Before this generation of Apple products, I found their product shortcomings so minor that I wouldn't consider switching. I think I'll always favor apple products but I'm definitely loving them less than I always have.

- If you buy a new macbook and a new iPhone, you can't physically connect them

- If you buy standard aux headphones, you have to keep track of the tiny dongle

- You can't charge your iPhone while using wired headphones

- No more Macsafe chargers which have saved me so many times

- A touchbar that I'm sure I could get used to, but haven't seen a compelling use case yet

Unlike some others, I'm not pushed to the point of leaving Apple. I just don't want to buy the new gen and hope that they can refocus on creating great experiences that doesnt involve friction like the above changes do.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple will never back down on USB-C.

Not now, not ever.

In a perfect universe, any plug will fit into any port, you wouldn't need to worry about adapters, and you wouldn't need to worry about interoperability.

That's the future that Apple is counting on, and they think that they can bring it about by making every customer who buys the single most popular laptop on the planet a forced user.

I have to say, looking back, this is the first year, in close to 8 years, where I have not bought anything made by Apple. I decided this year to not buy the iPhone 7. I usually upgrade every year and buy the phone outright. But with the headphone jack issue and artificially low throughput on the modem, I decided not to.

I also usually get every new refresh of the Macbook Pro. This year, I decided not to do that either because of the bad specs. I hope Apple can refresh the Macbook Pro with Pro specs so it is a viable purchase again.

"The 13in MacBook Pro could be a wonderful computer, but it isn’t. Is it great to use? Absolutely, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, it’s almost everything Apple said it was, I absolutely love it … until it runs out of battery. Or you have to dig out yet another dongle to use a sodding USB flash drive, or a card reader, or attach a display." that's the exact opposite way I feel. I already was using a MacBook with USB-C so I'm used to the port issues. The battery life is great. The processing power is amazing. Don't listen to people telling you dongles and USB-C is bad. It's not bad. It's just the future.

I waited new MacBook Pro for 2 years. Once it came out I was ready to buy it but then I hesitated on the checkout flow and paused. I waited another 4 weeks reading reviews and slowly moved out of the Mac world where I have been since 2006. Today I received Dell’s XPS 13 so I am back to Windows now. It will be interesting to see if Apple is able to lure me back in to their world in 2017 but right now I am very excited with my new XPS.

I took delivery of my 13 inch Touchbar MBP last week and after a weekend and 2 full work days with it, I have to say that I've not been this happy with a new Mac in since my first one.

I've owned a Mac Mini (just after intel launch), iMac, MacBook (White), 15 inch MBP, 11 inch Air and most recently 2 years with a 13 inch air so I got a good stable to compare to.

This laptop feels incredible, it's plenty powerful enough for what I do (Sketch/Photoshop, HTML/CSS, PHP/MAMP, Swift, C for embedded microcontroller work, large spreadsheets for forecasting) and while I've not put the battery through its paces I can't remember the last time I ran my Air's battery down to less than 50%.

The screen is amazing (even compared to my wife's 2015 retina MPB), the overall finish is great, I really don't mind the keyboard although I type on a Magic Keyboard so it's not that different really.

The touchbar is new, novel and not all that useful right now but given it's not tied down to an App store I'm looking forward to what people make for it. Touch id is a big plus as well.

The USB C future is going to be very nice, sadly that future is not right now. Plugging my laptop into a screen for power, USB and video will be very convenient but right now it's damned awkward but that's the early adopter price I guess. Apple won't back down on USB and I'm glad someone is willing to force this through as it's time to settle on the one connection that can do it all.

You can plug in an iPhone, you need to buy a USB C to lightning cable or dongle. People complain about the price of the cable but if you've got a £1,750 computer and a £700 phone then £20 really isn't that much.

Just my 2 cents

I really like this review, it's the first one I've read where I feel like someone who uses a laptop like I use a laptop every day sat down and used the thing for a while and wrote about how it works.

"Cons: short battery life, no USB-A ports, no ethernet, no native display ports, no upgrading after purchase, very expensive"

For me at least, those cons mean I am very very hesitant to buy one of these, and mine just died, so I am trying to decide what to do now. I have an somewhat new Lenovo and I'm sticking with this for now. It's not my main work machine, mostly used for travel, but I traveled with it last week for the first time and it worked perfectly. I was really nervous. How could I possibly work on a Windows machine after almost a decade on OSX. I just worked. No issues, I missed NOTHING in OSX. But for some reason I still want to replace this perfectly functioning thing with a MacBook. Maybe just habit?

The reviewer complains about battery life but is using Chrome which is a known battery hog. I use Safari instead of Chrome for precisely this reason.

Regarding battery life, there are comments in macrumors forums from real users.

He also complains about dongles. I use my laptop with iPhone (sometimes) and with USB drives. Hardly an issue.

I'm a current 15" rMBP 2015 owner.

I tried the different models in the store. For those "on the go" the 13" is a nice "Air" replacement. I'm not certain I'd go with the touch bar version.

It is reasonable to keep up-to-date with Mac hardware if you use computers a lot. If things go wrong, it is far easier to take the laptop to the Genius Bar than options for other laptops.

EDIT: Comments on macforums claims 10+ hours.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-13-tb-with-2-50-batt...

What really grinds my gears is not the MacBook but the fact they went with lightning on the iPhone for the newest gen. If I bought lightning headphones I'd be pissed I couldn't use them with my Mac, even more so if the next iPhone does go USB-C. You'd think it would make the most since to go USB-C at the same time you drop the headphone jack...

> "If it was the 15in MacBook Pro I could almost imagine that you’d never use it when away from power, and that battery life wasn’t that important. But a 13in laptop is made for portability."

At my university and nearby coffee shops the 15" model (which I own) has in the past year or so become very popular. And it is used portably. That is why I like the newer 15" model which weighs less and has a smaller form-factor. Makes it more portable.

>It’s the best, lightest, most beautiful laptop around. Until it runs out of battery.

So, like any other computer.

>Or you forget a dongle

You only need ONE dongle, which can give you several USB 3.1, SD card, and other ports. And for most devices you don't need ANY dongle -- you just replace their existing USB-A cables (that you had to carry anyway) with USB-C cables (those go for $5 to $10).

>Or you realise you’re bankrupt

Then opt for something in your price range?

Pity. I was considering it as a replacement for my 2010 15" MBP. I'm slowly getting tired of the random kernel panics.

Come to think of it, has anyone tried to disable the NVIDIA graphics card in the 2010 15" MBP by moving the driver (.kext) somewhere where the OS cannot find it? If that gets rid of the kernel panics then I think I'd just buy more RAM and an SSD.