7 ms·

So far none of the reviews (including this one) have been that relevant for makers/hackers. I have the new MacBook Pro and yes the battery isn't great. On aver

So far none of the reviews (including this one) have been that relevant for makers/hackers. I have the new MacBook Pro and yes the battery isn't great. On average you're pressed to get 3-4 hours of realistic development use. I say "realistic" because all the test I've seen have been very artificial and don't mirror a typical hacker's environment (using Chrome/Firefox with a zillion tabs open) multiple electron based apps (hear: Slack, Frontapp etc), with sublime and terminals running. This contrasts the 7-9 hours of realistic use I'd get with a 13" MacBook Air (which I still think is Apple's best machine ever made, in spite of it's non-retina screen). Just a heads up the changes to the keyboard are terrible (especially the arrow keys layout). Surprisingly the virtual escape key hasn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, even in vim. The other thing you should be aware is that this is the first MacBook where I get unintentional input on the touch pad when typing. It's really annoying to be writing and have the mouse jump the cursor position to another part of the doc. This is something that I experience all the time on non-apple HW (and scoff at), and it's really sad to see Apple's once perfect touch pad drop to that level. If you're thinking of buying the new MacBook Pro, my short answer is "don't", see what you do about hanging out until the next revision or possibly switch platforms.

gizmo 10y ago
As a counterpoint, I am still annoyed by the touch bar. Whenever you're idle for a minute the touch bar powers down, which means the keys stop working. So when you're watching video first the touch bar lights up, reflecting the light onto the screen which is distracting, especially at night. After a minute the touch bar turns dark, even though the touch bar contains the brightness slider and media keys, the only keys you're interested in! So you first have to touch the touch bar, wait for it to turn on, hunt & peck for the icon you need and press it. It's remarkably bad. The app-specific touch bar features are gimmicky and useless. So I've turned them off and I'm now using the touch bar with fixed icons, because that way at least I regain some touch-typing ability. I expected the touch bar would be useful to input emojis, but it turns out that scrubbing through 300+ emojis on a tiny horizontal bar takes way too long. Most apps can pull up a list of favorite or recently used emojis, and that works just fine. When in an intense debugging session I like to rest my fingers on the step-over, step-into, step-out function keys, while I compare mentally what should happen with what happens in reality. Ruining a debugging session and losing your concentration because of the damn touch bar is infuriating. When using Windows or Linux on a MBP the touch bar is worse than conventional function keys in every single way. The touch bar is worse still when rebooting the MBP after a system update, because the touch bar doesn't turn on until after you log in. Last time this happened the screen was at minimum brightness, but without the touch bar I couldn't turn the brightness up. And when you accidentally trigger voice control with the power button you can't hit escape to shut it up, because escape isn't powered on either! The touch bar is after a few months of use still a miserable experience. There is enough physical space on a 15" MBP for a full size keyboard, but instead we get minuscule arrow keys. Ugh.
- weaksauce 10y ago
  It feels like they should have added that touch bar as a bar in addition to the function keys if anything. That is likely off the table because of space and aesthetics though.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    I think I would have preferred the touch bar as a strip on the top of the trackpad. Could use it with your thumb while typing, or as a fixed space for shortcuts when you're mousing.
- dzhiurgis 10y ago
  Touchbar needs more customisability. The fact that now I have to make multiple presses and look into it to change the volume is making it a time waste.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    I used to have a laptop with a built-in tiny hardware volume dial. It was hooked directly into the power to the amp and speakers so it worked instantly even if the machine was bogged down with loud busy autoplay video web sites or other awfulness. I'd pay extra for another one like that.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    BetterTouchTool
    - dzhiurgis 10y ago
      And?
  - extra88 10y ago
    If you don't care about the new App Controls, you can go into Keyboard preferences and set the Touch Bar to show the Expanded Control Strip.
- 10y ago
chrisseaton 10y ago
> this is the first MacBook where I get unintentional input on the touch pad when typing I don't think your hands or wrists are supposed to touch the laptop at all while you are typing though.
- rileymat2 10y ago
  I find that I need my wrists to provide stability so it does not slide off my lap.
- MrLeap 10y ago
  This reminds me of the "you're holding your iphone wrong" explanation for the signal problems.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Why not?
