Another tech blogger moonlighting as a reviewer.
I'd like to see a proper review by an actual media professional that uses Photoshop/Lightroom etc, for 10 hours a day.
The touchbar may be cool but the lack of physical buttons is a major drawback for image editors (at least) when you have to take your focus off the screen to find the virtual key you want to press. With physical buttons you can feel them under your fingertips and know you are pressing the correct key without taking your eyes off screen.
That may not be relevant, or even cross the mind of a tech blogger, but it is deal breaker for the pro creative media crowd.
Those that rely on SD cards have to carry extra fiddly bits along with your assortment of dongles - increasing the chances of missing the part you need on a job.
And what about the lack of innovation around the MagSafe. They just killed a useful feature saving people thousands of dollars in repairs after accidents. They could have kept the USB-C charging and integrated MagSafe in the cable, or at power brick end. Steve would have forced his designers to find a way, but not this bunch of lazy out-of touch bores that seem to have taken over at Apple lately.
Those arguing this laptop is future proof have no clue. By the time USB-C is standard on everyting and camera wireless transfers are as fast and reliable as physical readers, this laptop would be as old as a 5 year old laptop today - with the added disadvantage nothing on it is upgradable.
We need a laptop we can use TODAY, and upgrade it when needed.
Another tech blogger moonlighting as a reviewer.
I'd like to see a proper review by an actual media professional that uses Photoshop/Lightroom etc, for 10 hours a day.
The touchbar may be cool but the lack of physical buttons is a major drawback for image editors (at least) when you have to take your focus off the screen to find the virtual key you want to press. With physical buttons you can feel them under your fingertips and know you are pressing the correct key without taking your eyes off screen.
That may not be relevant, or even cross the mind of a tech blogger, but it is deal breaker for the pro creative media crowd.
Those that rely on SD cards have to carry extra fiddly bits along with your assortment of dongles - increasing the chances of missing the part you need on a job.
And what about the lack of innovation around the MagSafe. They just killed a useful feature saving people thousands of dollars in repairs after accidents. They could have kept the USB-C charging and integrated MagSafe in the cable, or at power brick end. Steve would have forced his designers to find a way, but not this bunch of lazy out-of touch bores that seem to have taken over at Apple lately.
Those arguing this laptop is future proof have no clue. By the time USB-C is standard on everyting and camera wireless transfers are as fast and reliable as physical readers, this laptop would be as old as a 5 year old laptop today - with the added disadvantage nothing on it is upgradable.
We need a laptop we can use TODAY, and upgrade it when needed.
USB-C doesn't need to be standard on everything, it already works with USB 3.1, 3, and 2.0 devices. So what's the problem? If the problem is the cable, your neighbor PC repair shop will give a USB-C to USB cable for free to you. MagSafe was not a good solution, the MagSafe plug breaks under heavy use and the replacement is $79. If you want to feel the touch of real function keys then buy a 13" MBP without Touch Bar. Upgrade is not your job, you cannot upgrade a soldered LPDDR3 RAM which has no removable variant, as you cannot upgrade the SSD which has a custom Apple controller to provide the fastest SSD in the industry over NVMe. You may want to sacrifice speed for upgradability but not everyone has to buy a Macbook Pro, just buy a PC laptop then. Apple still has many solutions for PC users, such as iPhones and iPads and as a PC user you will be still welcome by Apple.
Here's the problem. If anything goes bad on the motherboard, it's a replacement. Yea it doesn't happen often but the biggest issue is the SSD. What's the expected life of these? From Phil's comments, you should be upgrading every 3-4 max. If you're outside the one year warranty and SSD goes bad, new motherboard at the cost of what? 1k? When I could pick up a Samsung SSD for $150 on Amazon?
10 years 300TBW is the best SSD warranty from Samsung.
macplusplus said: You may want to sacrifice speed for upgradability…
Not just speed, but also reliability and longevity.
That is the point. One doesn't need to sacrifice speed for reliability and longevity with Apple.
Reliability and longevity are the attributes of the product. Upgradability is not. Upgradability is a lifestyle choice, an attribute of the person. Are cars and trucks upgradable? No. But there is still a car modifier culture. This is a lifestyle.
I always shut down my Mac before stuffing it in my bag to change locations. It doesn't seem like a good idea to leave power applied to something that's being hauled around.
1) Define changing locations.
