16-Inch MacBook Pro Said to Launch in September | Hacker News Reader

16-Inch MacBook Pro Said to Launch in September

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59 pointsjasonrhaas62 comments

It will hopefully contain a lot of features people asked for like a better keyboard, Face ID, more connectivity, etc. And just like the Mac Pro the starting price will probably be enormous, I wouldn't be surprised if the base model is $2.5K or more.

And I wouldn't have problem with that at all. My 2015 Macbook Pro has been worth every penny. I used it every day and it's still going strong. Before I bought this MBP I tried every Windows machine money can buy and I always had problems, both hardware and software.

If Apple goes back to making products that are generally without problems, I'll upgrade to the newest model at launch day. The keyboard woes definitely held me back.

Same. I bought and returned a few PCs, including a couple of Surface Pros. I actually like the feel of the new Macbook Pro keyboard, but I'm running into too many friends with missing or stuck keys. I'm still using my 2012 retina, and it has lasted an amazingly long time. I want that kind of craftsmanship. I also, like most, really do not like the touch bar.

Currently still on my maxed out late 2013 15" retina with 2.3 Ghz 16GB RAM 512GB SSD. The trackpad has ceased to work but it has come to rest on my desk with dedicated monitors, keyboard and mouse. Easily the most important enjoyable inanimate object in my life that. Oh, and still have my early 2010 15" MBP to troubleshoot, run Windows, and as a backup in case this one is out of commission for an extended period of time which has only happened once. Really appreciate the feeling that when I buy my next one I'll be able to rely on it for over half a decade.

Still haven't warmed up to the keyboard and seemingly useless touchpad (although I'm sure I could find fun ways to use it)

As for modern Windows machines, I bought a Surface Laptop for my wife and that machine holds up pretty good. But she does not use it every day like I do and only uses it for browsing, Office and remote desktopping to her work environment.

The Surface Pro was an impressive feat of engineering, but was never a comfortable typing experience regardless. I would say the Surface Book legitimately has a super nice keyboard though, reminds me of the pre-2015 Macbooks in good ways.

I'm actually switching back to Linux. Partially because of the issues you cite, I too love my 2015 MBP - where as I don't use my bigger 2017 MBP as a laptop (it's basically a desktop for me).

The bigger issue for me though is price. I love my 2015 not only because the keyboard is great, but because the price was good (it's a cheaper model). I can take it outside and not fear losing $2k-$4k. My bigger MBP is just over 3 grand, which is a lot to lose due to sea air, outside dirt, etc.

Sure, I could probably buy a cheaper 2019 MBP if they're quality and feel good about going outside, but I want power too. The price just doesn't seem worth it these days. If I go Linux, I can get a powerhouse for the same price as the lower end MBPs it seems (though I've not done rigorous comparisons yet). I want cheap and powerful.. and it just seems impossible to do that with Apple.

I'm switching to Linux as well. It's that "just works" has become "it doesn't work anymore, and we don't sell anything you want." I'd happily give them money, but they don't seem to care about what I want as a customer.

I'm typing this on a mid-2010 iMac with Linux installed because it's no longer supported by Mac OS. My 2012 MBP died earlier this year. I replaced it with a Dell XPS 15 running Linux. I don't like it as much as my MBP, but I don't hate it like the current Apple offerings.

I don't mind paying for power. I've got a ridiculously overpowered "cheese grater" Mac Pro. But the OS is dated, and I can't replace it without a total wipe and reinstall because I used a RAID. After being left in the lurch on the (admittedly dated, but perfectly functional) iMac, not knowing if I'll ever like another MBP offering, and having to wipe the system anyway, I'm not sure I'm not just going to put linux on that as well.

I might even switch over to Android for my phone. While setting up a VPN, I had a very difficult time, because even though all Apple's configurator does is create XML profiles, I couldn't run it because none of my hardware had a recent enough version of Mac OS on it. It seems totally arbitrary; especially since I can duplicate the profile by hand, email it to myself, and install it on the phone.

