Yes, I know, I’ve already reviewed Apple’s new laptop line, the MacBook Pro.
But that was when they first came out. When I had a review unit supplied by Apple (AAPL). Before I spent $3,000 on my own, suped-up, top-of-the-line 13-inch MacBook Pro.
I
know: That’s an obscene amount of money. But this is my main machine,
my livelihood. If you add up the hours, I spend more time with my laptop
than I do with my bed, car, or home. I figured it would be worth the
splurge.
As it turns out, that’s a big Yes and a big No.
Life with this thing has been a roller coaster: one emotional whiplash after another. “Cool!” “Oh, NO!” “Cool!” “Oh, NO!”
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My $3,000 life companion.
Looking good on paper
Four
things attracted me to this new laptop. First, you can get it with a
1-terabyte “hard drive” (actually a giant flash drive). I’m a big
photos-and-videos guy. I’ve spent the last five years struggling against
the storage limitations of MacBook Airs. I’m ready.
Second,
the size. This thing is at least an inch smaller than the MacBook Air
all the way around. Apple shaved away most of the margin around the
screen. I’ve wrestled with my laptop on an airplane tray for the last
time.
Third,
the screen. I’m finally ready for Retina resolution on my main
machine—and having enough brightness to light up a runway doesn’t hurt,
either.
Fourth, being able to log in with a touch, thanks to the fingerprint reader. (You can read about the Touch Bar here.
It’s super handy to be able to adjust the volume or brightness with one
quick swipe, and navigating a video is super quick—but otherwise, I
don’t use it much.)
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It’s nice to be able to adjust the volume or brightness with a single swipe.
I knew I was also getting far better speakers; a much bigger trackpad; the Touch Bar above the keyboard; and four USB-C jacks instead of the usual USB, video, and power jacks. I didn’t think any of those things would affect me.
At the time.
Up: The power thing
I
know everybody bellyaches about the loss of the standard jacks. But
USB-C is awesome, man. You can’t plug this cable upside-down. There’s no
right end or wrong end. A single cable carries audio, video, power, and
data.
The whole industry is going to USB-C—phones, tablets, laptops, desktops—so get used to it.
Right
off the bat, I love that you can plug the MacBook Pro’s power cord into
either side, since any of its four USB-C jacks can accommodate it.
Useful more often than you’d think.
Yeah,
it’s sad that we’ve lost Apple’s MagSafe magnetic power-cord connector.
But the fact that we don’t have to buy Apple’s power cords anymore
easily makes up for it.
For
example, I like to have a spare charger next to my bed, and another one
in my laptop bag for travel. But I don’t like paying $70 or $80 to
Apple for spare cords.
Now,
I don’t have to. Any old USB-C charging cord will work. You can get
power from the wall, from your car’s cigarette jack, from one of those
backup batteries, or even from another USB-C laptop! Like mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation for laptops.
I
bought a $27 Dell charger and a Udoli one for $35. The Dell one lights
up to show that it’s getting power, which the new Apple cord doesn’t.
The Udoli one has a regular USB jack on the side for charging your phone
or Fitbit (FIT), which the Apple cord also doesn’t.
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My $35 second charger. Bye-bye, $80 adapters!
Now,
in theory, any USB-C device can charge from any USB-C charger; the
voltage and whatnot is adjusted automatically. You can even charge the
MacBook Pro from a phone charger. It’ll take forever, but it’ll charge.
My
cheapo Dell charger supplies 27 watts; the Udoli offes 45 watts.
Neither, in other words, charges as fast as the Apple charger (61
watts). And the Dell charger does a weird thing when the laptop is
closed: It chimes every couple of minutes, as though the power is being
unplugged and replugged.
I don’t care. I got away with price murder on these spare chargers, and they’re smaller and handier than Apple’s.
Oh!
And I also bought, for $15, a charger that plugs into my car cigarette
lighter. It juices up the laptop great (I’m frequently the passenger on
long drives to the airport), and has an extra USB jack for charging
something else.
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Power in the car!
Down: The Trackpad
Apple made its new trackpad huge, and I can’t figure out why. What does that get you?