I also always shut down my MacBook(s) when changing locations. I manage IT security for my organization and this is simply good practice from that point of view. Some of the benefits of using Filevault are negated by leaving your computer in a non-powered off state. To answer your questions (not addressed to me ):
1. For me changing locations means leaving one site and going to another (work to home or vice versa, for example), or anytime that I may find myself leaving my computer out of my sight when it's not in my office. If I'm using it at home and I leave the house, it also gets turned off then.
1) Thanks for the detailed answer, but I still don't get how turning off your Mac from "work to home" but not your iOS devices when these things are still in your possession is efficient. If I'm traveling a long distance without using the machine or crossing borders I will turn it off, but I assume when you say "work to home" you're not talking about international or even interstate travel.
It's not impossible that I have to run an errand on my way home from work and that may mean my leaving my computer in the car (locked in the trunk) while I go to the store or some such thing. Even if I carry my computer bag with me, there is always a chance that it can be put down and left behind (at a restaurant, for example). I just make it a habit to shutdown my computers when I'm moving from site to site; that way there is never, ever a question of what state they were in should they be lost or stolen.
My iPhone tends to be on my person or beside me pretty much 100% of the time, so the times when it's "necessary" to shut it down are far less frequent. Also, the iOS devices have a few more safeguards that make data recovery much more difficult than on Macs (even with Filevault). They also tend to have better network connectivity which makes remote wipe far more reliable.
You (and I) may think that it's highly unlikely that we'd ever lose a computer, but in an organization of any size, that happens a non-insignificant number of times. It's happened several times at my workplace during my tenure as the ITSO, which is why I recommend that computers be powered down when in site to site transit. If I recommend it for others, then I do it myself.
Edit to add: Powering down and starting up my computers takes about 20 seconds each way, so it's really not much of an inconvenience to me. Your mileage may vary, of course.
sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1
Forces file vault key to be destroyed on standby.
sudo pmset -a standbydelay 300
Forces standby time to be 5 minutes - enough time to go from your desk to a meeting (using normal sleep) but not a significant vulnerability window unless you manage to lose your laptop between your desk and car.
Minor Downsides: Two passwords required to get your computer out of standby which you wouldn't if you let the computer just sleep. You need to hit the power button rather than just lifting the lid. Not as much time savings over just turning off the machine. Power nap may wake up, discover the disk is encrypted and shut down the laptop. If this is an issue you can disable powernap:
sudopmset -a darkwakes 0
Major Downside: Computer goes to standby in 5 minutes...enterprise wide updates at 1am where users leave computers connected to the corporate network sleeping no longer works.
Upsides: It's more secure than manually shutting down the computer and quicker. Close lid and go. You can probably deploy these changes enterprise wide easily and no need to teach users to shut down their macs when taking them home. However, see major downside.
I would set this as a policy for loaner laptops and on laptops of employees that travel a lot or work remotely and need to VPN in. They have to explicitly start updates anyway.
ObDis: YMMV, see your security representative before making any changes to your machine, not responsible for your loss of data or disruption because you sudo'd random commands found on internet forums, etc.
…One thing I've been wanting since Touch ID came out is a poison finger option. One Touch ID print that when used will lock down the device until the passcode has been successfully used. Touch ID on the new MBP will now allow you to create your own poison finger solution. Since it will auto-switch accounts with Touch ID, you create a fail sake account, assign it a special fingerprint, and then scripts that will auto-launch that will force shutdown the Mac. I haven't gotten mine yet so I haven't used Automator to write the proper commands, but it might be as simple as the Terminal command:
Holy shit, that’s brilliant. You should write detailed instructions and get that on Hacker News.
Here's the problem. If anything goes bad on the motherboard, it's a replacement. Yea it doesn't happen often but the biggest issue is the SSD. What's the expected life of these? From Phil's comments, you should be upgrading every 3-4 max. If you're outside the one year warranty and SSD goes bad, new motherboard at the cost of what? 1k? When I could pick up a Samsung SSD for $150 on Amazon?
Point is, who hasn't had a hard drive/ssd fail on them? If it does, it's a throw away device at that point. Just to re-iterate, it's not about the backup or data itself, it's about the cost of fixing an SSD failure.
