Apple 13" MacBook Pro review: the best computer you shouldn’t buy | Hacker News Reader

Apple 13" MacBook Pro review: the best computer you shouldn’t buy

theguardian.com

57 pointsnoir-york76 comments

Before this generation of Apple products, I found their product shortcomings so minor that I wouldn't consider switching. I think I'll always favor apple products but I'm definitely loving them less than I always have.

- If you buy a new macbook and a new iPhone, you can't physically connect them

- If you buy standard aux headphones, you have to keep track of the tiny dongle

- You can't charge your iPhone while using wired headphones

- No more Macsafe chargers which have saved me so many times

- A touchbar that I'm sure I could get used to, but haven't seen a compelling use case yet

Unlike some others, I'm not pushed to the point of leaving Apple. I just don't want to buy the new gen and hope that they can refocus on creating great experiences that doesnt involve friction like the above changes do.

There are a few USB C magsafe chargers on the market, they work with non-Apple hardware as well.

Not that I disagree with your larger point.

I can't speak for all of them, but on the second-most recent episode of The Talk Show Gruber and his guest Joanna Stern agreed that the most popular aftermarket USB-C MagSafe replacement did not cut it. Be careful before you buy one of these.

I don't think there are any that provide enough power for the pro

Agreed on all of this, but magsafe for sure. I was disappointed that they removed that feature. It saved me many times, through things that weren't even my fault like someone at the coffee shop tripping over the cord or my dog running past and snagging it. I shudder to think of my macbook likely flying to the ground in those situations.

I don't see how having your cord in a spot someone can trip over it at a coffee shop isn't your fault ;)

In a crowded space, there may not be such a spot.

Accidents are always possible, Magsafe was a great innovation, and now Apple are going to abandon it while presumably sitting on the patent? Not that that's stopped Microsoft copying it for the Surface.

It amazes me that they so eagerly ditched magsafe. As a long time and generally quite happy PC owner/user, magsafe was one of the few Apple features that I looked at with envy.

I know magsafe is probably a lot better than this, but my type c charger also comes right off when I trip over the cable.

Granted it's because the port got wrecked, but it works (kinda).

I love my 2013 macbook air, but when it comes time to upgrade if I can't even do something as simple as plug in my headphones without a dongle there's no way I'm considering a macbook.

When you come to upgrade you might be looking at a model which hasn't been released at this time, but the 2016 MacBook Pro does have a headphone socket.

About Magsafe - you should definitely consider - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/436147229/snapnator-you...

> - If you buy a new macbook and a new iPhone, you can't physically connect them

Yes, you can. Get a USB C to Lightning cable or just a simple USB A to USB C adapter. Here's 2 for 7 bucks:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EL4PVFE/ref=oh_aui_de...

> - If you buy standard aux headphones, you have to keep track of the tiny dongle

Or buy lots of tiny dongles and keep them attached to your headphones? Honestly I just use the lightning set included with the phone.

> - You can't charge your iPhone while using wired headphones

Yes, you can.

https://smile.amazon.com/Lightning-Adapter-Charger-Earphones...

> - No more Macsafe chargers which have saved me so many times

Not quite true:

https://smile.amazon.com/USB-C-Magnetic-Adapter-MacBook-Alum...

> - A touchbar that I'm sure I could get used to, but haven't seen a compelling use case yet

Ok, you get one. I don't see a point to it either.

So yeah, you'll need to buy some accessories and yeah, Apple should have included all of that stuff at no cost ... buy hey, they're probably making big $$$ on the dongles they sell directly.

I noticed the amperage on that adapter looked wrong, and in fact one of the only two reviews points this out: "DANGER: Cannot handle wattage of Macbook Pro power charging" "The specs for this say it handles 2.1 amps at 5 volts. That equals 10.5 Watts. The Apple 2016 Macbook Pro has either a 61 Watt or 87 Watt charger." ""At best this cable will reduce your charging speed by a factor of 6-8 times. That's why it cannot even charge the computer while you're actually using it."

If you have the 12" MacBook (as I do), this one supposedly works (it is from a legit company and claims to handle 60W, which is sadly for this thread just short of the 13" MacBook Pro), but it is extremely large and looks really annoying :/. (Check out pictures of the actual connector in the reviews, or on the product page of some other website than Amazon.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CQTK6GU/

Yeah, I noticed that after I posted it. Griffin is also a reputable company, I'd definitely grab the one you posted over the one I found.

I think the parent meant he couldn't do all that stuff sans dongle/adapter.