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    I don't know. But all those guides to correct posture using a computer say it. http://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/guide-to-correct-hand-position-to-use-keyboard-vector-id504535048 http://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/guide-to-correct-hand-p...
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Interesting. I'll have to pay attention to where my hands go next time I'm at a keyboard.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Really? Why would I not want them to?
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    Well I'm not a doctor but it seems to be what many keyboard manufacturers say, and I guess they've thought about it. Das Keyboard for example say your wrists should be well above the level of the top of the keys, which is the level the trackpad is at. http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/keyboard_posture.jpg http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...
marricks 10y ago
I've actually really liked the keyboard and mouse-pad, but I came from a windows laptop. Keys give a firm click which is very satisfying for me despite low travel. Track pad is expansive and glorious, always used a mouse before on a laptop, don't see the need now except if I try gaming on it. Weirdly no problems with it picking up my wrist and jumping around. I definitely find the up/down arrows to be annoyingly small, though.
Karupan 10y ago
This is exactly why I picked up the older 2015 13" MBP for work a couple of weeks back. Just trying out the keyboard and the annoyingly large trackpad for a few minutes at the Apple store was a big NO. Is the older MBP still value for money? Probably no. But its still a better choice for most.
- leesalminen 10y ago
  I have a mid-2014 MBP and have been seriously considering purchasing a lightly used one and putting it in a closet until my current one dies. At this point I'm not worried about specs-dollars value but the development efficiency-dollars value of purchasing an inferior product (new MBP) or switching platforms (XPS with Ubuntu). Apple sure is trying _really hard_ to get me to switch.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    Apple sure is trying _really hard_ to get me to switch. Yes. It sure doesn't look like Apple is going to relent on the silly touchbars, the $300 price bump you pay for the touchbars, the shrunken batteries, and ongoing trials they subject us to. The only saving grace for them is that Dell XPS machines don't really cost much less. Similarly outfitted 15" units cost a couple hundred dollars less than Apple's. Pre-touchbar they'd actually cost more.
  - Karupan 10y ago
    I'm considering doing the same for my personal device. I have a 2012 15" rMPB and its showing its age. I want to get a beefed up refurbished replacement before Apple stops selling them.
jacobolus 10y ago
Give Safari a shot. For me, it increases battery by at least 25% vs. Firefox or Chrome with many tabs open, probably more like 50%+ sometimes. Cutting the Electron apps might also help a lot. I can’t imagine having many terminals open takes any appreciable CPU, unless you’re using them to continuously run compilers or something. You can also try reducing the display brightness, turning off bluetooth, and poking around in the Activity monitor to see what other processes are using lots of CPU time.
- leesalminen 10y ago
  Safari dev tools don't seem to be up to par with Chrome. Especially on the react.js front. I just can't bring myself to use one browser for work and another for personal.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    It’s hardly fair to blame Apple when third-party browsers and other applications are battery hogs though.
    - leesalminen 10y ago
      I do not blame them for this. I blame them for building an inferior web browser with substandard feature support just because they want to wall people into the App Store ecosystem. It does seem like they're changing and incorporating more JS features into the browser. Let's hope they keep up.
- jmduke 10y ago
  I want to use Safari, but its lack of developer tools (e.g. the React debugger console) make it a no-go except for light browsing.
- schappim 10y ago
  I actually do/did! I much prefer Safari for the iCloud Keychain syncing with the iPhone. (Apple actually stuffed thr keychain app up too recently where on the macs with touch bar keychain takes a few seconds to do a query). I have been a huge proponent of Safari but currently there is a real annoying bug where the URL/Search input won't register the "return/enter" key press for a URL or query. This happens once every 20 or so times and to get round it I need to close the window, reopen it and paste my query. I've nuked the caches and removed extensions to no avail.
WildUtah 10y ago
Surprisingly the virtual escape key hasn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, even in vim. Put this ino kj <Esc> in your .vimrc and instead of escape, just hit the j and k keys quickly to leave insert mode. It's a life changer.
dzhiurgis 10y ago
My thoughts exactly, especially arrow keys and trackpad. I used to rely a lot on tiptap gesture to switch terminal, browser, ide tabs but now it too sensitive as my palms always touch corners of trackpad. Someone needs to write an app to setup ignore areas of the trackpad. I would pay for that.

