of limitations and you
can't get through with a working development environment. It's locked on
ubuntu 14 from what I recall and you can't really install/compile do your
thing freely due to some limitations. If working with nodejs and light stuff I
presume it can be okay'ish.

~~~
traviswatkins
If you switch to the preview releases of Windows they've upgraded to Ubuntu
16.04 and you can easily execute Windows applications from the Ubuntu shell.
The stock terminal is also a lot better (24-bit color!) but I'm using wsltty
instead which, aside from not having the ability to use my preferred keyboard
shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-C/V for copy/paste) works great. I have kotlin projects
open in IntelliJ in Windows and can also run gradle in my Ubuntu environment
to work with them.

~~~
vorg
Hope you're using Kotlin (rather than Apache Groovy) to write your Gradle
scripts, since you're using it to build Kotlin code.

------
simonbarker87
I took delivery of my 13 inch Touchbar MBP last week and after a weekend and 2
full work days with it, I have to say that I've not been this happy with a new
Mac in since my first one.

I've owned a Mac Mini (just after intel launch), iMac, MacBook (White), 15
inch MBP, 11 inch Air and most recently 2 years with a 13 inch air so I got a
good stable to compare to.

This laptop feels incredible, it's plenty powerful enough for what I do
(Sketch/Photoshop, HTML/CSS, PHP/MAMP, Swift, C for embedded microcontroller
work, large spreadsheets for forecasting) and while I've not put the battery
through its paces I can't remember the last time I ran my Air's battery down
to less than 50%.

The screen is amazing (even compared to my wife's 2015 retina MPB), the
overall finish is great, I really don't mind the keyboard although I type on a
Magic Keyboard so it's not that different really.

The touchbar is new, novel and not all that useful right now but given it's
not tied down to an App store I'm looking forward to what people make for it.
Touch id is a big plus as well.

The USB C future is going to be very nice, sadly that future is not right now.
Plugging my laptop into a screen for power, USB and video will be very
convenient but right now it's damned awkward but that's the early adopter
price I guess. Apple won't back down on USB and I'm glad someone is willing to
force this through as it's time to settle on the one connection that can do it
all.

You can plug in an iPhone, you need to buy a USB C to lightning cable or
dongle. People complain about the price of the cable but if you've got a
£1,750 computer and a £700 phone then £20 really isn't that much.

Just my 2 cents

------
blakesterz
I really like this review, it's the first one I've read where I feel like
someone who uses a laptop like I use a laptop every day sat down and used the
thing for a while and wrote about how it works.

"Cons: short battery life, no USB-A ports, no ethernet, no native display
ports, no upgrading after purchase, very expensive"

For me at least, those cons mean I am very very hesitant to buy one of these,
and mine just died, so I am trying to decide what to do now. I have an
somewhat new Lenovo and I'm sticking with this for now. It's not my main work
machine, mostly used for travel, but I traveled with it last week for the
first time and it worked perfectly. I was really nervous. How could I possibly
work on a Windows machine after almost a decade on OSX. I just worked. No
issues, I missed NOTHING in OSX. But for some reason I still want to replace
this perfectly functioning thing with a MacBook. Maybe just habit?

~~~
SmkyMt
Well, picking from late-models while they're there is the _only_ way I've
bought macs for 10+years.

[http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac](http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac)

------
davidf18
The reviewer complains about battery life but is using Chrome which is a known
battery hog. I use Safari instead of Chrome for precisely this reason.

Regarding battery life, there are comments in macrumors forums from real
users.

He also complains about dongles. I use my laptop with iPhone (sometimes) and
with USB drives. Hardly an issue.

I'm a current 15" rMBP 2015 owner.

I tried the different models in the store. For those "on the go" the 13" is a
nice "Air" replacement. I'm not certain I'd go with the touch bar version.

It is reasonable to keep up-to-date with Mac hardware if you use computers a
lot. If things go wrong, it is far easier to take the laptop to the Genius Bar
than options for other laptops.

EDIT: Comments on macforums claims 10+ hours.

[http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-13-tb-
with-2-50-batt...](http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-13-tb-
with-2-50-battery-life.2016587/)

~~~
nezza-_-
> It is reasonable to keep up-to-date with Mac hardware if you use computers a
> lot. If things go wrong, it is far easier to take the laptop to the Genius
> Bar than options for other laptops.