SSDs should be fine. We did some calculations for IBM/Lenovo Value SSDs (which should be more robust than consumer units, but not as good as IBM Enterprise units) and, based on monitoring servers' storage performance and utilization over time, came to conclusion that these drives should run happily in servers for 15+ years, non-stop. Of course some will die because electronics do that on occasion, but much as SSDs' total write count is considered, we should be good. Our servers are all Hyper-V, running any number of VMs on top of core OS, so utilization is well above anything you can put on personal computer. And your personal computer will not run 24x7.
My concern would rather be that SSD replacement could extend life of laptop by providing larger storage, not for replacing worn SSD inside. I really don't know how much will my storage requirement grow over, say, next 2 - 3 years. I don't shoot 4K videos and my still camera is 20MP, so I could go with 256GB - I need storage for my raw media while traveling, once I'm home all that data goes to my home NAS and clears space on laptop. But in two years' time, I might be shooting 4K videos and my camera might have 40MP sensor, and no RAW compression; I might find 256GB too small. Replacing perfectly fine laptop just to increase storage is, well, a bit unpractical. I'd feel safer to get laptop with larger storage in this "non-replaceable" scenario, it could turn out to be a bit wasteful if I don't grow my storage requirements, but OK - as some said, if I want MBP, spending some more $ on future-proof storage shouldn't kill me. Still, some flexibility would be nice.
Here's the problem. If anything goes bad on the motherboard, it's a replacement. Yea it doesn't happen often but the biggest issue is the SSD. What's the expected life of these? From Phil's comments, you should be upgrading every 3-4 max. If you're outside the one year warranty and SSD goes bad, new motherboard at the cost of what? 1k? When I could pick up a Samsung SSD for $150 on Amazon?
Point is, who hasn't had a hard drive/ssd fail on them? If it does, it's a throw away device at that point. Just to re-iterate, it's not about the backup or data itself, it's about the cost of fixing an SSD failure.
SSDs should be fine. We did some calculations for IBM/Lenovo Value SSDs (which should be more robust than consumer units, but not as good as IBM Enterprise units) and, based on monitoring servers' storage performance and utilization over time, came to conclusion that these drives should run happily in servers for 15+ years, non-stop. Of course some will die because electronics do that on occasion, but much as SSDs' total write count is considered, we should be good. Our servers are all Hyper-V, running any number of VMs on top of core OS, so utilization is well above anything you can put on personal computer. And your personal computer will not run 24x7.
My concern would rather be that SSD replacement could extend life of laptop by providing larger storage, not for replacing worn SSD inside. I really don't know how much will my storage requirement grow over, say, next 2 - 3 years. I don't shoot 4K videos and my still camera is 20MP, so I could go with 256GB - I need storage for my raw media while traveling, once I'm home all that data goes to my home NAS and clears space on laptop. But in two years' time, I might be shooting 4K videos and my camera might have 40MP sensor, and no RAW compression; I might find 256GB too small. Replacing perfectly fine laptop just to increase storage is, well, a bit unpractical. I'd feel safer to get laptop with larger storage in this "non-replaceable" scenario, it could turn out to be a bit wasteful if I don't grow my storage requirements, but OK - as some said, if I want MBP, spending some more $ on future-proof storage shouldn't kill me. Still, some flexibility would be nice.
I carry an older version of this while traveling without a laptop. I use my iPad copy SDXC cards to a SSD and a USB thumb drive. I preview some stills on the iPad. The app is a bit meh but it's a nice lightweight solution.
Here's a relatively tiny mSata drive as a USB3 external. http://a.co/95XRVjx I'm going to get these as they are smaller than my existing external SSDs. I'll keep the one that's IP54 rated and replace the other with this one to hide somewhere in the hotel room. That covers getting splashed/rained on and getting stolen.
Essentially, external storage is getting smaller in size, faster in performance and larger in capacity that I don't worry about internal storage anymore. I buy one step up from the bottom as that usually gives you a reasonable boost in size at a moderate price from Apple and it's fine.
They should have taken this model and offered it as the new MacBook Air in two options 1. 256GB with i3/8 GB RAM and 2 type C ports, MagSafe (or the smart connector from the iPad Pro for power) and 1 lightning port
2. 512GB with i5/16 GB and 2 type C ports, MagSafe and 1 lightning port, 1 3.5 headphone jack.
Otherwise it's underpowered and overpriced. I agree with the numerous comments about this not meeting the definition of Pro.
TB is the consolation price for the fact that Apple can't do a full multitouch UI Mac. There should be no price premium for it.
