A Week with the New Macbook Pro with Touch Pad | Hacker News Reader

A Week with the New Macbook Pro with Touch Pad

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I've had my MBP 2016 with Touch Bar since Tuesday. Some additional thoughts for anybody who cares:

Re: the speakers.

I was watching something on Netflix on my chest lying on my back (you know the position) and the speakers were so good they almost sounded like surround sound.

I had to turn the sound off because I was convinced somebody had walked in to the room behind me. Seriously good speakers.

The keyboard is also excellent, if not a bit noisy for my fat fingers but it doesn't bother me.

Touch bar - meh. It's good when it works but it's not life changing. When more apps (I'm looking at you spotify) get on board I expect I'll use it more. It definitely doesn't detract from the experience.

Battery life is a real bug bear of mine. I come from a MacBook Air 2013 model and could easily get 6+ hours even if I was using Chrome heavily. Now my average run time is closer to 4 hours. Those two hours make all the difference.

The trackpad in my opinion is not too large. Having said that I was happy with the size of the previous track pad, I don't know why they increased the size but it hasn't lessened the track pad experience.

Finger print to login and siri a touch bar click away is neat, I hope to use siri more now.

Re: battery life. VSCode (and the underlying Electron shell) is likely to blame. I can get 10 hours on my 2015 MBP if I'm just tooling around in Safari and Emacs. Having anything Electron based (or Chrome) drops that to about 6. It's somehow more power hungry than MS Office, which is saying a lot.

Funny thing is, it has no effect at all on the battery life on a PC (Thinkpad T530 in my case). ~5 hours on Windows, ~3-4 on Linux.

Yep. I tried Atom for a little while last year until I tried using it while running on battery. It dramatically reduced how long I could run on a charge (15-inch Mid 2012 MBP).

So running JavaScript reduces battery life? Woa.

Very true about the speakers -- I never cared either, until now. They're so good. Also true about the trackpad -- not a big problem, but it does sometimes move my cursor when typing, and there's just no need for it to be this huge.

As for the keyboard, I've been using mine (sans Touch Bar) at home for four weeks now, and it's great. It took a while to adjust, but now when I use my Air at work, the keyboard just feels so... suboptimal. It really is a pleasure to use. (In contrast to the Macbook keyboard, which was terrible.)

Totally agree with this - that was my main divergence from the article. I have a late 2013 15" rMBP and when I go back to it the (physical in addition to normal-size) trackpad is like an old friend, but the keyboard feels unbearably mushy.

The author is confused over terminology. The control strip above the keyboard is called the Touch Bar. The main pointer input device is the Trackpad. Neither is called Touch Pad.

Normal users literally don't care. It was invented as touchpad so touch pad it is, no matter what Apple wants users to call it now. Don't see a point get butt hurt about that.

He isn't a normal user. He's someone who claims to be a software architect and Microsoft MVP -- yet doesn't know/can't care enough to use the correct terminology when he's writing a blog post from his "developer's point of view"?

I'm a developer, and I still call things by the first thing I heard them called.

I don't think he's obligated to use the "proper" terminology unless he was a software engineer /sarcasm.

Snarkiness aside though, I really don't think using the original term decreases his credibility at all.

Yeah. I mean: one could even make the argument that Apple is the one that often insists on using "creative" terminology for marketing reasons, and there is no reason to be sympathetic to them; I also remember this device being called a "touch pad" a long time ago--the device which had "track" was the "trackpoint" from IBM--but I also remember the device had always been stalled different things by different people.

In the article for this device, which Wikipedia canonically calls a "touchpad", we see comments on its terminology and the only place in the history section where the device is called a "trackpad" is jarring and happens to be in a sentence about Apple (where I would argue it should be corrected).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchpad

"""Apple Inc introduced touchpads to the modern laptop in the PowerBook series in 1994, using Cirque’s GlidePoint technology;[8] later PowerBooks and MacBooks would use Apple-developed trackpads."""

