Apple today released its much-rumoured new 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the first impressions are painting the laptop in a flattering light.
John Gruber from Daring Fireball shared his impressions on the new laptop, and was particularly happy with the brand-new Magic Keyboard:
No one would ever suggest that the steering wheel for a car be designed by people who don’t drive. But yet somehow the entire Macintosh world has spent the last three years dealing with or avoiding keyboards that were seemingly designed by people who don’t type. The whole saga of the butterfly keyboards?—?their unreliable switches, poor typing feel, and anti-functional layout?—?betrays a certain arrogance. The more powerful an organization?—?a corporation, a nation, a sports team, whatever?—?the more at risk that organization is to hubris. It’s power that allows one to act on hubris.
We shouldn’t be celebrating the return of longstanding features we never should have lost in the first place. But Apple’s willingness to revisit these decisions?—?their explicit acknowledgment that, yes, keyboards are meant to be typed upon, not gazed upon?—?is, if not cause for a party, at the very least cause for a jubilant toast.
Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch praised the laptop’s new features, including higher capacity SSDs, a larger display, a bigger battery, and a better keyboard:
In my brief and admittedly limited testing so far, the 16” MacBook Pro ends up looking like it really delivers on the Pro premise of this kind of machine in ways that have been lacking for a while in Apple’s laptop lineup. The increased storage caps, bigger screen, bigger battery and redesigned keyboard should make this an insta-buy for anyone upgrading from a 2015 MacBook Pro and a very tempting upgrade for even people on newer models that have just never been happy with the typing experience.
Dieter Bohn from The Verge does mention the laptop’s lack of HDMI and USB-A ports, though he says that it’s not that big of a deal:
That probably won’t matter, though. Because Apple has almost surely delivered the thing people have been asking for: a MacBook Pro with a good keyboard and (hopefully) sufficient thermals.
The general consensus at this point is that Apple is finally back on track with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Look forward to more official reviews in the coming weeks.
Other first impressions are also on the web and on YouTube:
