So I finally got around to an Apple store. We have a couple close by, but I haven't had an opportunity for a casual stop.
This was my first chance to see the new touchbar Macs.
I thought the touchbar was nice, super responsive, looked better than I expected. I thought the keyboard was great for typical typing. I'm a spacemacs/vim user, and yet I found no problem with the escape key on the touchpad. Not really enough time to truly evaluate, but the first impression was "This is really nice." Like walking into a really nice kitchen, or sitting behind the wheel of a high end car.
My expectations had been tempered by all the naysaying about it, so perhaps because of that I was very impressed.
If my mac were a few years older, I'd buy one in a minute. I actually find myself wishing my mac was a few years older to justify upgrading.
That said, I'm not happy about only having USB-C. Mainly because I really like magsafe. My power cable gets kicked out several times a week, and sometimes a day. And on laptops of ages past (HP), the power socket has been the first thing to break on me. There are options out there for magsafe style USB-C cables, so that might mitigate.
They keyboard is pretty nice to type on, even when you are typing a lot. That surprised me, because I thought the low travel would present a serious problem, but for me at least, it does not. I think it has changed the way I type a bit so that I'm not hitting the keys quite as hard as I do with other keyboards, which certainly would help.
The Touch bar I'm less enthusiastic about. There are times when it comes in handy, but I rarely use it and accidentally interact with it quite a bit while typing.
I love Magsafe but, honestly, I haven't really had a need for it. Now that they fixed whatever the initial battery issue is, my tbMBPs (I own two - one personal and one for work/media/appdev) both last me a full day so charging has only been like my cell phone. There are rare occasions where I've had to plug it in during the middle of the day but I usually just do that at lunch and it lasts me the rest of the day. It depends on what apps you're using. Chrome and Slack suck the life right out of the battery but Adobe Audition and Premiere are fine for me. Magsafe was cool, but I think I'd take the USB-C now over Magsafe any day.
I thought the touchbar was nice, super responsive, looked better than I expected. I thought the keyboard was great for typical typing. I'm a spacemacs/vim user, and yet I found no problem with the escape key on the touchpad. Not really enough time to truly evaluate, but the first impression was "This is really nice." Like walking into a really nice kitchen, or sitting behind the wheel of a high end car.
My expectations had been tempered by all the naysaying about it, so perhaps because of that I was very impressed.
If my mac were a few years older, I'd buy one in a minute. I actually find myself wishing my mac was a few years older to justify upgrading.
That said, I'm not happy about only having USB-C. Mainly because I really like magsafe. My power cable gets kicked out several times a week, and sometimes a day. And on laptops of ages past (HP), the power socket has been the first thing to break on me. There are options out there for magsafe style USB-C cables, so that might mitigate.