What are Your Thoughts About the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar?

Submitted by Justin on Friday, January 13, 2017.
Forum
Hardware & Accessories

So, yesterday I finally got my new MacBook pro with touch bar. It's the 15 inch MBP with 16GB ram, 512 GB drive, 2.6/2.7 GHZ I7 sky lake chipset, you get the specs. Anyway, what do y'all think of the new mac with the touch bar. Do you like it? Hate it? what's your thoughts and do you have one. Personally I love it. Took a little getting used to, but now it's working great. I personally like the new butterfly key switches in the new keyboards. It makes typing a little more interesting. Also, have you noticed on here that the speech/audio seems kind of compressed? I see that whenever VO starts speaking after a little silence it's like theres a built in compressor for the audio. Lol, just my thoughts.

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Submitted by Ahmed on Thursday, October 29, 2020

Hello I love my MacBook Pro with the touchBar all though it took some getting used to I was able to learn it quickly I love it!

Submitted by Pepper Fox on Thursday, October 29, 2020

During my short ownership of a 16 inch MBP, I had absolutely no trouble at all with the touchbar. Accessibility on it worked the same way it does on iphone. It came in handy for performing actions that I didn't know the keystrokes for. I hate all of the MacBook keyboards. Doesn't matter if it's the new scissor switches or the butterfly keyboards. The travel distance is far, far, far too short, and for whatever reason I really struggled to find the home row.

I own a Razer Blade 15, and while the trackpad is huge and made of glass, it still uses a traditional diving board mechanism. Nothing has been able to topple Apple's force touch trackpad, both in physical design and software gestures. Apple also really excels with its audio. Yes, they go heavy on the DSP, but my MacBook had actual bass. The blade does not.

The things I really don't like about the MBP are the internals and Mac OS. It's a fine operating system, but the accessibility team needs to step up their bug-squashing game. Fingers crossed Voiceover gets some love with the impending transition.

Submitted by Justin on Thursday, October 29, 2020

Lol. I hear ya! They def need to have more mac accessibility people on their side of the mac pool. It's a wonderful os, it just lags behind a bit from iOS and others. Personally once you get used to apple keyboards, they're a joy to use. I chuckled a lil when ya said you had a difficult time finding the home row!! No hard feelings!! lol!! :)

I think Mac OS is a really competent system, and I found genuine value in it, but oof Voiceover needs some work. As for keyboards, I'm used to pounding mechanical switches with Hulk-smashing force. Besides issues finding the home row, the friction of the MacBook keys always felt... off. I think I'm just one of those exceptions that falls outside of their testing parameters when it comes to their keyboards. Cooling could be better. Maybe a vapor chamber, or actually make the heatsink have full contact with the CPU. Speaking of internals, now that the T2 chip has been blown wide open with an unpatchable jailbreak that persists between Mac OS reboots, it's a nuisance more than anything. I'm interested in finding out what their new silicon can do, especially for video rendering which is one of the main reasons I bought a Mac.

I'll admit, I miss not having texts and calls be routed to my laptop. Once the transition is complete, I think I'll give the Mac another go. Yes, RGB is nice and all for showing off pride or what have you, but the appeal of the Mac's simplicity is intoxicating. It's a laptop with handsome hardware wrapped in a beautiful package.

Submitted by Joe on Thursday, October 29, 2020

Club AppleVis Member

I have the 2019 MBP 16 and love it. I like having Siri and screen lock up on the Touch Bar plus in preview if listening to audio you can quickly maneuver a file.