dreyfus2

Many thanks for that – highly informative and helpful.

I have received my new MBP (2.6 GHz i7, 560X, 32GB RAM, 2 TB SSD) a couple of days ago and I am extremely happy with it. While everybody says the changes to the keyboard are minor, I do not think so. To me it is a night and day difference. Much more quiet (maybe not in dB, but in perception) and a much better typing experience. I make almost no typing errors while I had to go back and make corrections all the time on my 2016 model.

I am not doing a lot of hardcore video and 3D stuff, I mainly need the power to run extensive virtualization projects in class. 6 cores with hyperthreading and 32 GB RAM (finally!) make a world of difference here. I can run an entire MS System Center simulation (11 servers and 3 clients) and a network simulation in Cisco VIRL simultaneously while having a separate VM doing packet capturing and LogManagement/SIEM in parallel... Bottom line that means that I no longer have to lug 2 machines around, and that my XPS 15 can go in the trash (well, on ebay) where it belongs.

jameskatt2 said:

Just look at how thick, loud and heavy real gaming laptops are. These laptops take full potential of the CPU and GPU. 
As the CPUs and GPUs become more powerful, Apple needs to get away from THIN and make the MacBooks THICK BEASTS again.

Sales figures for these things do not seem to be too impressive (otherwise the revenue share of other OEMs would not be what it is). For the few people who want these things there is more than enough choice. MacBooks have never been "THICK BEASTS", even the PowerBooks before them weren't. You would have to go back to the previous millennium to find such a failure. It is not that I do not want other's to get what they want, I just do not see how Apple could do anything different enough to justify the expense to serve a market that small. I have literally not seen anybody lugging around a mobile workstation in years - and I visit a lot of companies.

You guys have done an amazing job with all those reviews. So: Thank you! For completeness I would really like to see some of those numbers for the forgotten better 15" model (i7 with 2.6 GHz). Would really like to see where this lies between the minimum and maximum configurations... I know that most people have settled on "the TouchBar is a gimmick", and I respect that opinion. But since nobody else says something positive about it, I have to mention that I would really miss it if it were removed. I see that it is rather useless if you are permanently using the TouchPad or mouse. But if you do anything keyboard-centric, like typing with both hands, I find it more than useful. Picking suggested word completions and selecting the buttons from dialogs without moving a hand to the trackpad alone is more than enough to make me like it. It is much less disruptive. And I consider the fluid volume, brightness and, where applicable, color adjustments a lot better than the old way.

I am doing this for many years now, and agree with pretty much all of it. But just for completeness... Having to tether the iPad does not really constitute the end of being able to move around. Controlling the iPad using an iPhone, or even the Watch as a remote works very well.

backstab said:

Hey! A whole new level of pathetic clickbait from AI.
Even I'm a bit surprised.

Clickbait, yes. But a different kind. One that actually leads to something intelligent and true. Made me smile...