What
it gets me is accidental clicks, caused by my left thumb as it hovers
while I type. My cursor or insertion point suddenly pops into the wrong
place or the wrong window.
Apparently,
this problem is much worse if you’ve turned on Tap to Click (which
requires only touching the trackpad, not actually clicking down on it,
to register a click).
I’ve solved the problem by taping a piece of cardboard to the trackpad, in essence shrinking it. Real classy.
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My solution to accidental clicks.
Up: The Keyboard
The
key travel has gotten dissed for its shallowness, but I can really fly
typing on this keyboard. It’s crisp and firm. Loud as hell, but crisp
and firm.
Neutral: The adapter thing
Of
course, switching into MacBook Pro Land means getting adapters for
everything that normally plugs into USB. Sometimes, that just takes the
form of a $6 replacement cable; sometimes, you need a $3 plug adapter.
Everybody
talks about how many dongles they’ll need, but that’s not been my
experience. I still have one Fitibit cord, one MiFi cord, one digital
camera charging cord, and so on; it’s just that some of them have an
adapter plug on the end.
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There’s no USB-C Fitbit cord, so I popped a $3 adapter onto the end.
I
did have to buy a new Lightning-to-USB-C cable for my iPhone. Apple’s
version is $19, which is absurd. I found this awesome one on Amazon (AMZN)
for $9. It has a sturdy, non-tangling nylon fabric outer shell,
available in three metallic colors to match the three MacBook Pro
colors.
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My new Lightning cable. (I chose gold so it’d show up in the depths of my laptop bag.)
I’ve
read here and there that cheapo Chinese USB-C adapters and cables can
be glitchy. But all the ones I’ve picked up on Amazon have worked like a
champ, except for the Dell dinging-power-cord thing.
Down: No card slot
I
deeply, deeply miss a memory-card slot. Used to be, transferring photos
from a camera was as easy as popping out its memory card and slamming
it into my MacBook Air. Now I have to go looking for my $8 USB-C card
reader, or hook up the camera with a cable.
I
no longer have any video-output jack, either—like VGA, HDMI, or
Mini-DVI. So for $45, I bought a multi-jack dongle that offers both VGA
and HDMI—and Ethernet and a regular USB jack. So I’m covered there.
Up: One-cable docking station
I
spend a lot of time doing book layouts, so I sprang $524 for the LG
UltraFine 4K 21-inch monitor. What’s amazing about it is not just the
gorgeous image; it’s that one USB-C cable connects it to the MacBook.
That single cable charges the laptop, carries audio and video to the
monitor’s screen and speakers, and conducts data both directions (there
are four USB-C jacks on the back of the monitor).
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Presenting: The one-cable docking station.
I
used to hook up my MacBook Air to a docking contraption every time I
came home from the road. Now, I plug in one cable, and my entire desktop
system is ready to go. It’s fairly awesome.
Down: Shorter battery life
Apple
says this smaller laptop has a smaller battery than the MacBook Air—and
yet that it still gets the same 10 hours of work time.
That’s baloney.
There’s
been a lot of confusion and analysis about why the MacBook Pro does or
does not get the battery life it’s supposed to. But this much I can say
for sure: You get better battery life if you install the latest Mac OS
version, 10.12.3. And if you keep the screen dimmer than full
brightness. And if you don’t do heavy-lifting work like Photoshop, video
editing, and games.
This
much I can also say for sure: No matter what you do, you won’t get as
much life out of this battery as you would doing exactly the same work
on the MacBook Air. It’s a 33% smaller battery; it’s not going to have
the same capacity. I usually get six or seven hours from it.
I wasn’t ready for that, and it’s a real drag. Thank goodness I’ve got chargers all around me.
Whiplash
If
you’re a Mac person and can’t afford to switch to Windows, then the new
MacBook Pro is it. Apple doesn’t intend to update the MacBook Air or
the older MacBook Pros anymore. The future is this or nothing.
But you know what? This really isn’t a MacBook at all.
I
mean, it doesn’t have the same anything. Screen, jacks, power cord,
keyboard, battery, trackpad…it has almost nothing in common with
previous Apple laptops.
It’s much better in some ways, and much worse in others. You’ve been warned; keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times.