gizmo 10y ago

As a counterpoint, I am still annoyed by the touch bar. Whenever you're idle for a minute the touch bar powers down, which means the keys stop working. So when you're watching video first the touch bar lights up, reflecting the light onto the screen which is distracting, especially at night. After a minute the touch bar turns dark, even though the touch bar contains the brightness slider and media keys, the only keys you're interested in! So you first have to touch the touch bar, wait for it to turn on, hunt & peck for the icon you need and press it. It's remarkably bad. The app-specific touch bar features are gimmicky and useless. So I've turned them off and I'm now using the touch bar with fixed icons, because that way at least I regain some touch-typing ability. I expected the touch bar would be useful to input emojis, but it turns out that scrubbing through 300+ emojis on a tiny horizontal bar takes way too long. Most apps can pull up a list of favorite or recently used emojis, and that works just fine. When in an intense debugging session I like to rest my fingers on the step-over, step-into, step-out function keys, while I compare mentally what should happen with what happens in reality. Ruining a debugging session and losing your concentration because of the damn touch bar is infuriating. When using Windows or Linux on a MBP the touch bar is worse than conventional function keys in every single way. The touch bar is worse still when rebooting the MBP after a system update, because the touch bar doesn't turn on until after you log in. Last time this happened the screen was at minimum brightness, but without the touch bar I couldn't turn the brightness up. And when you accidentally trigger voice control with the power button you can't hit escape to shut it up, because escape isn't powered on either! The touch bar is after a few months of use still a miserable experience. There is enough physical space on a 15" MBP for a full size keyboard, but instead we get minuscule arrow keys. Ugh.

weaksauce 10y ago
It feels like they should have added that touch bar as a bar in addition to the function keys if anything. That is likely off the table because of space and aesthetics though.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I think I would have preferred the touch bar as a strip on the top of the trackpad. Could use it with your thumb while typing, or as a fixed space for shortcuts when you're mousing.
dzhiurgis 10y ago
Touchbar needs more customisability. The fact that now I have to make multiple presses and look into it to change the volume is making it a time waste.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  I used to have a laptop with a built-in tiny hardware volume dial. It was hooked directly into the power to the amp and speakers so it worked instantly even if the machine was bogged down with loud busy autoplay video web sites or other awfulness. I'd pay extra for another one like that.
- r00fus 10y ago
  BetterTouchTool
  - dzhiurgis 10y ago
    And?
- extra88 10y ago
  If you don't care about the new App Controls, you can go into Keyboard preferences and set the Touch Bar to show the Expanded Control Strip.
10y ago

chrisseaton 10y ago

> this is the first MacBook where I get unintentional input on the touch pad when typing I don't think your hands or wrists are supposed to touch the laptop at all while you are typing though.

rileymat2 10y ago
I find that I need my wrists to provide stability so it does not slide off my lap.
MrLeap 10y ago
This reminds me of the "you're holding your iphone wrong" explanation for the signal problems.
mikeash 10y ago
Why not?
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  I don't know. But all those guides to correct posture using a computer say it. http://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/guide-to-correct-hand-position-to-use-keyboard-vector-id504535048 http://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/guide-to-correct-hand-p...
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Interesting. I'll have to pay attention to where my hands go next time I'm at a keyboard.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Really? Why would I not want them to?
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  Well I'm not a doctor but it seems to be what many keyboard manufacturers say, and I guess they've thought about it. Das Keyboard for example say your wrists should be well above the level of the top of the keys, which is the level the trackpad is at. http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/keyboard_posture.jpg http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...