I switched to Linux from Mac back in 2009.

While I enjoy the freedom and lately the niceties of NixOS, there are a few things I miss about Apple. Especially hardware.

It sounds crazy, but some Macs were among the best Linux laptops. MacBook Air 11 (Late 12) used by Linus himself. That's my main machine too. Silent, pure Intel, flawless. Other Macs were really nice too. E.g. MacBook 2.1. Great keyboard, and supported by Coreboot. Not so much lately sadly, with non-USB input devices, secure boot and bad keyboards.

People talk about Thinkpads, which are good, but you need to cherry-pick a lot. Some models are quite noisy for example. Outside Thinkpads, it's hit and miss. Currently, I like Surface Go and Xiaomi Mi Air 12. Most other laptop options are not good. Desktops are a completely different business.

Buying from Apple is always very reliable and easy. Pay and go. Everything is fine. Guarantees across borders are fine. Getting keyboards from different locales is fine. With other brands, not so much. I feel that Apple is focused on less products, and this really makes a difference in terms of quality and user experience.

Lately, I was trying to get a US ANSI keyboard in the UK, and the only option that worked was buying a Magic Keyboard (which has really nice latency).

> Some models are quite noisy for example.

You can change fan speed curve. NBFC with one is suggested profiles working great for me and my laptop became much less noisy. But nbfc was my only option because my hp laptop has unrecognizable by linux fans so fancontrol cant control it.

> I want cheap and powerful.. and it just seems impossible to do that with Apple.

My job relies on this laptop. I don't care if it's expensive, I want to buy reliability.

I agree. My desktop I want to be super powerful, but my laptop I need to travel. I don't like traveling with $4k worth of hardware in my backpack. I don't like setting $4k worth of hardware down on park benches or tables.

Worst of all, my 2017MBP has nothing for reliability. It's both expensive and unreliable. The keyboard is absolutely terrible. I never use that machine as a laptop because of how unusable and unreliable it is.

Part of reliability to me is affordability. If I take a laptop outside and it gets damaged, how quickly can I get it replaced, fixed, etc? If I have to spend $4k to replace it that's not an easy chunk of change. This is a way of saying price tags of Apple hardware can inhibit reliability, imo.

How about used ones from eBay?

People are asking for Face ID on laptops?! I have an EFF sticker over my 2015 MBPR's webcam thank you very much…

Those things don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive - though grant, they likely will be as implemented. Face ID is incredibly convenient on phones, and I while I didn't expect to care either way on the iPad, it's just as nice there. My only complaint with my 11" iPad Pro's Face ID is that the sensor is only on the "top", and is almost always covered by my hand when I'm holding it in landscape (which is pretty much always). A second sensor on the right side of the device, near the magnets for the Apple Pencil, would be very welcome.

For a laptop... I'm not sure exactly how that would best implemented. The easiest thing to do would likely be to hardwire an LED to the sensor so that it couldn't be activated without notifying the user. Otherwise... perhaps it could be implemented as a self-contained authentication device that sent some sort of hash of the user's facial features to the OS, instead of the actual image? I'm not familiar enough with how the technology works to say for sure.

Yes they do.

To be at all interesting, this would have to have a good keyboard (as in the 2015 MBP), and an optional touchbar.

For what its worth, I just picked up the latest gen and the keyboard seems like a real improvement in both feel and noise. The Touch Bar still sucks, but I am happy with the keyboard.

I've got one of the latest ones too, I still think it sucks more than the 2015 ones.

I used to keep them on my desk partly as screen estate, now keep the lid closed, leave it under the desk and use a bluetooth keyboard in the hope it'll survive.

It's definitely different than 2015 so if you require more key travel, it won't be for you. But I am pretty happy with it.

I tried a recent one and it's definitely better, but still not nearly as good as the old ones.

I'm perfectly fine with it having a touchbar, if only there was a physical ESC button.