I don't ever remember a Mac where you had to buy a pile of cables to just to use it with common non-legacy stuff (wired mouse, usb keys, phone charger etc.) you already have. I'm guessing that only a small percentage of people already had any USB-C devices at the time they bought a new MBP.

original iMac with USB only...

I forgot that one! For some reason I thought it might still have had a SCSI port because of all those Syquests and Zip disks that people still had.

My wife's laptop is on its 3rd Magsafe adapter in 7 years. As much as I liked the features it provided Apple couldn't make a charger that could actually handle some abuse and not have the cord fall apart after a year. I mean you just have to read all the reviews at Apple.com to see this a common issue. At least with USB C other companies can make super high quality versions of the cable that will last awhile.

It's interesting to contrast with the ms Surface pro 4:

- Headphone jack

- Magnetic charger

- Touchscreen

- Pen/digitizer screen

The only problems with the sp4 is it should've had double the battery, and Ms needs to work more on high dpi support - specifically the file explorer needs a high-dpi, touch-first skin.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple will never back down on USB-C.

Not now, not ever.

In a perfect universe, any plug will fit into any port, you wouldn't need to worry about adapters, and you wouldn't need to worry about interoperability.

That's the future that Apple is counting on, and they think that they can bring it about by making every customer who buys the single most popular laptop on the planet a forced user.

I understand why there is no ethernet port. But… hdmi does not looks too big to have one on side.

And the case is - when you are using Apple products you always must have some specific accessories - like adapters (for dvi in retinas, for usb-a for new mbp). Even the iPhone charging port is different - which is interesting as in Europe this should be usb port…

I would like a bit bigger laptop with hdmi and usb-a without need to taking another bag with adapters… (bigger laptop without adapters would take less space than mbp + adapters)

I would be fine with the USB-C if it wasn't for the Lightning port and the drive to headphones on a proprietary connector or wireless. USB-C is a great standard and useful, it's the interaction with the Lightning port that making things difficult.

On a side note, does Apple have a use case for Lighting / wireless headphones and ATMs with headphones jacks for the visually impaired?

> In a perfect universe, any plug will fit into any port, you wouldn't need to worry about adapters, and you wouldn't need to worry about interoperability.

That's the goal, but at the moment USB-C is a step backwards. "Any cable that fits in the port will work properly" is something we have today; USB-C is a regression from that.

> Apple will never back down on USB-C

This is true, it's not Apple's' MO to fallback, they will double down and plow forward(even if it's too soon).

>the single most popular laptop on the planet

Based on... what metric? I'm assuming you've got another metric beyond revenue, volume, and market share you're basing this on. Because by all measurable aspects, they're definitely not #1. If you're claiming one specific model of laptop like a 13" pro with a certain configuration, I've never seen Apple break down by model so I'd be interested to see your numbers.

>> I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple will never back down on USB-C.

Nobody's pissed at Apple for going USB-C. I think everyone knows they're the future.

But people are pissed that they dropped the other ports in the short term.

You can argue about the future ad nauseum, but people want a computer that is present-friendly and future-resistant without a lot of inconvenience. Inconvenience is highly subjective, because I see a lot of people here are willing to put up with dongles on Macs instead of having to switch to an operating system or laptop form factor they don't like. That's perfectly fine.

While I get a Mac lover isn't going to switch to PC over Apple's changes, it's worth noting that just about every other PC who makes a laptop with USB-C/TB3 offers dongle-free legacy ports. The ones that don't have legacy ports tend to include some free dongles in the box.

> they think that they can bring it about by making every customer who buys the single most popular laptop on the planet a forced user.

Are they wrong in that regard? Historically they pushed the adoption of USB, WiFi, and a couple other standards. They've always spurred the decline of floppies, CDs, and several other standards.

I think the biggest problem with USB-C is that not all USB-C ports are created equal. Can it charge? Will it work with my monitor? Does it do x? There's no way to tell by looking at a port what it's capable of. You just have to plug in and hope whatever you're using is up to spec and doesn't fry the port or worse the entire PC.

Apple for it's part has made the ports on the Pro function the same but that's probably also why there are so few of them because of the cost. Other manufacturers have no qualms about putting a half dozen crippled ports on a PC that will have slightly different capabilities. Just look at how many laptops have USB2 and USB3 ports on them.

If only they would do it for their phones. That'll probably never happen though since they make far too much money on licensing the lightning port.

I have to say, looking back, this is the first year, in close to 8 years, where I have not bought anything made by Apple. I decided this year to not buy the iPhone 7. I usually upgrade every year and buy the phone outright. But with the headphone jack issue and artificially low throughput on the modem, I decided not to.