marricks 10y ago

I've actually really liked the keyboard and mouse-pad, but I came from a windows laptop. Keys give a firm click which is very satisfying for me despite low travel. Track pad is expansive and glorious, always used a mouse before on a laptop, don't see the need now except if I try gaming on it. Weirdly no problems with it picking up my wrist and jumping around. I definitely find the up/down arrows to be annoyingly small, though.

Karupan 10y ago

This is exactly why I picked up the older 2015 13" MBP for work a couple of weeks back. Just trying out the keyboard and the annoyingly large trackpad for a few minutes at the Apple store was a big NO. Is the older MBP still value for money? Probably no. But its still a better choice for most.

leesalminen 10y ago
I have a mid-2014 MBP and have been seriously considering purchasing a lightly used one and putting it in a closet until my current one dies. At this point I'm not worried about specs-dollars value but the development efficiency-dollars value of purchasing an inferior product (new MBP) or switching platforms (XPS with Ubuntu). Apple sure is trying _really hard_ to get me to switch.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Apple sure is trying _really hard_ to get me to switch. Yes. It sure doesn't look like Apple is going to relent on the silly touchbars, the $300 price bump you pay for the touchbars, the shrunken batteries, and ongoing trials they subject us to. The only saving grace for them is that Dell XPS machines don't really cost much less. Similarly outfitted 15" units cost a couple hundred dollars less than Apple's. Pre-touchbar they'd actually cost more.
- Karupan 10y ago
  I'm considering doing the same for my personal device. I have a 2012 15" rMPB and its showing its age. I want to get a beefed up refurbished replacement before Apple stops selling them.

jacobolus 10y ago

Give Safari a shot. For me, it increases battery by at least 25% vs. Firefox or Chrome with many tabs open, probably more like 50%+ sometimes. Cutting the Electron apps might also help a lot. I can’t imagine having many terminals open takes any appreciable CPU, unless you’re using them to continuously run compilers or something. You can also try reducing the display brightness, turning off bluetooth, and poking around in the Activity monitor to see what other processes are using lots of CPU time.

leesalminen 10y ago
Safari dev tools don't seem to be up to par with Chrome. Especially on the react.js front. I just can't bring myself to use one browser for work and another for personal.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  It’s hardly fair to blame Apple when third-party browsers and other applications are battery hogs though.
  - leesalminen 10y ago
    I do not blame them for this. I blame them for building an inferior web browser with substandard feature support just because they want to wall people into the App Store ecosystem. It does seem like they're changing and incorporating more JS features into the browser. Let's hope they keep up.
jmduke 10y ago
I want to use Safari, but its lack of developer tools (e.g. the React debugger console) make it a no-go except for light browsing.
schappim 10y ago
I actually do/did! I much prefer Safari for the iCloud Keychain syncing with the iPhone. (Apple actually stuffed thr keychain app up too recently where on the macs with touch bar keychain takes a few seconds to do a query). I have been a huge proponent of Safari but currently there is a real annoying bug where the URL/Search input won't register the "return/enter" key press for a URL or query. This happens once every 20 or so times and to get round it I need to close the window, reopen it and paste my query. I've nuked the caches and removed extensions to no avail.

WildUtah 10y ago

Surprisingly the virtual escape key hasn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, even in vim. Put this ino kj <Esc> in your .vimrc and instead of escape, just hit the j and k keys quickly to leave insert mode. It's a life changer.

dzhiurgis 10y ago

My thoughts exactly, especially arrow keys and trackpad. I used to rely a lot on tiptap gesture to switch terminal, browser, ide tabs but now it too sensitive as my palms always touch corners of trackpad. Someone needs to write an app to setup ignore areas of the trackpad. I would pay for that.