Real escape and full row of real F- keys. Just push the Touchbar above it, so we can power it down and ignore it (or run cute screensavers on it while plugged in).

The whole concept makes no sense. "Don't look at the computer's screen when you work, look down at your keyboard instead!" It is like an anti-touch typing gimmick, the tagline should be "become a worse typelist today!"

If you want to stay sane with touch bar, buy one of those keyboard covers for non-touchbar models with ESC/Fn keys, pad the Fn keys with some pieces of rubber. Then you can have have some poor man's tactile feedback. The very latest keyboard is improvement both in sound and feel, latest CPUs are very fast, just the touchbar kills the overall impression.

I'd be perfectly fine having a touchbar if it were in addition to the f-keys.

So not quite perfectly fine since no iteration of the Touch Bar has a physical ESC button?

I would like to have my "pro" ports back, standard usb3 alongside usbc, magnetic power plug, possibly an hdmi port. I've used the hdmi countless times over the years in unexpected situations but I guess carrying an adapter around would be ok.

Those features are never coming back, but you can dream.

Agree. I'm holding out on my 2015 MBP, no way I'll upgrade to one of the crappy keyboard shitters.

With the addition of iOS apps, would it be too much to ask for a touchscreen?

Do you ever consider ipad pro?

Even as a (former) heavy iPad Pro user, I don't think the iPad Pro is a viable replacement for a MBP with touchscreen.

My ideal MBP has a touch screen, no touch bar, the old smaller trackpad, and better keyboard, in a form factor something like a Surface Pro.

Yes, definitely. Even with the improvements in the latest version, it still comes up way short of what you get from Windows/MacOS.

And a battery that doesn't explode

Here's a revolutionary idea in case Sir Jony is reading:

Make it lighter and thicker.

Seriously, until it's as light as a phone I don't mind if they keep shaving weight off. But there's very little to be gained by going thinner:

1. I doubt ergonomics get much better as it approaches typing on a sheet of paper

2. the risk of bending increases

3. if it's not as thin they can fit more stuff in there more cheaply: better heat management, longer lasting batteries, faster processors/more memory, stronger antennas, etc.

Thermal performance is my #1 issue with the MBP. I have a 2017 13", and it really struggles with even modest sustained loads. I often work outdoors from a hammock, and even in the shade it throttles very quickly when using Docker to spin up a local instance of an app or even tox to run its test suite.

Even just web browsing quickly becomes a problem if the laptop is in direct sunlight.

Better keyboard and no touch bar would cause the MBP to be the undisputed champion of laptops. I have a 2019 MBP and love absolutely everything about it minus the keyboard, thank god the 13" has an option without the touch bar.

If there’s no escape key and inverted-T arrow keys I’m cutting my losses and jumping to Linux after 30 years as a Mac owner.

I’m also a thirty year Mac user and also not happy about the keyboard and waiting for a new one (using pre 2016s) - but I’m not going to throw away three decades of my own knowledge and tooling over it. Yes it sucks, but that seems like blowing it out of proportion.

I'm curious what losses there are to be cut? Isn't it as simple as just buying a different product and using that instead?

It's not like my kitchen only fits Whirlpool or my garage only fits Honda.

> I'm curious what losses there are to be cut? Isn't it as simple as just buying a different product and using that instead?

Chances are they have software installed on their machine. OSX has a vibrant ecosystem of independent developer and thus a pretty large number of bespoke good-quality software which might / would have to be replaced. Especially as cross-platform software tends to integrate less than well with the platform.

That goes double for older mac users, which have a higher tendency to use native software.

And of course one needs the time to adapt to different paradigms, shortcuts, facilities, … once again especially for older users of the platform for whom this becomes second nature.

Incidentally the points mix, the second one drives the first, I regularly notice cross-platform software which doesn't respond properly to Cocoa's text-movement shortcuts (even a simple C-a / C-e).

