
The 16-Inch MacBook Pro - Amorymeltzer
https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16
======
kossTKR
I know this is becoming repetitive, but seriously still no optional touchbar?
I mean for gods sake, why?

Doesn't pretty much all professionals from programmers to editors to musicians
_still_ use function keys as part of their workflow when touch-typing?

I mean if the touchbar was above the function keys it would be an added bonus,
but removing function keys for "professionals" is like telling a pianist that
he now has to play on a touch-keyboard with no tangents.

I am more than ready to pay for an upgrade but now i am going to keep my still
excellent 2014 pro with no stupid gimmicks and a good keyboard.

EDIT: To all the people downvoting me, why? Why on earth earth downvote a
fellow pro addressing an obvious downgrade - am i missing something? Why jump
on a bandwagon an "be an optimist" or "stop complaining" if this gimmick makes
coding/working slower for us?

It reminds me of when most of the pro market fled the revamped Final Cut X
Suite which was so dumbed down it was almost a "kids editing program" while
Apple gave no fucks.

EDIT2:

To all the people saying they don't use F keys. I simply don't believe you.
You also control brightness, volume and playback with these buttons and i have
never seen anyone NOT using these keys without looking. Especially the volume
keys all the way to the right tap-tap-tap without looking - i know you have
done this ha!

~~~
relix
Maybe people just disagree that it's an obvious downgrade? There are benefits
to the touchbar, and yes people who prefer the touchbar over the function keys
do exist - I'm one of them. Have you tried really using it, or did you write
it off and ignore it as much as possible?

For example, the fact you're talking about tap-tap-tap to change the volume
leads me to believe you're not aware of the swipe-to-change function. You
don't have to tap the volume button, you just swipe over it in one go. A
single tap-swipe. In my opinion that is a superior experience than indeed
having to tap the correct F-key a few times. Is that so hard to believe?

~~~
throwanem
I had no idea that existed and I've been using a touchbar Mac for years.

What other neat features does it have, for which the UI designers appear to
have given no thought to discoverability?

 _edit:_ Apparently on the 2017 model it _doesn 't_ exist. Neat.

~~~
relix
You can customise it to a larger degree than you realise, with tools such as
BetterTouchTool. You can script it. It takes some work to setup but it allows
for extremely cool things to happen. This should be right up every hacker's
alley!

Regarding discoverability - it's a touchscreen, why wouldn't you swipe it? No
one complains about two-pinch zoom not being discoverable. It requires a
single a-ha moment which you could've had from taking a cursory look at the
Touchbar documentation.

As a hacker news reader, it's on you for not checking out the powerful
possibilities before categorising it as bad.

Edit: I'm finding articles explaining the swipe-to-change from 2017, so it
should be on that model (I believe it's on every model since the beginning).

~~~
throwanem
Turns out it's a separate control, not enabled by default. Only took me three
web searches to find that out, and find out how to find the configuration UI
for the control strip so I could replace the default controls with the
swipeable ones.

I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe I was wrong to assume that Apple knows
how to build discoverable user interfaces. I guess I should've spent a lot
more time reading manuals and dinking around with the keyboard on this
machine, instead of letting myself be distracted with trivialities like
building software, solving problems, and getting work done.

------
clarkmoody
It really is a testament to how "great" design can handicap great products.
It's 2019. Computer makers have been designing electronic keyboards for _close
to 50 years_. Typewriter keyboards have been around since the 1870s. For a
century and a half we've been designing and building ways of getting
alphanumeric characters from brains to machines.

Apple is one of the most valuable companies in history building hardware that
a large portion of the professional computer user workforce use on a daily
basis. For them to make such an egregious error as shipping fatally-flawed
_keyboards_ should teach us two things:

\- Humility. We can all make big mistakes and shouldn't rely on track record
to assume that everything we're doing now is the right thing.

\- Focus. Shifting its focus to design at the expense of human factors cause
Apple to make a colossal blunder.

