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Comment by Uupis | Hacker News Reader

> There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.

Without any data to back the claim up, I'm reasonably sure this is just a loud, extremely small, minority. There are some things wrong with the new MacBook Pros, but, in my opinion, they are still, very likely, the best laptops out there.

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I postponed a purchase of a fully loaded 13 inch model because of the lack of compelling enhancements (not sold on the bar) and these reports of battery life issues likely mean I will not make the purchase at all. At least 3 people I know are in the same boat and could have purchased at launch. While purely anecdotal and selection bias (all of us work in tech), but that's close to $10k in sales right there.

Best case, I'll skip this generation, but I'm strongly considering razer blade stealth + core.

I'm in dire need for an upgrade, too, and have been broken up about the fact that there is no dGPU-free option this time around. As well as the battery life issues, which probably are at least tangentially related to the dGPU.

If there was any clarity as to when we could expect a new MBP, I'd very strongly consider waiting. But otherwise, I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet on the current one, mainly because of the keyboard (entirely subjective, but I very much like it), and the screen (just as subjective). Anecdotally, I've seen a reasonable number of people say that the new MBPs run cooler and quieter, which, to me, is very appealing in a laptop.

As far as TouchBar goes: while playing with it at the store, I found some reasonably cute uses that might offset the loss of function keys, such as the seek-bar for Picture-in-Picture or AirPlay videos. And, of course, TouchID.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if at all feasible – definitely wait for a refresh. But, personally, after taking the time to think about it, I've found sufficient reasons to upgrade even to the 2016 model.

That's just the thing - my upgraded '12 15 inch MBP with 16GB RAM can last me until the chassis give out. To help with weight while traveling, I've been using an iPad + VPS for coding.

Switching back to Linux no longer feels like a downgrade after a year of VIM over SSH.

Had my new rMBP+TB machine for a month now, and I seriously can't see any use of the Touchbar that makes a difference to me. I simply don't ever look up there. Its not useful in bed - when laying down with laptop on lap, I can't even see the Touchbar screen.

So to me its a near-total useless 'feature' that has the potential to be reverted in the next generation. Unless I see a really killer app for it, I'll just continue ignoring it - and one of the reasons I may not see it, is that Apple are discouraging developers from using it as a display and requiring, rather, that it be used as a control surface. If I had an RSS feed on the thing, I'd find it a lot more useful - but Apple have a policy against that sort of thing. This seems like a broken policy, to me, though ..

Then there is Consumer Report not recommended the MacBook Pro for the first time ever! Today, Apple claimed there was a bug in Safari[1] which caused the very poor battery life in their report. Sounds very fishy.

[1] - http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14225716/apple-macbook-pro...

Agreed. Apple's rebuttal does sound very fishy.

I'd love to hear how Consumer Report managed to get a nearly 20-hour battery life result in one of their tests, though.

It doesn't sound fishy at all, that was the most obvious explanation right off the bat. The battery was inconsistent when Safari was running, but consistent when Chrome was used in its place. That's a massive neon sign pointing to a bug in Safari causing problems, and loads of people said this as soon as the report came out.

Six and a half years ago, Steve Jobs literally told people to hold the iPhone 4 in a better way to keep it from losing reception. Software is hard. Hardware is harder. Doesn't sound fishy at all to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/25/ipho...

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