I also usually get every new refresh of the Macbook Pro. This year, I decided not to do that either because of the bad specs. I hope Apple can refresh the Macbook Pro with Pro specs so it is a viable purchase again.

You buy a brand new MacBook Pro every time it's updated? Isn't that a bit excessive. The performance gains between each update would be almost negligible.

By "updated" I assume he means a new generation, which has happened about 4 times almost 11 years. Updating your computer every 3 years doesn't seem unreasonable if you use it for professional purposes:

original: Jan 2006, unibody: Oct 2008, retina: Jun 2012, touch bar: Oct 2016.

Kind of puts things into perspective: the jump from original to unibody was pretty significant, and the jump to retina was also a massive change.

That would be reasonable, I interpreted his comment as every update (every 9ish months)

Is it? You can sell your old one so it probably works out to a fairly small premium to always get the latest than to say upgrade every 3-4 years and for that premium you always have a new machine

give me your money

"The 13in MacBook Pro could be a wonderful computer, but it isn’t. Is it great to use? Absolutely, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, it’s almost everything Apple said it was, I absolutely love it … until it runs out of battery. Or you have to dig out yet another dongle to use a sodding USB flash drive, or a card reader, or attach a display." that's the exact opposite way I feel. I already was using a MacBook with USB-C so I'm used to the port issues. The battery life is great. The processing power is amazing. Don't listen to people telling you dongles and USB-C is bad. It's not bad. It's just the future.

It may or may not be the future - Apple hasn't always picked the winners. Remember DisplayPort? Thunderbolt? FireWire? PERCH?

In the case of USB-C, it seems to be an industry wide push toward it. Not only Apple.

USB, and now USB-C. Also dropping things like RS232, parallel, floppy drives, cd/dvd drives, VGA ports.

When the parent argues that "Apple hasn't always picked winners" he already conceded that Apple has picked winners.

It is a bit of a pointless statement then. You could say that about any hardware company really.

USB-C is the industry standard for the connector, it is the future as it's already gaining widespread support across the entire industry. There is zero doubt about it, everyone will be switching to USB-C in the next few years.

The best part about USB-C is Alt Mode support, it allows you to use any protocols you want as long as it is supported on both sides. In this case with Macs, the TB3-enabled USB-C ports mean you can use Thunderbolt 3 without changing the connector port and not lose other protocols like USB 3.1 Get 2 (10Gbps), Power Delivery, etc.

By saying future proof, what they meant is that any future products using USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps), Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) and/or power-delivery up to 80-100W will be supported on these MBPs.

don't forget ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping

> Don't listen to people telling you dongles and USB-C is bad. It's not bad. It's just the future.

God I hate this argument. Sure it is the future. But what you and other keep forgetting/not mentioning is the fact that USB 2 (type A) isn't going to suddenly disappear. There are just too many use cases where a bigger throughput from USB 3+ isn't needed.

So what do you do? Throw away all usb 2 peripherals? Buy multiple adapters? To think of all the usb sticks that would be basically useless without a dongle...

When apple decided that CD/DVD's are deprecated it was an ok decision because a) Most media can be put on an external dive b) you can buy an external CD/DVD reader. And i think you need an USB-A dongle WAY more often then an CD/DVD drive.

Apple should have just keep 1 usb 3.1 (Type A) port => 1 USB-A + 2 USB-C for the non touchbar MBP. If the macbook would then be a few mm taller, excellent. More room for the battery.

I think anti dongle people look at using a dongle as a failure. Like you should be able to live your computer life without ever having to touch one. Vs. I use a usb-C to usb dongle every single day. I'm just used to dongle life. It's no big deal. I have best of both worlds. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzfYo2fVIAANV8F.jpg

The thing that I find confusing is that a lot of people call the new Macbook Pro "future proof" because it is all-in on USB-C.

And while I get most people can survive with 16GB today, limiting RAM isn't future proofing for people who plan on owning a Macbook Pro for five years. Over time, new revisions of operating systems and software tend to require more RAM, not less.

I waited new MacBook Pro for 2 years. Once it came out I was ready to buy it but then I hesitated on the checkout flow and paused. I waited another 4 weeks reading reviews and slowly moved out of the Mac world where I have been since 2006. Today I received Dell’s XPS 13 so I am back to Windows now. It will be interesting to see if Apple is able to lure me back in to their world in 2017 but right now I am very excited with my new XPS.

Curious what stack you use for development? how do you find working on Windows?

I really tried myself but switched my XPS on linux after 1 hour. I placed all my hopes on that Ubuntu on Windows thing but it's full of limitations and you can't get through with a working development environment. It's locked on ubuntu 14 from what I recall and you can't really install/compile do your thing freely due to some limitations. If working with nodejs and light stuff I presume it can be okay'ish.