If you're still asking for a touch mac then you really haven't been paying attention. They've discussed why they're not doing it many times.
Here's the problem. If anything goes bad on the motherboard, it's a replacement. Yea it doesn't happen often but the biggest issue is the SSD. What's the expected life of these? From Phil's comments, you should be upgrading every 3-4 max. If you're outside the one year warranty and SSD goes bad, new motherboard at the cost of what? 1k? When I could pick up a Samsung SSD for $150 on Amazon?
Point is, who hasn't had a hard drive/ssd fail on them? If it does, it's a throw away device at that point. Just to re-iterate, it's not about the backup or data itself, it's about the cost of fixing an SSD failure.
All drives fail. All. You need to back up your stuff, period.
But yes, if the SSD fails it's a new logic board. Oh well, it happens...Replacement is usually in the hundreds. Same when something in my car conks out. Not sure I get the pain point here...
So, as a new owner of the Macbook Pro 15", I have to say I'm really disappointed. I hope people will find my personal opinion useful before they decide to do a major investment in a piece of hardware:
The Touch Bar is a gimmick and it sucks. Keyboard sucks.
I'd choose tactile feedback using traditional function keys over the Touch Bar any day. Not knowing what you press defeats the purpose of a keyboard with actual buttons. The idea is that you look at your monitor, not at your keyboard. What mediocre intern at Apple came up with the idea for the Touch Bar?
The Touch Bar is context sensitive which requires me to look at the keyboard to see what I'm going to press all the time. The implementation is messy and the result is an inconsistent interface.
The keyboard is horrible. It's my first laptop with the new butterfly mechanism (or whatever it's called). It's SUPER NOISY - not good when you're in a meeting or joining a conference, and distracting when typing. How could a company like Apple not catch such a big, obvious flaw? Even worse, the keys don't have any travel, missing essential, tactile feedback and causing me to hit the wrong keys. It's the keyboard equivalent of the Apple Mouse. I fear that Apple is going to ditch their (excellent) iMac keyboards and replace it with their shitty butterfly mechanism.
Ports
Not having an SD card stinks. It belongs in a Pro laptop. I understand their decision to go USB-C only, but the SD card is a common port that's unrelated to USB.
I think the dongle stuff is just temporarily. Next year we're enjoying the new format. It's not a big deal.
Apple should move to USB-C on the iPhone or their decision to move to USB-C on desktop doesn't make any sense (their argument is to go for a future proof port, so they'll have to apply that to their phone business as well. If not, it's hypocritical.)
So, as a new owner of the Macbook Pro 15", I have to say I'm really disappointed. I hope people will find my personal opinion useful before they decide to do a major investment in a piece of hardware:
The Touch Bar is a gimmick and it sucks. Keyboard sucks.
I'd choose tactile feedback using traditional function keys over the Touch Bar any day. Not knowing what you press defeats the purpose of a keyboard with actual buttons. The idea is that you look at your monitor, not at your keyboard. What mediocre intern at Apple came up with the idea for the Touch Bar?
The Touch Bar is context sensitive which requires me to look at the keyboard to see what I'm going to press all the time. The implementation is messy and the result is an inconsistent interface.
The keyboard is horrible. It's my first laptop with the new butterfly mechanism (or whatever it's called). It's SUPER NOISY - not good when you're in a meeting or joining a conference, and distracting when typing. How could a company like Apple not catch such a big, obvious flaw? Even worse, the keys don't have any travel, missing essential, tactile feedback and causing me to hit the wrong keys. It's the keyboard equivalent of the Apple Mouse. I fear that Apple is going to ditch their (excellent) iMac keyboards and replace it with their shitty butterfly mechanism.
Ports
Not having an SD card stinks. It belongs in a Pro laptop. I understand their decision to go USB-C only, but the SD card is a common port that's unrelated to USB.
I think the dongle stuff is just temporarily. Next year we're enjoying the new format. It's not a big deal.
Apple should move to USB-C on the iPhone or their decision to move to USB-C on desktop doesn't make any sense (their argument is to go for a future proof port, so they'll have to apply that to their phone business as well. If not, it's hypocritical.)
3. I can guess how noisy your keyboard was when writing your post ;-) As I've read on other Mac related sites however, everyone gets used to that keyboard after a while and says the difference is not a big deal.
2. The Touch Bar is context sensitive, yes. It is a new interface element, not part of the keyboard. It is not easy to judge an interface at first sight, given Apple's obsession with application UI guidelines. Inconsistencies, if any, may be cured with software updates.
