Why I returned the MacBook Pro 16”
When it was announced, the new 16” MacBook Pro looked like a beast of a machine – 64gb of RAM, 8TB option, 8 cores, an impressive screen and the apparent Apple-saving, doom-averting keyboard.
I ordered one because I was really interested in the spec – the 64gb was incredibly attractive despite me having survived on 16gb for years and not really knowing why I wanted more — and that’s the issue with this machine for me at least – what problem was it actually solving for me?
Firstly, I’ve had no real issues with the butterfly keyboard – it has less travel yes, but I spend 90% of my time with the MBP docked and using a Magic Keyboard 2 so the time I spend in laptop mode doesn’t bother me that much.
What *did* bother me was the palm rest of the 16" — if you’re wearing a watch, especially one with a metal bracelet, the palm rest will seriously piss you off as you’re either raising your hands above it OR removing your watch.
If you don’t remove it you’ll absolutely end up scuffing the aluminium edge of the palm rest. I did every so slightly on the FIRST DAY OF OWNING IT – it was subtle and in most cases unnoticeable but in that “right” light, you could see it.
And the touch bar? Again I hardly need it as 90% docked and I don’t need a physical ESC key as I remapped that to the top left key on the keyboard (and capslock) so no issues there.
(I’m also not a “real” developer so I don’t use VIM, 😂 )
The typical YouTubers and click-batiers will be bang on about the keyboard and how it’s going to solve everything but ironically I didn’t get on with it – I found I mistyped more on the new keyboard than the butterfly keyboard — it felt more spongy to me and not as crisp as the butterfly.
Ultimately my biggest issue was how this thing was SO damn big on my desk; in my bag; to carry etc.
The screen is impressive and makes it a pleasure to use when not hooked up to a monitor compared to the 13" which feels cramped and hard to read.
Ultimately though I’d bought this thing as a punt, having only used 13” devices and thinking this would actually help me in my work. The reality is that build times were faster yes but not THAT much faster, and I was lugging around a bigger machine that had cost me close to £4.7k once I included AppleCare+ and carry cases etc.
The reality is that we’re probably less than 6 months away from an Intel chipset refresh of the Mac lineup and specifically of the 16” which could include WiFi 6 amongst other things and I believe we could easily see a 14” MacBook Pro with 6-core 32gb, WiFi 6 etc. I felt like spending this much money (despite the fact I use PayPal credit) was just too much of a risk.
Really I think my perfect machine is a 13" refresh that makes it a “little” bigger and with a 14" inch screen and adds at *least* 32gb RAM option and hopefully 6 cores at least.
That’s a machine that would seriously appeal to me.
