I've been using one of the new 15" with the touch bar for about 2 weeks now. I agree there's a lot more hate in user forums than on professional review sites.

I've been using one of the new 15" with the touch bar for about 2 weeks now. I agree there's a lot more hate in user forums than on professional review sites. I don't know that either are 100% honest... but I think it's because for so long Apple set the bar so high. My biggest gripe with my 2016 MBP is that it doesn't feel like there's any room to grow. Every MBP I bought to date felt like it was way ahead of the curve. The new ones... meh, they are fine. Just nothing special. (I wouldn't have bought it for myself, but since work was paying...) 1) I don't notice the battery life being any better (or worse). When I'm just surfing the web / doing emails... it lasts a good 4-5 hours. I always plug in when I'm at my desk and I can certainly go between meetings fine. When I play a video, fire up a game, or do a site crawl (for a 250k+ page site) the battery doesn't last. The old ones didn't either. 2) Keyboard took some getting used to... but I do like it now. I really didn't at first. And I didn't like it until I went back to use my old computer and the old keyboard just felt soft and loose -- the old-style keys had more give to them, now typing on that feels like trying to drive a car with huge tires on. 3) Dongles... I miss the MagSafe power plug... I really wish Apple would have left that. But I bought a little hub for all my USB products and it's fine. I have another dongle for HDMI cords. I don't love the new ports, I see no benefit to them... but, I get it -- Apple wants to push the envelope where it can. I carry a lot more dongles with me now that I have at any point in history. Not a fan of this situation at all. I don't want to carry a bag full of wires with me. 4) My old MBP had an upgraded graphics card, and the new one is just stock. I think my 2013 with the upgraded card handles games better than the stock 2016... but that's not fair since I boot to Windows on my old computer. Macs aren't for gaming... I know. But like... sometimes shooting a few aliens in XCOM is a good way to kill time when a client bumps the meeting back. =P The fact it can't run games from 2012 at max settings... this does bug me because of how expensive this computer was. It handles "medium" settings about as well as my 2013 with the upgraded graphics card did... 5) I don't use the touch bar. I just have it set to show function keys most of the time. I miss a tactile "esc" key. I don't know, it's not really something that I think about or have a gripe with. It's just different, but I can't say it's better or worse than the old physical function key row. 6) The new touch pads are way too big. I'm still bumping it when I don't want to. I have no idea how I'm supposed to use a touch pad this large... the old ones were perfect, this was a clear case of "fixing what ain't broke."