1. As I said above, the Touch Bar is not part of the keyboard. You don't have to use it at all if you don't want to look at it. As a substitute to function keys you can define your own keyboard shortcuts in Keyboard Preferences pane; you can customize the keyboard shortcuts of any application or service, not only Apple's ones. There are different usage patterns, on my 2015 rMBP 15" I use function keys only for brightness and volume and I use my own custom keyboard shortcuts. Function keys are totally useless to me.
Ports
1. According to 2 if the dongle stuff is just temporarily then the lack of SD card reader is temporarily too. You just buy a dongle for SD card, not a big deal, either. Attaching four 4K monitors to four Thunderbolt 3 ports is much more important than that little dinky SD card.
I can understand your frustration with the Touch Bar, you wouldn't know without using it. But I cannot understand your complaint about the SD card: didn't you see that before buying? Then why did you buy it if the SD card was so crucial to you? The same for the keyboard.
2. The same is valid for the SD card stuff too.
3. iPhone doesn't need any USB because it has no "peripheral" concept. A very few connected devices work very well with Lightning and since third parties had already committed to 30-pin connector, they switched easily to Lightning. So what's the problem with Lightning?
In contrast USB is a peripheral connection standard and of course a computer is expected to support it. Since USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 standards share the same port design, there is nothing wrong with Apple's commitment to USB-C. Instead it is a big improvement.
So, as a new owner of the Macbook Pro 15", I have to say I'm really disappointed. I hope people will find my personal opinion useful before they decide to do a major investment in a piece of hardware:
The Touch Bar is a gimmick and it sucks. Keyboard sucks.
I'd choose tactile feedback using traditional function keys over the Touch Bar any day. Not knowing what you press defeats the purpose of a keyboard with actual buttons. The idea is that you look at your monitor, not at your keyboard. What mediocre intern at Apple came up with the idea for the Touch Bar?
The Touch Bar is context sensitive which requires me to look at the keyboard to see what I'm going to press all the time. The implementation is messy and the result is an inconsistent interface.
The keyboard is horrible. It's my first laptop with the new butterfly mechanism (or whatever it's called). It's SUPER NOISY - not good when you're in a meeting or joining a conference, and distracting when typing. How could a company like Apple not catch such a big, obvious flaw? Even worse, the keys don't have any travel, missing essential, tactile feedback and causing me to hit the wrong keys. It's the keyboard equivalent of the Apple Mouse. I fear that Apple is going to ditch their (excellent) iMac keyboards and replace it with their shitty butterfly mechanism.
Ports
Not having an SD card stinks. It belongs in a Pro laptop. I understand their decision to go USB-C only, but the SD card is a common port that's unrelated to USB.
I think the dongle stuff is just temporarily. Next year we're enjoying the new format. It's not a big deal.
Apple should move to USB-C on the iPhone or their decision to move to USB-C on desktop doesn't make any sense (their argument is to go for a future proof port, so they'll have to apply that to their phone business as well. If not, it's hypocritical.)
Then take it back and get something else. Its not for everyone. There are plenty of people who hated last gen's model/design too. I would never rely on someone's opinion when buying something. I'd rather try it for myself. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean others won't either.
I always shut down my Mac before stuffing it in my bag to change locations. It doesn't seem like a good idea to leave power applied to something that's being hauled around.
But you do not need to. Unplug power close the lid. It will go to sleep and it will eventually hibernate. You can adjust the hibernate with Terminal commands in the firmware if you wish but its recommended not to play with those settings as it can impact the wake and update features of Auto Nap. It takes longer to boot than it does to wake from hibernate or sleep. In sleep mode the power is extremely low and in a few hours it will hibernate turning off completely. Hibernate means it writes what is in RAM to a file saving it to the SSD. Waking from hibernate means it takes longer to load that file back into RAM to restore where you left off. Sleep means it supplies power efficiently to RAM to maintain it but doesn't spin up the CPU, disk nor fans. The power usage on sleep mode is very very small. In and out of bag, on a bike, in car, on train, on plane, it matters not providing you have a good bag. The only time I might shut it off is if the battery is almost dead. Plugging it in when off powers it on at least for my ultraportable MacBook 12".