As far as I know the only major things not working right now are databases (sockets are not implemented) and network device enumeration (although I don't know if any program uses it). Although your bash can access databases running on the Windows side.

It's good enough for NodeJS, Python, Ruby on Rails, C++ and dotnet core dev. What did you face problems with?

Docker really struggles

If you switch to the preview releases of Windows they've upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04 and you can easily execute Windows applications from the Ubuntu shell. The stock terminal is also a lot better (24-bit color!) but I'm using wsltty instead which, aside from not having the ability to use my preferred keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-C/V for copy/paste) works great. I have kotlin projects open in IntelliJ in Windows and can also run gradle in my Ubuntu environment to work with them.

Hope you're using Kotlin (rather than Apache Groovy) to write your Gradle scripts, since you're using it to build Kotlin code.

Well, the argument that Windows sucks for development environment is true only if you use programs like rbenv, nvm or other stuff that is built on GitHub. Even then most of them work on Windows. I've moved from Linux to Windows (battery life issues, video tearing and lots of maintainance for my extremely custom setup) around 7 months ago and mostly use Python, DotNET Core, NodeJS and MySQL and Postgres. I also run and deploy my Ghost blog from Windows. The only things I initially missed was bash, which is now available. Even 256 colour support for the terminal is here in Insider releases.

I use VSCode as an IDE (with the vim plugin). Yes there are some issues if you want to run Ruby or Perl (package (gem or perl packages) management) but otherwise its good.

I was in the same boat, waiting for this update to finally upgrade my 2011 MacBook Pro. After seeing this new machine and trying it out in a store I ordered a Thinkpad t460s. I considered running Ubuntu on it but I wasn't a fan of the way the touchpad was working there and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I'm now running Windows 10 insider preview so I can use Ubuntu 16.04 on Windows to get my terminal on and still run my IDEs and such on Windows.

I took delivery of my 13 inch Touchbar MBP last week and after a weekend and 2 full work days with it, I have to say that I've not been this happy with a new Mac in since my first one.

I've owned a Mac Mini (just after intel launch), iMac, MacBook (White), 15 inch MBP, 11 inch Air and most recently 2 years with a 13 inch air so I got a good stable to compare to.

This laptop feels incredible, it's plenty powerful enough for what I do (Sketch/Photoshop, HTML/CSS, PHP/MAMP, Swift, C for embedded microcontroller work, large spreadsheets for forecasting) and while I've not put the battery through its paces I can't remember the last time I ran my Air's battery down to less than 50%.

The screen is amazing (even compared to my wife's 2015 retina MPB), the overall finish is great, I really don't mind the keyboard although I type on a Magic Keyboard so it's not that different really.

The touchbar is new, novel and not all that useful right now but given it's not tied down to an App store I'm looking forward to what people make for it. Touch id is a big plus as well.

The USB C future is going to be very nice, sadly that future is not right now. Plugging my laptop into a screen for power, USB and video will be very convenient but right now it's damned awkward but that's the early adopter price I guess. Apple won't back down on USB and I'm glad someone is willing to force this through as it's time to settle on the one connection that can do it all.

You can plug in an iPhone, you need to buy a USB C to lightning cable or dongle. People complain about the price of the cable but if you've got a £1,750 computer and a £700 phone then £20 really isn't that much.

Just my 2 cents

I really like this review, it's the first one I've read where I feel like someone who uses a laptop like I use a laptop every day sat down and used the thing for a while and wrote about how it works.

"Cons: short battery life, no USB-A ports, no ethernet, no native display ports, no upgrading after purchase, very expensive"

For me at least, those cons mean I am very very hesitant to buy one of these, and mine just died, so I am trying to decide what to do now. I have an somewhat new Lenovo and I'm sticking with this for now. It's not my main work machine, mostly used for travel, but I traveled with it last week for the first time and it worked perfectly. I was really nervous. How could I possibly work on a Windows machine after almost a decade on OSX. I just worked. No issues, I missed NOTHING in OSX. But for some reason I still want to replace this perfectly functioning thing with a MacBook. Maybe just habit?

Well, picking from late-models while they're there is the only way I've bought macs for 10+years.

http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

I am very amused that a 6 hours long battery life can can be so important. My laptop don't even have this battery life in sleep mode and when powered on, it must be something like 50 minutes.

Do you run in the street with the thing in your hands or drive your car with the laptop on?

