I for one will be getting the new MBP. I love MacOS. I love the multi touch pad. I love the vibrant screen.
If I want to train a neural net, I spin up my Core i7 leaf blower next to my desk and drink coffee at home.
Prior I had a Windows desktop, Surface Pro 2, & 3. The desktop got many years of use but sat in one place. The Pro 2 & 3 were very cool, at least initially. Both had issues with randomly shutting down or overheating. The 3 gave me insane eye strain and I had to get rid of it quickly. Going back further, all of the other major PC laptop makers had their shares of weight, clunkiness, and quirks. They devices were not enjoyable to either travel with or use.
After a few weeks of use, some keys on the butterfly keyboard started behaving poorly and I thought for sure the thing was toast. Magically the keys unstuck themselves and I haven't had a problem since.
Is the 2015 Macbook underpowered? I use Illustrator, Photoshop for design work, Tableau & Excel for data analysis. Commonly I have at least 3 running at once. All of the server work is remote so that doesn't put any recognizable strain on the device. If I need massive computational power for some reason I can spin up an ec2 instance. An occasional website with heavy JS show signs of strain. This makes me wonder more about the sites' developers than the Macbook.
Expectations for Apple to come up with radically new innovations each year are like movie fans demanding a totally new and completely unexpected ending from a film. Maybe bloggers, newspapers, and viral news sites should be upset when Apple fails to produce a jaw dropping headline for them - but end users should not.
I don't want entertainment from the computing device I work with -- I want something that works so well I forget about it. I don't miss the days of low-resolution, loud fan blowing, heavy, crash prone laptops one bit.
My initial skepticism of Tim Cook has faded. I think Apple is doing a great job. And yeah, I already ordered the new Macbook Pro.
Are you a coder, and have you noticed any things that you wish they'd fix; things that hamper you as a coder?
I love El Capitan, esp how they've finally absolutely perfected full screen mode / swipe to switch, half-screen, etc. at this point. Is that all still great?
Since I don't use the new Siri integration, I couldn't tell you a single difference between this and El Cap (maybe dark mode?)
I'm a .net developer running vs code and docker most of the time, for reference. I'm running on a late '13 rMBP.