> If you want a laptop with 16 GB of RAM, HiDPI screen, a discrete GPU and 10 hours of battery life, then there really aren't very many choices.

Off the top of my head:

Dell XPS 15 has up to 17 hours of battery life, a 4k screen (that can be upgraded to a touchscreen), dedicated Nvidia GPU and up to 32 gigs of Ram

The Razor Blade and perpetually on the horizon Razor Blade Pro have QHD or better touchscreens, 16 gigs or more of RAM, and the best line up of dedicated graphics cards you're going to find in a laptop. Oh, and they did reactive/programable touch keyboards without removing core functionality from the device. Can't find specs on battery life at the moment. Plus, mechanical keyboard and glowy lights!

And there's the ThinkPad line up which has basically everything under the sun now.

Not to mention the Surface Book, which claims 12 hours of battery life, meets your dedicated GPU and RAM needs, and has a killer scree, that supports a some rather interesting input devices. And it can connect to an iPhone 7 without a dongle.

There are options out there.

>Dell XPS 15 has up to 17 hours of battery life, a 4k screen (that can be upgraded to a touchscreen), dedicated Nvidia GPU and up to 32 gigs of Ram

Every report I've seen from owners of the 15 says that even the 1080 version struggles to get 6 hours so where did you get 17 hours from?

Dell's own self reporting on their website, I presume. I got an XPS15 a couple of months ago and I have no idea what crack Dell smoked to get that number. I don't have a problem with the battery life personally since I'm coming off a very old laptop which has about a 6 minute lifetime, so the 4-5 hours I can get is a breath of fresh air, plus I tweaked the battery to the "mostly plugged in all the time" setting which I think works by lowering the max charge limit to 80%, so most people will probably get more than I do (at least at first). But if you're used to getting 10 hours from an existing system you may be disappointed.

Are you guys seeing 15" MBPs with discrete GPUs really get 10 hours of battery life? I've got one at home and one at work, and moderate usage manages to kill them both in 4 or so hours a lot. Big difference from the 13", which consistently lasts longer for me. That GPU likes to switch on, and that screen is a big hog too.

What are you using that causes the discrete GPU to turn on? Install Gfxcardstatus to find out.

I get about 8 hours on my 2 year old 15 rMBP with Safari. Less than 4 hours with Chrome.

Interesting, haven't tried Safari. Chrome and Firefox are both big big culprits for flipping the GPU on for me.

Chrome and Firefox drain batteries really fast. When I use Chrome on my MBP, I have 2 to 4 hours less battery life compared to Safari. Google / the Blink developers really don’t care about draining the battery. It is infuriating because Opera, Vivaldi and other browsers using the Blink engine suffer from the same problem. Safari has come a long way, both in terms of battery savings and usability. I use Safari Technology Preview[1], which is the most up-to-date version of Safari. Apple releases an update every two to four weeks.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/

Safari has improved dramatically in the past couple years. Give it a shot.

No, I don't even think 6-7 hours is bad unless I'm flying and even then most seats have plugs these days it's just a pain to have the cables all out. I just noticed the huge disconnect from the 17 hour claim.

Between Chrome and Photoshop my GPU seems to be on pretty much all the time on my MBP. I get probably 5-6 hours on it working unplugged(my power cable is usually at my standing desk and some days I'm lazier than normal so I get close to this before standing up again).

Not in European planes.

>Are you guys seeing 15" MBPs with discrete GPUs really get 10 hours of battery life?

I get close to 8 hours with a late 2013 MBPr 15".

Pulled it from their website. Should have said 'claims up to' like I did with the Surface Book.

>Dell XPS 15 has up to 17 hours of battery life, a 4k screen (that can be upgraded to a touchscreen), dedicated Nvidia GPU and up to 32 gigs of Ram

I don't see any 32Gig update, either as standard (16GB) or even as a customization option.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd

As for the battery life, LaptopMag gives: 10:26 for the 1080p XPS 15 and a meagre 6:36 for the 4K screen.

I also think the SSD is quite slower, single thunderbolt port (it has 2 USB 3 ports and HDMI), and the touchpad is worse. So there's also that.

The fact that the Razor Blade doesn't even advertise the battery life tells me everything I need to know about what I should expect from that line.

Also, dell battery life is only decent with the 1080p screen. Everything I heard about the higher resolution touch screen is that it eats battery life (and the 16 GB of RAM on the XPS 13 only comes with the touch screen).

Thank you for the list, but how is this an alternative? None of those run macOS (not Hackintosh). I'm not being fastidious, but I have an nontrivial software investment in macOS and Windows Any Version is not an alternative.

Yes, the new MBP wasn't all we could have hoped for, but I had held out for a very long time and it's the best option I have.

EDIT: A actually do also have an XPS 15 w/Ubuntu, but that combination isn't quite a replacement for an MBP.

There is one line of laptops I definitely prefer and highly recommend: the previous generation of the MacBook Pro.

The current generation of MacBook Air, with Five (5) Ports (Power, 2xUSB, 1xTB, 1xSD), not including the mic is pretty good value as well for a certain group of people who use a lot of connected devices in the field. I have zero reservations about recommending the i5 1.6Ghz w/8GB to anybody but the most demanding professional, who probably already knows they want something different.

It's funny that this whole "controversy" about the new MBP had me take a closer look at my mid-2014 MBP, which is my daily workhorse. I honestly had no idea that it even had an HDMI socket. I've never once used either of the Thunderbolt sockets. I routinely forget about the second USB plug. So I basically need a single USB socket to allow me to run apps on my phone for testing. I sometimes use the SD card slot to pull images off my camera, but I could easily use a dedicated USB-C interface for that.

So am I a "pro" user? I make iPhone and web apps with lots of users that generate many millions of dollars per year, so I'm at least "prosumer", which is probably more in line with Apple's target market for MBP than someone who makes 3D games or does VFX or motion graphics, etc.

Lol...I used my 2014 MBP as my daily for about a year with an external screen running off a DisplayPort to HDMI dongle before I realized it had an HDMI port built-in. (The only reason I even noticed is because I tried to use it as a USB port...I just never looked closely at the ports on that side.)

I bought my 2015 15" refurb the day of the MBP Apple Event from the Apple Store. A couple of days ago all of the 15" models were sold out, but I think they have since replenished with a new batch. They seem to be selling well.

I don't think most developers make use of the discrete GPU. Does forgoing this open up alternative options?

I think the new MBP seem expensive like everyone else, it I species out a Lenovo Carbon X1. There was a rebate available at the time. But otherwise the price was pretty much the same ... as usual.

It's definitely a bit more expensive, especially if you opt for the 1TB SSD. But the X1 Carbon doesn't have a discrete GPU.