Losses in accumulated platform knowledge, purchased software investments, and custom built tooling. No, it’s not like replacing a dishwasher!

For me, these are non trivial to replace on Linux or windows: 3 years of randomly generated passwords conveniently stored, a purchased movie collection on iTunes, tab syncing between phone and laptop, touchId login, and probably most importantly iMessage sync between laptop and phone.

Presumably the investment in MacOS applications. Switching from Mac to whatever else would require finding replacements for those.

Possibly software and accessories that only work with macOS.

Not sure I understand this. Apple means both hardware and software, are you cutting software and using linux on a macbook, or cutting hardware too and using on a windows machine?

Already jumped. System76 Darter + PopOS is a great combination.

Whoah Whoah they’re talking about getting rid of arrow keys?

Will this be the first MacBook that will be thicker than its previous gen? I am hoping Apple has realised that they are at the limit of what the current MacBook Pro can do in terms of thermals. I want a laptop that doesn't have its fans spinning non-stop only because I use an external screen or Firefox instead of Safari.

I'd be curious to know if Apple collects telemetry on touchbar usage. I don't use it. At all. I have it frozen to only show the equivalent physical keys that used to be there (esc and the fn keys). Does anyone use the touchbar effectively and like it? What are the chances of Apple ditching it on some models?

I used to be the same. After 6 months of use and getting use to not accidentally hitting the touch bar I changed it back to the dynamic setting. That said, I still don't use it except for volume, which was part of the standard set of keys.

I'm in the same boat. I have it frozen to use as regular keys. So basically I have the same functionality as a regular keyboard, with the caveat that sometimes the keys don't work, and there is no haptic feedback.

I do the same thing and would also really love to know who thinks it’s in any way good.

I hit it all the time by accident and suddenly in the middle of typing iTunes pops up, or an IntelleJ config window, vi sort of works but amazingly the escape touch key isn’t always sensitive enough and I have to double tap it.

> really love to know who thinks it’s in any way good.

I think it’s good. Install BetterTouchTool (or analog) and the touchbar becomes infinitely-customisable multi-touch fn-keys row. The only missing thing is any tactile feedback (although BetterTouchTool can “simulate” it using touchpad’s linear motor).

I used to feel the same until I discovered BetterTouchTool which lets you completely customize it yourself, contextualized by app.

This made me actually really like it.

But the vanilla Touch Bar? Totally agree it’s pretty near useless or worse.

I use the Touch Bar for volume control, brightness control, to select screen when VNCing to remote machine.

FN key reveals Function keys for me.

> Korean website The Elec recently reported that Samsung was in talks with Apple about supplying OLED displays for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but if the IHS Markit report is accurate, the notebook will have a LCD instead.

Shame. I was hoping for a much better display. Of course, I won't complain too much until I see it for myself compared to my 2012 mbpr. If there isn't too much of a jump, my wallet will stay closed.

Edit:

I would have thought that Apple's recent push to 4K would have signalled a common push to all devices having a minimum resolution [0].

[0]: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...

It would be nice if Apple would move to @3x for this Retina screen, making it a tad above 4K. Yes I would pay the Apple tax for that. Also interested in what they're going to do with the 13" one. If it gets a smaller bezel screen will it get more screen or will they shrink the machine a bit further?

I'm not going to hope for changes in the keyboard or ports or the Touch Bar. So far I like the keyboard on the 2018 anyway, but connecting a camera was a bit of a hassle.

That's an unusual screen resolution. Are there existing panels at that resolution?

All of Apple's laptops use unusual resolutions since they're basically the only company still doing 16:10 displays. They just order custom panels.

I am seriously hoping for a 4K panel so that you get a 2x resolution of 1920x1080 .. If they did that, they would instantly have my money.

It is exactly the old 15" resolution scaled up to 16", which both are quite unusual.

> As would be expected, Lin claims the 16-inch MacBook Pro will feature a newer processor. No other details are known.

Didn't they update macbook pro with latest intel CPUs like a month ago?

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