Macbook Pro review/impressions

Alanstrainor

I got a 13" Macbook Pro in the last month or so. My first real Mac experience. I had wanted one for a long time but I could never justify the cost. But this time it was easy since work paid for it! The model is the non-touch core i5, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

First impressions after taking it out of the box. It's a beautiful machine. It's a hefty and solid thing; I know in real terms it is not heavy but it feels very solid in hand. First book and setup was nice and easy, as you would expect really.

The keyboard and touchpad are top class. Really amazing to use. The touchpad is enormous and I wondered if my palms would hit off it. But they don't, my palms naturally sit either side of it, despite it's huge size. The keys are very different to a normal laptop/ultrabook, they are very shallow but it is a fantastic keyboard to type on. I was immediately comfortable with typing on it, and my speed and accuracy were excellent. The trackpad is equally nice to use, gestures work well and it has a great feel.

The screen is beautiful. I must admit that my old Windows machine is now 5/6 years old and it had a poor display even when new, so I would expect to be blown away by this new one. I'm into photography so this screen is perfect for editing and viewing photos, it seems very accurate as far as colour and contrast are concerned.

The battery life is fine really. I actually expected better, but I'd say getting 6 hours + is easily doable with every day usage. But if you do anything more intense it will plummet. I could probably just about get 8 hours if I was very retrained with screen brightness and kept it to just light work. I would have hoped for better, that's one thing that is a must on any laptop, and this seems only so so compared to the competition.

Now for the OS. I use Windows 10 and Linux daily. I probably use Linux more actually, but that's just a work thing. I've used Windows since Windows 95 and I'm very comfortable with it. Mac OS is very nice, no doubt. But there is a very large learning curve involved, and I think there needs to be a better way of conveying the functionality of it when you first login to the Mac. There is lots I do not like. The Apple Dock for apps is a bit crap, it was great 10 years ago, but now it is just wasted space imo. Windows 10 is much better at innovating in this regard.

As for ports/USB C. It's great. I'm a believer that it should be adopted quickly by all other manufacturers. It is the all in one port we should all want to move to. One port to rule them all! My only gripe is missing an SD card reader, but I have a little dock that I use now and that works well. I was never a great user of ports on my old laptop anyway, the SD card reader was definitely the most used device. In saying all of that, I think all models of the Pro should have 4 USB C ports. It's ridiculous to me to try and cripple the 'lower' non touch model in this way. But for my use 2 ports is absolutely fine.

So overall I really like the Mac, it performs well, it's very skick and it suits my needs. Would I spend the guts of 2k for this machine out of my own money? I'm not so sure. There are a lot of other systems that would meet my requirements for under half that price, but a part of me would be tempted if I was feeling particularly flush with cash.

ED E

Booooo, we don't like your kind here! :pac:

Zimmerframe

Alanstrainor wrote: »

The Apple Dock for apps is a bit crap, it was great 10 years ago, but now it is just wasted space imo.

If you hit Command+Option+D it will automatically hide or show the dock. It will only reappear when you hover the cursor over the dock region.