"""As touchpads began to be introduced in laptops in the 1990s, there was often confusion as to what the product should be called. No consistent term was used, and references varied, such as: glidepoint, touch sensitive input device, touchpad, trackpad, and pointing device.[9][10][11]"""

"""Apple's PowerBook 500 series was its first laptop to carry such a device,[citation needed] which Apple refers to as a "trackpad"."""

You've pretty much made the opposite point you intended to. What the author is calling the 'touchpad', isn't the trackpad - it's the touch bar.

This is precisely the confusion that's causing people to raise eyebrows at the term.

This is being overly pedantic. Even for HN, which is saying a lot!

No, it's not. Touchpad is a synonym for trackpad and has been forever.

>Touchpad is a synonym for trackpad and has been forever.

I know, that's why I'm saying arguing about touchpad vs trackpad is stupid.

Why is this downvoted? "Touch pad" is the perfect mix of ambiguity between track pad and touch bar. It's a pretty careless mistake to write a blog post about a piece of tech and not even get the name of the tech right...

"Touch pad" is what most non-Apple vendors call the mouse replacement below the keyboard, and I think the meaning is perfectly clear. "Track pad" makes me think of the IBM/Lenovo-style trackpoint nipple mouse, even if it's Apple's documented name for their mouse input. "Track bar" is different enough from "track pad" that it doesn't seem confusing to me (I use the former term daily, so the latter term provides enough mental surprise to make the difference obvious).

The post you replied to is correct, but not usefully correct. It sounds overly pedantic and elitist, like arguing that one shouldn't call "LEGO bricks" "Legos".

The touchpad is the touchpad, i.e. another term for the trackpad. It's called the touch bar because the name touchpad was already taken by the thing below the space bar. "Touchpad" isn't some weird marketing term, it's probably a more common term for "trackpad" than "trackpad".

Besides, neither you nor I nor anyone reading or writing anything on HN is a normal user. If you're not a little butthurt by people using the wrong technical terms for things, you are in the wrong place and/or the wrong line of work.

And no one who read it cared or was confused.

I was.

Really? What did you imagine that the author meant when he said "touch pad"?

I was confused two times what the heck is he talking about now.

Thanks for pointing this out. Corrected.

I am using the 13" (maximum possible configuration) for a couple of days now. So far:

- At first, the keyboard felt very different, but now I really enjoy working with it and the may Air's keyboard feels like a toy

- Screen and speakers are gorgeous

- USB-C is nice given you have all the adapters you need

- I find the TouchBar actually useful for some things, e.g. easier formatting in Keynote

But it looks like, there are still some bugs:

- The first adapter I plugged in caused a kernel panic

- After reboot, the login screen is hardly usable. Very slow and looks weird sometimes

- Three finger drag works only from time to time

Edit:

Two things I forgot:

- the media controls in the expandable bar simply do not work - nothing happens when they are pressed

- in Safari, the TouchBar allows to play/pause and advance HTML5 videos. I took a photo of it: http://i.imgur.com/pbYdhMi.jpg

I'm surprised people are getting theirs so quickly. I ordered the 13" max spec on the day of announcement and it only shipped today - and should arrive in 2 weeks time. What gives?

I ordered 30mins after the keynote and paid with PayPal. Location: Germany.

re: media keys not working, do you have Karabiner/Karabiner-Elements running? if so you'll need to disable it for the Touch Bar device in the settings

Thanks for the hint. I do not use Karabiner, though, so that is likely not the issue.

It's great to read some informed comments about this wonderful new laptop by someone who has actually used it. I disagree with his opinion about the size of the touchpad, but that's a matter of personal preference.

> Needless to say, for a nearly $3,000 machine, this list is hard to accept. So much so that I’m seriously considering returning the machine.

It seems, "wonderful", wouldn't be the author's word of choice to describe this new laptop. I kind of share his point of view, as we've just order a new set of 2013 MBP at work. Those are great machines and I will probably buy the next one if Apple starts making laptops for developers again. Otherwise, it will be Lenovo or Dell xps.

