mrmojo

The Ars Technica review of the 2020 13" MBP was more objective in its assessment and it does not include the clickbait title of the AppleInsider review.

It's a simple fact that many real-world Mac users do not need a lot of power in a portable Mac.  They aren't routinely editing 4k video or processing 46mp RAW image files with umpteen layers in Photoshop. Two Thunderbolt 3 ports is plenty because they never directly connect their Mac to anything.  The GPUs get the job done and if I ever want to plug-in a high res 27" or larger display, the Mac will handle it with aplomb.

My 73 year old wife is a good example.  She uses her 2011 13" MBP for hours every day.  It's the usual Internet, messaging, email and word processing usage syndrome.  Replacing the stock mechanical drive several years ago with a Samsung 850 EVO 128GB SSD for around $70 has given her MBP years of additional life.  (The original cost for the MBP was just shy of $900 during an Amazon sale with a 20% discount.) The increase in speed was considerable and very noticeable.   The stock 8GB RAM is plenty for her uses. (I can always install 16GB in the improbable case that the need arises.)

I haven't tried out the new MBP keyboard yet and I hope that it is a decent upgrade for typing vs. the 3 generations of the horrible butterfly keyboards.  We'll just have to wait and see if the new keyboard is more reliable. . .  With Apple's recent track-record with portable keyboards I wouldn't get a new MBP until others have done the public beta testing.

Now that we have this update along with the 2020 Air there are actually some portable Macs that I would buy to replace the 2011 MBP.  I couldn't care less about 8th generation vs. 10th generation CPUs or the integrated GPU.  What we have are some reasonably priced Macs (the inevitable discounts will help and there are always Apple refurbs. . .) that have the Mac OS.  If you want a faster/more powerful Mac you can spend the extra $$$ that meets your needs or confers bragging rights.

The ironic thing is that my wife is happy with her old MBP and she will likely use it until it or she finally croaks. . .  Of course, it's a Mac and like most of the Macs that I have owned since 1995, I always expected it to have a long, useful life, so I don't mind paying a reasonable premium for a Mac.  And anyway I have better things to do with my time than installing dozens of patches every month when Microsoft Patch Tuesday rolls around. . .