The reviewer complains about battery life but is using Chrome which is a known battery hog. I use Safari instead of Chrome for precisely this reason.

Regarding battery life, there are comments in macrumors forums from real users.

He also complains about dongles. I use my laptop with iPhone (sometimes) and with USB drives. Hardly an issue.

I'm a current 15" rMBP 2015 owner.

I tried the different models in the store. For those "on the go" the 13" is a nice "Air" replacement. I'm not certain I'd go with the touch bar version.

It is reasonable to keep up-to-date with Mac hardware if you use computers a lot. If things go wrong, it is far easier to take the laptop to the Genius Bar than options for other laptops.

EDIT: Comments on macforums claims 10+ hours.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-13-tb-with-2-50-batt...

> It is reasonable to keep up-to-date with Mac hardware if you use computers a lot. If things go wrong, it is far easier to take the laptop to the Genius Bar than options for other laptops.

To be honest, the best service I so far was with my Lenovo machines.. Next-(work-)day technician on site, whether I'm at a customer or at home.

Now with my MacBook Pro with Apple Care they have to send it in to replace the screen.. (According to the Apple Store personell here at least)

Only if you have the right warrenty. But when you do, they take care of you. I had a defective touchpad, but it was usable with a mouse. The technician arrived at my work, and while I was in a meeting, he switched it. Done. My coworker had his screen replaced the same way. The cost of not having a machine for even just a week, means it makes more business sense to simply buy a new machine, so this next-day onsite warrenty, is worth every penny unless you have a lot of machines and can realistically buy more machines as spares and come out ahead.

I had Thinkpads until 2011. For hardware repairs I couldn't do myself there was an authorized dealer not far from work who would order the replacement parts (e.g., motherboard) and I'd bring it in for quick repair.

With Apple for a major repair, I dropped it off at my nearby Apple Store on a Monday and had it mid-day on Wednesday.

Not all people live near an Apple Store, and even if you did, with a minimum 3 days wait without PC, it is most likely worth buying another PC.

Many people have backup laptops and in my case most recent model.

> I use Safari instead of Chrome for precisely this reason.

He mentions this:

"Swapping Chrome out for Safari increased battery life for some sites, but I noticed others really chewed through battery, meaning it came out about even."

He did say it came to about even between Chrome and Safari. Maybe Chrome upped their game and is better at the battery usage, or did the new MbP optimize for it?

The Chrome team is always working on power improvements. Recent example: https://blog.google/products/chrome/chrome-faster-and-more-b...

What really grinds my gears is not the MacBook but the fact they went with lightning on the iPhone for the newest gen. If I bought lightning headphones I'd be pissed I couldn't use them with my Mac, even more so if the next iPhone does go USB-C. You'd think it would make the most since to go USB-C at the same time you drop the headphone jack...

> "If it was the 15in MacBook Pro I could almost imagine that you’d never use it when away from power, and that battery life wasn’t that important. But a 13in laptop is made for portability."

At my university and nearby coffee shops the 15" model (which I own) has in the past year or so become very popular. And it is used portably. That is why I like the newer 15" model which weighs less and has a smaller form-factor. Makes it more portable.

If there were a PC equivalent to the old Retina 15" MBP, I would buy it instantly. It seems like all the quality PC ultrabooks are in the 13" category.

>It’s the best, lightest, most beautiful laptop around. Until it runs out of battery.

So, like any other computer.

>Or you forget a dongle

You only need ONE dongle, which can give you several USB 3.1, SD card, and other ports. And for most devices you don't need ANY dongle -- you just replace their existing USB-A cables (that you had to carry anyway) with USB-C cables (those go for $5 to $10).

>Or you realise you’re bankrupt

Then opt for something in your price range?

Pity. I was considering it as a replacement for my 2010 15" MBP. I'm slowly getting tired of the random kernel panics.

Come to think of it, has anyone tried to disable the NVIDIA graphics card in the 2010 15" MBP by moving the driver (.kext) somewhere where the OS cannot find it? If that gets rid of the kernel panics then I think I'd just buy more RAM and an SSD.

Yeah, disabling the discrete card made a huge difference to my laptop's stability (also 2010 15" MBP with NVIDIA GT 330M). There's an open-source app called gfxCardStatus [0] that lets you switch between integrated and discrete from the menubar.

On 10.12 the original app doesn't work properly, but one of its forks [1] fixes the issue.

[0] https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus

[1] https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases

Thanks! I'll give that a shot.

Don't listen to the reviews here. My MBP 15" (late-2016) is fine. I get all day battery life too. You can return it Jan 8th if it doesn't work for you. Hearing complaints from people who never used it is tiring.

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