I have the non touchbar version. The keyboard is the one thing that has surprised me. I've done a complete 180 and love it. I bought this to replace my 2008 Macbook and at first found the travel too shallow but now I can actually type much faster than on the old one and I'm convinced it's better. I hope that any of the issues you mention come up within the 1 year warranty period though.

Your issues about the touch bar are the reason I bought the non touch bar version, I use function keys too much to have the physical ones gone, also I'd rather not have it go to sleep and prefer to have the bigger battery. EDIT: just adding that I did spend time testing the touch bar version in the Apple store as the price difference was not a major factor for this type of one time purchase for me, and I think if it's a good idea to do so if you live near one.

I wasn't unhappy about new keyboard feel but rather quality of keyboard itself. Eventually I'll bring it for repair, I think that should be covered indeed.

>c) I don't get why Apple changed default/native resolution to be non-retina trading extra screen real estate for image quality.

You seem confused. The default/native resolution IS Retina.

Retina is exactly about trading "extra screen real estate for image quality".

There's no "change", that was what Retina was about all along.

The other mode doesn't make much sense -- to have larger dpi but tiny screen elements on 15" or 13" screen, and scalable doesn't work as well with legacy apps and most stuff than "pixel doubling" does.

I think he meant that the newest 15" MBP with a 2880x1800 retina display is configured by default to show a scaled 1680x1050 desktop instead of the "native" 1440x900@2x you are thinking about.

Thanks, did they? I missed that! The spec pages still say:

15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2880-by-1800 native resolution at 220 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors

-- and lists a number of supported "scaled" resolutions.

I wonder why they made this move... People asking them for more real estate? Haven't gotten my MBPr yet, is the scaled resolutions workable?

That's exactly what I meant, apologies for confusion.

I was profoundly shaken, but in the end, in the interest of discussion, I decided to accept the apology.

I totally agree with your statements.

I'd also add that the battery life is pretty woeful compared to a 13"MBA, I can't get more than 2 hours meaningful work done on mine.

The touchbar at time is slow and stutters.

The touch pad is too big and very often gets spurious inputs when typing. It acts like a "good PC touch pad", not the perfection of only a generation ago.

Power management with external monitors is also hit and miss. The device will often not wake in closed lid mode with presses to the keyboard.

The inclusion of Touch ID is great but whatever changes done under ttt hood has turned searching Keychain manager into molasses.

All in all this is the worst Mac laptop I've ever purchased, and I've purchased 1-2 per year since 2000. The only thing keeping me on the hardware is OS X.

I have to say M$'s new hardware looks very tempting.

I disagree on the last point. I think Apple moving up spec refreshes of the MBP to Q2 makes a lot of sense given that Intel's release cycle on chips tends to be Q4. A small Kaby Lake refresh in the MBP, potentially with a 32gb RAM option on the 15" model, could very well be in the cards.

I'd like to see them go more towards the XPS13. 13" screen in 11" body. Add a tiny edge to the top, run a cable behind the screen to add the iSight above the screen, voila. Also baffles me that Dell didn't go for that option, instead of the chincam they have now..

I'm returning my 2016 MacBook Pro (just got it) tomorrow over these exact same issues. Bad performance, TouchBar accidental triggers, 16GB of RAM... etc. same things.