To be honest, the best service I so far was with my Lenovo machines..
Next-(work-)day technician on site, whether I'm at a customer or at home.

Now with my MacBook Pro with Apple Care they have to send it in to replace the
screen.. (According to the Apple Store personell here at least)

~~~
hvidgaard
Only if you have the right warrenty. But when you do, they take care of you. I
had a defective touchpad, but it was usable with a mouse. The technician
arrived at my work, and while I was in a meeting, he switched it. Done. My
coworker had his screen replaced the same way. The cost of not having a
machine for even just a week, means it makes more business sense to simply buy
a new machine, so this next-day onsite warrenty, is worth every penny unless
you have a lot of machines and can realistically buy more machines as spares
and come out ahead.

~~~
davidf18
I had Thinkpads until 2011. For hardware repairs I couldn't do myself there
was an authorized dealer not far from work who would order the replacement
parts (e.g., motherboard) and I'd bring it in for quick repair.

With Apple for a major repair, I dropped it off at my nearby Apple Store on a
Monday and had it mid-day on Wednesday.

~~~
hvidgaard
Not all people live near an Apple Store, and even if you did, with a minimum 3
days wait without PC, it is most likely worth buying another PC.

~~~
davidf18
Many people have backup laptops and in my case most recent model.

------
joshstrange
What really grinds my gears is not the MacBook but the fact they went with
lightning on the iPhone for the newest gen. If I bought lightning headphones
I'd be pissed I couldn't use them with my Mac, even more so if the next iPhone
does go USB-C. You'd think it would make the most since to go USB-C at the
same time you drop the headphone jack...

------
davidf18
> "If it was the 15in MacBook Pro I could almost imagine that you’d never use
> it when away from power, and that battery life wasn’t that important. But a
> 13in laptop is made for portability."

At my university and nearby coffee shops the 15" model (which I own) has in
the past year or so become very popular. And it is used portably. That is why
I like the newer 15" model which weighs less and has a smaller form-factor.
Makes it more portable.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
If there were a PC equivalent to the old Retina 15" MBP, I would buy it
instantly. It seems like all the quality PC ultrabooks are in the 13"
category.

------
coldtea
> _It’s the best, lightest, most beautiful laptop around. Until it runs out of
> battery._

So, like any other computer.

> _Or you forget a dongle_

You only need ONE dongle, which can give you several USB 3.1, SD card, and
other ports. And for most devices you don't need ANY dongle -- you just
replace their existing USB-A cables (that you had to carry anyway) with USB-C
cables (those go for $5 to $10).

> _Or you realise you’re bankrupt_

Then opt for something in your price range?

------
i_don_t_know
Pity. I was considering it as a replacement for my 2010 15" MBP. I'm slowly
getting tired of the random kernel panics.

Come to think of it, has anyone tried to disable the NVIDIA graphics card in
the 2010 15" MBP by moving the driver (.kext) somewhere where the OS cannot
find it? If that gets rid of the kernel panics then I think I'd just buy more
RAM and an SSD.

~~~
amsha
Yeah, disabling the discrete card made a huge difference to my laptop's
stability (also 2010 15" MBP with NVIDIA GT 330M). There's an open-source app
called gfxCardStatus [0] that lets you switch between integrated and discrete
from the menubar.

On 10.12 the original app doesn't work properly, but one of its forks [1]
fixes the issue.

[0]
[https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus](https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus)

[1]
[https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases](https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases)

~~~
i_don_t_know
Thanks! I'll give that a shot.