Well, I bought one and I think it's wonderful. My other laptop is a 15" 2013 Retina MBP. The new model is an improvement in almost every respect. Also, the space gray case is stunning.

FYI, I'm planning to sell my old one. Let me know if you're interested.

The author contradicts himself on this at the end of the article:

> The next year or two will be a more compelling time to upgrade. I expect to see 32GB of RAM, more efficient modern processors, improved battery life, broad industry-wide USB-C support and docks, an OLED screen, and richer support for touch bar in MacOS apps. Until then, if you have a recent MBP, I’d hold on to it for another year.

> That said, I’m keeping my new 15". :)

> I chose the maxed out “standard” model for $2,799 at the local Apple store: 15" i7/2.7/16gb/512gb

I might be nit picking, but maxed out normally means you've picked the very best config (2.9/2T/Radeon 460), not that you picked one of the standard configuration.

PS: Also, they are selling better configuration than the author's at local Apple stores, no need to order necessarily online.

I was using an Apple store employee's term. He claimed the "standard" configurations listed on the website are what we should typically expect in the store initially. Later, they'll stock popular customizations. FWIW, I've been unable to find a single "non-standard" machine in stock at a store in my cursory checks.

I got a maxxed out 13 inch (touch bar) a couple of days ago, and I hate the new keyboard (I never got used to the shallow keyboard on the 12", after having one for almost a year).

The Touch Bar is also pretty much a useless gimmick.

Besides that it's a neat machine, though I think Apple is getting close to what is worth paying the Apple tax for (inconsistent product lineup: no USB-C on the iPhone 7, no USB-C on the external trackpads/keyboards, etc). My employer paid for my machine, I do not think I would have spent my own money on this.

I have the new 13 inch model and one of my main frustrations is that if I apply pressure to the area just the the side of the track pad, it prevents two finder scrolling from working. Basically if I rest my palm to the right of the trackpad, it interferes with the track pad movement. This isn't a palm detection issue because I'm definitely resting my hand to the right of the track pad, and I think it's a result of the pressure from the weight of my hand.

Wondering if anyone else is seeing this?

Having used one for a few days I have found that while disk I/O is an impressive gain on the already amazing speeds in the previous model the CPU gains are minimal and disappointing. And the GPU is already dated. It has a lovely screen and better speakers but I had hoped for a greater increase in CPU and GPU performance.

Also the keyboard just isn't as good.

Anybody had any issues with the keyboard? I've heard rumors of some ergonomic issues and it worries me.

The keyboard on my 2013 MBP had too much play in the keys, and the new keyboard is better in that respect. In general, I'm not fussy about keyboards -- I usually adapt to a new one quickly. I'd recommend that you try out the new keyboard at an Apple Store and decide for yourself.

I had a fiddle around with one yesterday and compared to my 2011 Air they keyboard is far more crisp and, as you said, reliable.

Personally I like it a lot but I hated their chicklet keyboards so

another plus is that the laptops bottom edge no longer digs into my wrist

On the contrary. I've only used my 15" MBP for a few days now, but three things stand out: the keyboard, the display, and the speakers. They are great.

an overall experience after reading: the new model seems only has 2 real pros: brighter screen and faster ssd... Damn, such a pity.

What does the Touch Bar look like with Boot Camp?

It has the normal function keys by default, and the hot keys when you hold fn.

I don't know much about the new MBP specs, but I was a little surprised to read this:

This taxed the system hard and it was very hot, with fans running

I was under the impression that these didn't have fans.

It has two.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Ba...

Definitely have fans. The design video[1] has a segment at 2:30 about thermal management.

1 - http://images.apple.com/media/us/macbook-pro/2016/b4a9efaa_6...

The ventilation system also seems buggy at this point.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/q/261604/45492

The 12 inch macbook is fanless, these aren't.

They literally added a fan.

I don't think an i7 without a fan is safe. We're talking 30 watts, or something of the like. That will get burning hot after a while.

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