Two months with Mac Book Pro 2016

When Apple released a new Mac Book pro in 2016 I couldn’t resist buying one for myself. I’ve been waiting for new macs for years and every year I couldn’t find a reason to upgrade my Mac Book Pro 2013. Seriously it was a great machine for development. The majority of time I spend in Xcode, PHPStorm, iTerm. I have nginx, mysql, postrgreSQL always running as well as all sorts of other apps and services.

Mac Book Pro 2013 was just fine for my tasks.

After the announcement of the next Mac Book pro generation I was waiting when they become available to buy one for myself. Finally I’ve found reasons to upgrade.

The first thing I really like about new macs is the design and space grey colour. It is truly the most beautiful laptop Apple ever created. I am a bit tired with the previous macbook pro design and having mac in space grey colour, very thin, and very thin screen edges seems to be a reasonable thing to let my old mac go.

I’ve read a lot of complains about specs but I knew I would be ok with it and it would have enough power to perform my tasks.

Second thing was the screen. I love my iPhone 7 Plus screen and having the same screen in the mac looks like a reason to upgrade.

However I had few concerns. The first concern was the butterfly keyboard. I used to have 12 inch Macbook and I had a lot of issues with the keyboard. Some keys stops give feedback when dust gets in, some keys needs to be pushed harder than others. I had to vacuum my keyboard every month.

The second concern was huge trackpad. Having quite big hands it looked like I will be struggling with false palm rejections.

And the last concern was the touchbar. I won’t say I am a huge F-keys fan but I was using F-keys from time to time for certain dev tasks. Touchbar looked a bit gimmick to me.

Well after about two months using this computer as my main development machine I have to say it is great.

The butterfly keybord is great. It is way better than Macbook 12 inch keyboard. It feels perfect. Apple did great work here. It might sound a bit loud in the beginning but I got used to it very fast. I can easily type while kids are sleeping in the same room.

Bigger trackpad feels exactly the same as previous generation one and this is a very good news to me. I haven’t got any false palm rejections so far.

Touchbar is my love. This is truly revolutionary thing. I didn’t notice how fast I got used to it. It makes my life much easier. I love it in Xcode, in iTunes, I love it every where. I have set it up to fit my needs and I have to say it is amazing thing. It feels a bit weird in the beginning but after only few days it fits naturally in the working flow.

Also I’ve noticed few other surprises like speakers. Sound is incredible. This is the best built in sound in any laptop I have ever used.

And finally Apple fixed AirDrop and Magic Mouse issues.

I am more than happy of getting this laptop and it looks like I will use it for another few years :).