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Comment by CraigJPerry | Hacker News Reader

My 13" ships back tomorrow. Keyboard befitting of a crappy laptop not a premium macbook pro, touchbar located where you hardly ever look (your keyboard), wifi borked on resume from sleep, fit and finish is poor - a disjoint ridge where the bottom panel and the unibody frame fail to meet accurately on the bottom rear, performance is below par regardless of what the reviews + benchmarks claim, intellij is not fast on this laptop.

USB-C wasn't an issue for me personally even though i have tons of electronics dev boards + associated junk i plug in all the time.

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I also returned my 13" MBP with Touch Bar. I also experienced issues with WiFi after wake (would not reconnect to my network), but my chief reason for returning it was the abysmal 4-5 hour battery life under light browsing usage.

In its place, I purchased a 2016 13" MBP with the 15W CPU and no Touch Bar. Oddly, its battery has about 11% more capacity than the Touch Bar model [1]. In their battery tests, Ars Technica reported that it lasts about 3 hours longer than the Touch Bar model with 28W CPU [2][3]. Here's hoping I see similar results.

[1] http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

[2] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/touch...

[3] http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inch...

How practical for Apple to get out of the WiFi Router business. Now they can blame "third party" routers as the culprit for issues like this.

I've returned mine (15''). First time I've returned an Apple product.

I previously wrote about my issues here [1].

For me, it was a combination of all the bad things: Touch bar (useless, distracting gimmick, no match for physical keys, nearness to keyboard results in inadvertent touches), lack of physical Esc key, meh keyboard (super loud, not enough key travel, annoying arrow keys), and absolutely no improvements over my current Mid-2015 MBP. The only thing I miss is the fingerprint reader.

I'm fine with donglegate, and I had bought all the cables/dongles I needed.

I'm surprised to read about everyone expecting 10 hours of battery life. My Mid-2015 gets 3-4 hours when I'm almost exclusively in Safari + VSCode + Terminal + Slack. Those are energy-hungry apps (especially Slack — only in 2016 would your chat app be the most CPU-intensive app!), and I got the same mileage with the 2016 MBP.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098257

Yes! Why is the slack app so power hungry??

Because it's not an app. It's Electron aka basically another copy of the Chrome browser running the slack web app

Any suggestions? I've a top of the line macbook and the two things it has the hardest time handling are Chrome and Slack... I think Chrome needs to start thinking more about performance and design.

I recommend switching to Safari. Faster and less resource-hungry.

You can use now Slack to XMPP or IRC gateway and use native client for these protocols - as a result power consuption is greatly reduced. A minor problem is that Slack has no idea if you read the message or not (though they should easily fix this with XMPP gateway).

#no-to-calling-electron-a-native-app-movement

I recently switched back to using Slack in a pinned tab and I can't recommend it enough. The minor additional inconvenience of getting to it makes it less distracting for me

... a disjoint ridge where the bottom panel ...

THIS!

I was checking out the new MBP's at the apple store and this was one of the first things I noticed when I picked it up by the sides. There is a huge gap along each bottom towards the side and it feels very sharp there when you pick it up. I could easily see someone getting cut or losing a fingernail. It's very unpleasant to hold there and just feels "wrong".

I have a 2015 15" MBP and this is not a problem on the 2015. While there is still the same gap, it is much narrower and is barely noticeable to the touch.

Shocking design flaw in the new body.

That's what threw me off as well when I was checking it at Apple Store, it felt very sharp, I often lay and use my laptop on my belly, i am pretty sure I would hate it, and the keyboard also sucks

I sent mine back almost entirely because of the keyboard. Shocked that most of the reviews gave Apple a free pass on that one.

One surprise was how good the speakers were though. Really hard going back to the tinny garbage on most everything else after hearing those.

Perhaps because a keyboard is a personal preference? Most of the reviews have mentioned the new keyboard as a love it or hate it thing. My wife has the new 13" model, and she loves the keyboard. I'm typing this on a spiffy mechanical keyboard. I don't think I could get used to one of the new Macbook Pro keyboards.

Does anyone actually prefer the new style low travel keyboards to the old ones? I'm guessing an extreme minority of users does. I can see indifference or thinking the slimmer profile is a good tradeoff, but not objectively liking the keyboard better. Most of the reviews seem to be an iteration on "well, I got used to it and it's not that bad!"

Who knows. I'm probably just crazy.

I objectively prefer the new keyboard. I've got a light touch and in my opinion any travel beyond what you need to be able to tell you've hit the key is wasted effort.

I've got a laptop keyboard on my desk (https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Compact-Keyboard-Trac...), and would have one of the new macbook keyboards if they made a standalone one.

I much prefer it. I don't see any reason to move my hands further than I need to to get just enough physical feedback. It feels sleeker and more modern too. Large travel just slows me down. I spilled a drink on my Apple wireless keyboard, and now I'm using a pretty standard office-type USB keyboard instead. And I can tell you I'm typing far slower.

Yeah I have been working nearly exclusively on a Retina Macbook since they were released last year. I really love the keyboard on this computer, and I think that the newest iteration of the keyboard is a significant improvement on the Macbook's. I know a couple people who hated it when they first tried it, and still hate it.

In and around my office had a few try it. It seemed to be about 50/50 Love / Hate.

I would say it was pretty predictable depending on how soft/hard the person typed on their current keyboard.

I tried it in the apple store and hated it, but after a week of actual use I like it much more.

Pros: More clicky, almost like a mechanical keyboard with no travel

Cons: I apparently used the raised profile of the keys to align my hands. Without it I find I have to look down once in a while to start typing.

It's fascinating how loud it is, like an old mechanical IBM keyboard; I wonder if that goes away after a few weeks of use. I was working from a coffee shop today, and the clacking sound from the guy sitting 2 meters away from me was super loud, even through my noise-canceling earbuds, with volume turned up high. An entire office with these going on at once must be... interesting.

If that sounds loud, imagine an entire office full of typewriters.

The difference in opinions is interesting. The keyboard (and the speakers) are my favorite aspect of the new mac. I'm a very light typist though.

The speakers are amazing, I have no idea how they managed that

I love the new keyboard, took two days to get used to it. The old one now feels wobbly and squishy.

Out of curiosity, what will you be replacing it with?

Just wondering, when did you place your order?

I ordered a new 2016 Macbook Pro 1 week after the Macbooks released, and my order is still processing with a shipping date of this week. I'm sure it will process, but the idleness (no credit card charges) and lack of emails from Apple has made me think it's in limbo.

One thing you should be aware of -- apparently Apple's 14 day return window begins when you place your order, not when you receive your order. So for pre-orders that took awhile to ship, your return window is probably zero days.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerem/status/808482774298468352

"You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it."

Source: http://www.apple.com/shop/help/returns_refund

Beyond that, Apple's holiday return policy says:

"Holiday Return Policy

Items purchased at the Apple Online Store that are received between November 10, 2016 and December 25, 2016, may be returned through January 8, 2017. Please note that all other terms and conditions provided in the Apple Online Store Sales and Refunds Policy are still applicable with respect to such items purchased. All purchases made after December 25, 2016 are subject to the Standard Return Policy."

Note that it says received, not ordered. The vast majority of 2016 MacBook Pros were received after November 10th (they started shipping around November 13th IIRC), which means that they can still be returned up until January 8th next year.

Good to know - seem to conflict with what that customer was told.

I think I may be sending back my 15" as well. I was playing Civ VI on battery and managed just over an hour. Regular usage of Chrome, XCode, Slack, Mail netted me about 3 hours with 75% brightness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST-VncjYydI

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