Thoughts on the Replacement

It had been a month since I own the new MacBook Pro. It was certainly more powerful than my old laptop despite the smaller footprint. It was kinda larger than my Air which I carry around but not by much. And I could see myself using this unit for many years to come.

Yes, the dongle was an issue and the keyboard needed some getting used to at the beginning, but it has since grew on me. In fact, I kinda like the new keyboard. Even this entry was done using the new machine.

Reading the review before buying the unit clearly did not inspire me. The review was downright negative. It was apparently not worthy of the Pro tag. Yes, it was underpowered in the true Pro sense. But I have the Mac Pro to do the real heavy lifting. This would be more of a laptop I carry with me to work, use for my presentation, write patient letters and take notes during meetings. Certainly it lived up to that billing and more.

The quality of the screen was much better than I expected, and then came the sound from the speakers. I never heard laptop speakers sounding this good. And those two facet added up to make this an excellent media consuming device, on par with the iPad Pro.

The machine was powerful enough to run Photoshop and Final Cut Pro without breaking a sweat. I was able to do some editing on 4K files, and it didn’t feel slower than my previous MacBook Pro.

How about the battery life? I could easily get 6 hours and since I have yet to travel with the new unit, I always charge it when I got home never running the risk of running out of juice.

And of course, the elephant in the room was the touch bar. Yes, it was a gimmick, but over time I was starting to warm to it. Safari really took advantage of the display, allowing the shortcuts to show up on the strip as well as the tabs displayed as a row, making switching between tabs that much easier.

Over time, there would be more apps taking advantage of the touch bar. Today, I just downloaded the latest version of Microsoft Office. This version has shortcuts using the bar.

Another feature of the new MacBook Pro was the Touch ID. It allowed me to both unlock the laptop and buy apps from the App Store just with my fingerprints. It worked out neatly in the end.

Would I recommend this laptop? Of course if this is not your main machine. I still do my editing both for the photographs and videos on my Mac Pro. Since I have a USB 3 card ready, I found using the desktop that much easier. No new dongles needed. I had also used the laptop to give a couple of presentations so far. No issues. Using the Apple adapter, I was able to connect to the projector without much hassle.