I've gone months without rebooting. Pull it out of bag, flip the lid, login, work, close lid put it in bag, rinse repeat many many times without issue. I typically only reboot when an update requires it or if something gets squirrelly (ala an App with a memory leak - bug). I sleep my desktops with an CMD+Option+ Eject button press as well.
Everything is going to go USB-C in the very near future. Chromebooks and other Ultrabooks are starting to use it as well as smartphones. Eventually Apple will switch to USB-C for iPhone and iPad maybe next year. Yes there are some aches and pains such as older USB-C docking stations being incompatible. Power issues between devices, etc. I quick charge my iPad Pro 12.9" (80% in an hour) using the MacBook 12" 29Watt USB-C charger with a USB-C to Lightning cable. I cannot charge a smaller iPad Pro nor iPad Air2 that way nor can I charge an iPhone that way. But I can use the cable to charge off the MacBook USB-C port for those devices. Having 2-4 USB-C ports changes the game considerably. So expect similar power charging issues with other devices. The voltage and amperage needs to be compatible.
Well, you're still in the return period. Send it back and get last year's model.
I can understand that the loud keys can be distracting in a meeting.
I prefer an iPad for meetings but YMMV.
I prefer that people just not use devices and pay attention in meetings instead of being distracted by email, chatting, Facebook, etc.
My meetings, my rules. I take notes on it and google relevant info. There's usually something that starts to go around in circles that a 10 second Google can resolve. Or just checking the notes from a couple meetings ago or the project wiki.
Comments
So a long time.
How much SSD replacement costs is TBD.
Reliability and longevity are the attributes of the product. Upgradability is not. Upgradability is a lifestyle choice, an attribute of the person. Are cars and trucks upgradable? No. But there is still a car modifier culture. This is a lifestyle.
Forces file vault key to be destroyed on standby.
sudo pmset -a standbydelay 300
Forces standby time to be 5 minutes - enough time to go from your desk to a meeting (using normal sleep) but not a significant vulnerability window unless you manage to lose your laptop between your desk and car.
Minor Downsides: Two passwords required to get your computer out of standby which you wouldn't if you let the computer just sleep. You need to hit the power button rather than just lifting the lid. Not as much time savings over just turning off the machine. Power nap may wake up, discover the disk is encrypted and shut down the laptop. If this is an issue you can disable powernap:
sudo
pmset -a darkwakes 0
Major Downside: Computer goes to standby in 5 minutes...enterprise wide updates at 1am where users leave computers connected to the corporate network sleeping no longer works.
Upsides: It's more secure than manually shutting down the computer and quicker. Close lid and go. You can probably deploy these changes enterprise wide easily and no need to teach users to shut down their macs when taking them home. However, see major downside.
I would set this as a policy for loaner laptops and on laptops of employees that travel a lot or work remotely and need to VPN in. They have to explicitly start updates anyway.
ObDis: YMMV, see your security representative before making any changes to your machine, not responsible for your loss of data or disruption because you sudo'd random commands found on internet forums, etc.
My concern would rather be that SSD replacement could extend life of laptop by providing larger storage, not for replacing worn SSD inside. I really don't know how much will my storage requirement grow over, say, next 2 - 3 years. I don't shoot 4K videos and my still camera is 20MP, so I could go with 256GB - I need storage for my raw media while traveling, once I'm home all that data goes to my home NAS and clears space on laptop. But in two years' time, I might be shooting 4K videos and my camera might have 40MP sensor, and no RAW compression; I might find 256GB too small. Replacing perfectly fine laptop just to increase storage is, well, a bit unpractical. I'd feel safer to get laptop with larger storage in this "non-replaceable" scenario, it could turn out to be a bit wasteful if I don't grow my storage requirements, but OK - as some said, if I want MBP, spending some more $ on future-proof storage shouldn't kill me. Still, some flexibility would be nice.
I carry an older version of this while traveling without a laptop. I use my iPad copy SDXC cards to a SSD and a USB thumb drive. I preview some stills on the iPad. The app is a bit meh but it's a nice lightweight solution.
Here's a relatively tiny mSata drive as a USB3 external. http://a.co/95XRVjx I'm going to get these as they are smaller than my existing external SSDs. I'll keep the one that's IP54 rated and replace the other with this one to hide somewhere in the hotel room. That covers getting splashed/rained on and getting stolen.
Essentially, external storage is getting smaller in size, faster in performance and larger in capacity that I don't worry about internal storage anymore. I buy one step up from the bottom as that usually gives you a reasonable boost in size at a moderate price from Apple and it's fine.