This move back to a better keyboard, along with the Mac Pro (for what it's
worth), are hopefully signs of Apple listening to some of its most important
-- and seemingly neglected -- customers.

------
drngdds
I'm very proud of them for coming up with a keyboard that's almost as good as
the one on the $700 laptop I had nine years ago

~~~
neonate
That could actually be a hard thing to achieve given the other design
constraints.

------
HorizonXP
I bought an MBP 15” back in 2013, and still use it to this day. I might
benefit from an upgrade, but haven’t seen an immediate need to.

Seeing this new 16”, I am so glad I skipped upgrading and waited. I still
might not, but at least I won’t be dealing with regressions if I do.

~~~
Japhy_Ryder
Same here. I have the most spec'd-out Fall 2013 MBP and it's still perfect to
this day.

~~~
mrpippy
Me three. I'm even seriously considering having Apple replace the battery in
mine (it was swelling a few years ago)

------
jacknews
OK, but let's see in 6 months or a year if the keycaps all start breaking off,
and the switches either freeze up or double-type.

trust needs to be regained.

~~~
joeraut
Not sure whether to be relieved or concerned that this MBP isn't part of their
extended keyboard repair program, but I'm leaning towards the former.

------
api
This... sounds... like... they... _listened to their customers_!

Listening to customers is a fine art. It can be a bad thing if you listen
slavishly without thinking. You'll end up with a haphazard ball of features.
This looks like they listened and _understood_ what power-user customers
wanted: a true _pro_ machine that remains quite portable and aesthetically
pleasing.

IMHO the 13-inch Pro should just be the MacBook, and of course the Air is
great for people who want a tiny lightweight "ultrabook" type machine. You'd
have:

Macbook: the current 13-inch Pro

Macbook Pro: the 16-inch

Macbook Air: the ultralight

I really hope this is the mid-oughts Apple coming back. Bravo!

~~~
AtlasBarfed
When it comes to MBPs being used daily for 8+ hours by a host of smart people,
you absolutely can get really good customer feedback, and the fact it took
this long still shows Apple isn't listening much and has a lot of managerial
and product development inefficiency and problems.

They still are shoving the touchbar down people's throats, they just aren't
using a piledriver at the moment. An option for legacy ports
(USB3/HDMI/minithunderbolt) would have been very nice.

But it's apple, for a new-age company with new-age CEO and new-age values,
they are very stubborn and closed minded.

------
ppeetteerr
I love that Apple replaced their 15in offerings with this 16in model. The
price is perfect and the lack of a 15in makes the selection process so much
easier. With this MacBook and the Mac Pro, Apple is really getting a great
lineup of products. Well done!

~~~
jsight
I'm not sure that $2400 with 16 GB of RAM is what I would call "perfect".

~~~
smnrchrds
At least it comes with an SSD, unlike their iMacs which they still sell with
8GB of RAM and spinning rust disks.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
And that SSD costs per GB, what, 10x what you can get from newegg on an NVMe?
And that's a consumer retail price rather than what Apple gets to pay an OEM
bulk order?

Google/Samsung/etc aren't much better.

SSD prices in phones and laptops are such a fraud.

~~~
ppeetteerr
I don't think you get the same performance from a newegg ssd than you get with
the soldered ssd on a MacBook.

------
jackhack
For me, this is the takeaway quote : "The biggest change is that I finally
don’t feel like it’s constantly fighting me. Its design doesn’t feel
spiteful."

------
nottorp
<quote> And keystrokes will probably work, 100% of the time, for
years!</quote>

How does he know? Sounds overoptimistic to me.

~~~
defap
He doesn’t know, hence the “probably”. It’s a good guess though, based on the
known reliability of the wireless Magic Keyboard.

~~~
nottorp
I doubt many people use a wireless Magic Keyboard outdoors. I've used my last
3 apple laptops outside though... first two had no keyboard problems, the 2018
failed in less than 6 months.

~~~
shakezula
I dunno where you're at but where I'm from, the Magic keyboards are ubiquitous
and generally viewed positively. I'm using one right now and I have always
really liked the way they feel, and I'm a mech snob.

------
syadegari
It's good to see that the physical escape key is back!

