I have a 16 inch, the keyboard is amazing, the display is beautiful, and I have had no thermal problems running multiple VMs, and heavy web development workflows.

Not sure what people are going crazy about regarding the keyboard, it is one of the most amazing ones on a laptop I have used.

He didn’t say anything about the keyboard. He only made a negative comment about the Touch Bar.

Who are you defending the keyboard against? No one anywhere complains about the keyboard on the new 16”. They complain(ed) about the butterfly keyboards on the older MBPs. Apple themselves implicitly agreed they were garbage by offering free replacements and abandoning the butterfly design.

Your comment and the motivation for posting it is very confusing.

I moved from 2014 15" (i7) to 16" (i9).

It is an upgrade, but not by much...

The touch bar gets in the way, but I use external keyboardS 90% of the time, so it isn't that big of problem. I would have gladly payed extra for F-keys.

The larger track-pad also gets in my way often.

Fan noise is significant compared to the old model.

USB-C-only is quite annoying. I never missed a port on the 15", whereas now ... well...

I bought it to get a performance boost (compiling/ML-training/etc.). The performance upgrade isn't really that significant.

I recommend waiting a little while longer...

My 2014 13” i5 broke last year after a drop so I bought a 2019 6 core 15”. I was pretty surprised that the performance of the new device isn’t really that much better. And the hardware feels worse. I think they should go back to the 2015 form factor, maybe replace some USB-A with C but otherwise leave it.

When is the 2nd-gen 16" MBP scheduled for release?

I went from late 2013 13 inch to the 2016 16 inch (maxed everything but the graphics). I also hate the touchbar. Things like volume control that used to be a tap away are now hidden in sub screens. You can switch it to only function keys but they are missing the icons for volume etc and you can't touch feel where the buttons are so I have left it in full touchbar mode. Some functions of it are actually quite cool but it should exist as well as the function keys not instead of. I haven't had any of the issues described anywhere. Mine works flawlessly. Very very happy with the machine overall. A huge improvement on the 2013 mbp i came from which i agree was an excellent machine.

You can tweak the touch bar to put e.g. volume control on the 'home screen' if you prefer; it's hard to find though, it's under Keyboard, then the Customize Control Strip button at the bottom.

I just checked. Unless I'm missing something there is no simple volume control like on the physical keyboard? I already have the volume button on my touchbar home screen however tapping it opens a slider. I don't want or need a slider and have to do a tap and then slide to get the volume down whilst before it was one press of a button. This usually requires me to look away form what I'm doing. It's definitely a step back in terms of UX. It was perfect before the touchbar.

Thanks for pointing that feature out though. Have replaced Siri with the play button :)

Edit: Just playing around with this a bit more I noticed the expanded view now has all the normal icons. Either I missed it before or I changed something. Is there a way to make the expanded view the default?

You can tap-hold-slide to adjust across the whole range, rather than tapping then hunting for the slider. You can also set the touch bar to show an expanded control strip by default (which includes a volume up/volume down/mute triple) if you want.

The tap and hold works well. I guess I will settle on expanded view with fn key for app controls. Probably the best for my usecase.

I have the problem where the TouchBar goes blank and it's not even detected by the system any longer (System Preferences - Keyboard) and I have to reboot to get the controls back.

Tweaks like Goldenchaos can help with usability. Volume control becomes a 2-finger slide on the touchbar. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

For things like volume control and brightness, you don't have to treat it as a two step process, you can simply press on the volume button, for example, and immediately slide to adjust without moving your finger over to the slider.

I had a 2014 15" (maxed out spec). I wanted a replacement so bought and returned the 2017 MBP because it was just not very good at all (https://blog.willj.net/2017/08/14/why-i-returned-my-macbook-...).

I have recently bought the 16" (max GPU, max CPU, 32GB, 2TB disk). It's way better. There's still stuff wrong with it for sure. Some takeaways:

- The keybord is better than recent models, but still not as good as the 2014. I can live with it though.

- The touch bar is still there, but there's an escape key which was my main gripe. I would still prefer an option to not have one though.

- I hate USB-c so so much. The mental overhead of trying to work out what will work with what cable is horrible.

- I had to buy a £250 dock to make everything work as it did before (the TS3 caldigit one on the Apple site). Apple would not recommend a USB-c to mini displayport adapter, and the first one I bought didn't work.

- The screen is lovely.

- The speakers are a massive improvement.

- The trackpad is too big. I hit it accidentally way too much.

- I have it plugged into two external 4k monitors and I keep the lip open, so it's driving three screens. It does this with seemingly no problem or cooling fan use.

I'm definitely keeping it. There's still issues, but it's now simply a much better machine overall (taking speed into account) than my 2014.

We have the same model. It's a much better machine than my old one. I agree with you on all points except the USB-C hate. I don't use it often enough to have to worry about what cable does what. I usually route everything through the TS3 Caldigit, and only ever hook up the TB3 cables to the laptop.

FWIW I have the 16" Pro and haven't noticed the fans other than when I'm running a LOT of stuff (either a game or a heavy Docker workflow).

I've got a new MBP (from work) and an x1 yoga personally. The X1's running Linux and frankly works beautifully. The mac's "quirks" aren't counterbalanaced anymore by being the only reasonable unix laptop solution. They're just an annoying PITA.

The Yoga is nice, I have one too, but there was no option to add a dedicated video card, and this issue with the MBP always seems to stem from the dedicated cards.

Yeah until I see emacs able to offload elisp to the GPU I have no interest in a dedicated card...

I recently switched from a 2014 edition MBP to a 2017, and the experience has been terrible. I had to make the switch b/c the battery on the 2014 machine was starting to die and my work had an extra 2017 model.

- popping sounds coming from the chassis that drive me crazy

- bunched up arrow keys that are occasionally unresponsive at least in X11 emacs

- it seems like the touchbar has potential but is difficult to customize

- I find it lame you need an adapter for USB or HDMI.

I agree, go back to the 2014 style.

And the Keyboard.

Most reviewers dont even want to touch on the topic as if Apple told them to do so. The so call new Magic Keyboard doesn't felt anywhere close to the Magic Keyboard used on iMac or iMac Pro. In fact they felt more of the same as the old butterfly, and it is awful.

I am on early 2015 ( brought it in 2017 if I remember correctly because I cant stand the MBP 2016+ ), and I pray it wont break down. It is already getting some strange lock up for no apparent reason.

I would even pay for a brand new 2015 MBP for the same price during its time in 2020.

mid-2014 editions had only one flaw: macOS. Easily remedied.†

† https://habd.as/post/invisible-arch-linux/

BTW