All drives fail. All. You need to back up your stuff, period.
But yes, if the SSD fails it's a new logic board. Oh well, it happens...Replacement is usually in the hundreds. Same when something in my car conks out. Not sure I get the pain point here...
The Touch Bar is a gimmick and it sucks. Keyboard sucks.
- I'd choose tactile feedback using traditional function keys over the Touch Bar any day. Not knowing what you press defeats the purpose of a keyboard with actual buttons. The idea is that you look at your monitor, not at your keyboard. What mediocre intern at Apple came up with the idea for the Touch Bar?
- The Touch Bar is context sensitive which requires me to look at the keyboard to see what I'm going to press all the time. The implementation is messy and the result is an inconsistent interface.
- The keyboard is horrible. It's my first laptop with the new butterfly mechanism (or whatever it's called). It's SUPER NOISY - not good when you're in a meeting or joining a conference, and distracting when typing. How could a company like Apple not catch such a big, obvious flaw? Even worse, the keys don't have any travel, missing essential, tactile feedback and causing me to hit the wrong keys. It's the keyboard equivalent of the Apple Mouse. I fear that Apple is going to ditch their (excellent) iMac keyboards and replace it with their shitty butterfly mechanism.
PortsI can understand that the loud keys can be distracting in a meeting.
I prefer an iPad for meetings but YMMV.
2. The Touch Bar is context sensitive, yes. It is a new interface element, not part of the keyboard. It is not easy to judge an interface at first sight, given Apple's obsession with application UI guidelines. Inconsistencies, if any, may be cured with software updates.
1. As I said above, the Touch Bar is not part of the keyboard. You don't have to use it at all if you don't want to look at it. As a substitute to function keys you can define your own keyboard shortcuts in Keyboard Preferences pane; you can customize the keyboard shortcuts of any application or service, not only Apple's ones. There are different usage patterns, on my 2015 rMBP 15" I use function keys only for brightness and volume and I use my own custom keyboard shortcuts. Function keys are totally useless to me.
Ports
1. According to 2 if the dongle stuff is just temporarily then the lack of SD card reader is temporarily too. You just buy a dongle for SD card, not a big deal, either. Attaching four 4K monitors to four Thunderbolt 3 ports is much more important than that little dinky SD card.
I can understand your frustration with the Touch Bar, you wouldn't know without using it. But I cannot understand your complaint about the SD card: didn't you see that before buying? Then why did you buy it if the SD card was so crucial to you? The same for the keyboard.
2. The same is valid for the SD card stuff too.
3. iPhone doesn't need any USB because it has no "peripheral" concept. A very few connected devices work very well with Lightning and since third parties had already committed to 30-pin connector, they switched easily to Lightning. So what's the problem with Lightning?
In contrast USB is a peripheral connection standard and of course a computer is expected to support it. Since USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 standards share the same port design, there is nothing wrong with Apple's commitment to USB-C. Instead it is a big improvement.
Then take it back and get something else. Its not for everyone. There are plenty of people who hated last gen's model/design too. I would never rely on someone's opinion when buying something. I'd rather try it for myself. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean others won't either.
But you do not need to. Unplug power close the lid. It will go to sleep and it will eventually hibernate. You can adjust the hibernate with Terminal commands in the firmware if you wish but its recommended not to play with those settings as it can impact the wake and update features of Auto Nap. It takes longer to boot than it does to wake from hibernate or sleep. In sleep mode the power is extremely low and in a few hours it will hibernate turning off completely. Hibernate means it writes what is in RAM to a file saving it to the SSD. Waking from hibernate means it takes longer to load that file back into RAM to restore where you left off. Sleep means it supplies power efficiently to RAM to maintain it but doesn't spin up the CPU, disk nor fans. The power usage on sleep mode is very very small. In and out of bag, on a bike, in car, on train, on plane, it matters not providing you have a good bag. The only time I might shut it off is if the battery is almost dead. Plugging it in when off powers it on at least for my ultraportable MacBook 12".
I've gone months without rebooting. Pull it out of bag, flip the lid, login, work, close lid put it in bag, rinse repeat many many times without issue. I typically only reboot when an update requires it or if something gets squirrelly (ala an App with a memory leak - bug). I sleep my desktops with an CMD+Option+ Eject button press as well.