~~~
jacknews
The lack of it on 2016 mbp made me re-assign the caps-lock key to ESC, and in
fact this is the correct place for it anyway - much more natural than as an
extra F-key.

~~~
hanniabu
On every keyboard the escape key is at the top left.

~~~
wffurr
Incorrect: [https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-
keys](https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys)

The keyboard vim was designed for had ESC where tab is on modern keyboards.

------
brandonfro
Strange to be getting a "Page Not Found" error on this link:
[https://www.apple.com/us/shop/go/macbook_pro/select](https://www.apple.com/us/shop/go/macbook_pro/select)

Usually they put up the splash page prior to new Macs being available.

~~~
ihuman
Are you looking for this page? The 13 and 16 inches now have separate pages to
select which version you want to buy.

[https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-
pro/16-inch](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/16-inch)

------
vemv
Wondering if the choice of a 16" screen was mainly for thermal reasons (bigger
screen -> bigger chasis overall).

FWIW 6-core over 15" (2019 model) is working nicely for me, but I suspect
8-core might be a bit too much for 15".

Experience reports welcome.

~~~
SkyPuncher
The chassis is barely larger (someone did a calculation in another thread).
They basically made the bezel smaller (thank goodness).

~~~
swiftcoder
The chassis is actually _smaller_ than the beloved 2013 MacBook Pro. It's only
regressed slightly from the 2017 and 2018 models.

~~~
LeftHandPath
I'm starting to believe that 2010 to 2013 were peak Apple, at least from a
consumer product perspective.

------
donatj
Well now I am really kicking myself.

I just got a new 15” MacBook Pro a couple weeks ago because my video card
fried in my 2013. If I had just held out I could have had a glorious escape
key and old style arrow layout... GAH

~~~
snowwrestler
If it really was a couple of weeks you may be within the return window.

~~~
donatj
It’s my work machine, I don’t think I could talk them into that.

------
Four8Five
Finally an upgrade worth of replacing my 2015 rMBP 15.

------
throwawaysea
How are Radeon GPUs for ML applications these days? I always found it strange
that the dev community was willing to invest in proprietary CUDA.

~~~
hkchad
Pointless, just spin up a GPU instance in AWS. I use a MBP for ML but anything
that needs GPU is better off running OFF my laptop.

~~~
cirgue
This is fair if you're working in an environment where you can do that, but if
you're designing stuff for anyone in a highly regulated industry, which is
increasingly where ML is making the big bucks, doing mission-critical ML on
someone else's servers is a no-no. There is still very much a need for beefy
GPUs in laptops.

~~~
Blackstone4
Maybe if a company is making big bucks off ML and were highly regulated, you
would have thought they could setup a GPU/ML server....

~~~
cirgue
One would think, no? Those pesky lawyers, IT governance people, and
institutional inertia have a habit of spoiling everyone's fun.

------
jolmg
There's this duplicate thread with more discussion. It points to Apple's
website, though:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780)

------
mcculley
Still no LTE modem?

~~~
api
There are tiny USB ones and WiFi ones that are okay, but it would be a neat
option. It better be unlocked of course for a laptop.

~~~
mcculley
There's a tiny one in the Apple Watch, the iPhone, the iPad, and in laptops
from other manufacturers.

------
koffiekop
Who uses their arrows for gaming?

~~~
babuskov
Left-handed people?

Edit: not really. I did some research and it appears they use IJKL because
it's easier to reach SPACE bar with the right thumb.

~~~
extra88
When I did it, I always had an external keyboard and used the numpad.

------
arthurcolle
I wonder if the keyboard works this time.

------
option
Still no NVIDIA GPU - so not for writing deep learning code. Also no ray
tracing in games :(

~~~
mchen076
There's tones of open-source frameworks for running on non NVIDIA systems.

