eeflyer

Percentage is still there. Time remaining is also visible in activity monitor

LondonElite

At the risk of repeating what I said earlier...I spent about 20 minutes looking at a new 15 inch MBP on Wednesday morning (a potential replacement for my mid-2014 rMBP which one of my children has her eye on). I can't comment on battery life (it was plugged in), but I just cannot get my head (fingers actually) around that awful keyboard (I'm typing this on my current rMBP). I tried typing lightly, I tried shift-typing (pressing and sliding, rather than gentle hammering), and I tried regular typing, but I just didn't like it. There is not enough travel and feedback for me. It's actually a bit like typing on an iPad I find, where there is not enough physical sensation of having pressed a key to feel satisfied. Maybe I need to get with the times, but it seems to me like innovation for its own sake; certainly no user experience improvement.

The screen is fantastic, and noticeably better than the previous version (next to it). Can't comment on speed or any other performance aspects, as this is not what I was testing.

The touch bar is a bit weird. I think this is something you need to grow into. I tried it with various programs and apps but I honestly can't say that I saw a lot of benefit from it. Indeed, in some apps it was difficult to find the volume controls when the sound was very loud...I suspect this is somewhere between a solution looking for a problem and early innovation to which we will all become accustomed.

The USB-C thing is just bizarre. OK, make a bold move, but losing the MagSafe connector was just stupid, and not having a SD or USB port, particularly when so many of the other Apple devices in the market rely on the latter, is just worrisome.

My final gripe, though I've had this for some years now, is the inability to expand memory, increase/replace the SSD, or replace the battery. This glue/solder business is extremely irritating, particularly for high-end machines.

As it stands at the moment, I have no intention of buying the 2016 edition. I'll wait to see what happens next year and, failing that, will opt for a high-spec prior model.

And did I mention, the prices are just stupid. I won't drink that Kool-Aid.

airsurfer

I was yesterday in a shop of a large retail chain (MediaMarkt) where the 2016 13" MBP was displayed.
It looked more like an el cheapo netbook than a $2100 'premium' laptop. Even the illuminated Apple logo on the lid was gone, it was replaced by an apple logo like on the iPads. So a very stripped down Macbook 'Pro'.

The salesman told me that he sold some copies of it, but advised power users who need the extra ports the 2015 edition. He said "Nothing wrong with it and almost as powerful as the 2016 edition.".

mikel51

I purchased a new 13" for my wife and myself. Wife had a 13" from 2011, and I have a 2012 15" MBP retina. I used to have two laptops, a 15" as my home desktop and a 13" macbook air for travel. Now I plan to just have the 13" as its the same weight as the air.

So far, we only have my wife's, and mine will be delivered soon.

We love the new keyboard and the new screen. Speed is good. We haven't noticed much about battery life-- so I guess thats good because we haven't seen it as noticeably short, but we haven't taken a critical look. We like the usbc, but do admit that we will lose a dongle one day. So far, we have only used the usbc to a adapter, but we have lightning adapters so we can plug in iPhone or iPad. I suspect we will also get an HDMI adapter, but don't use monitors too much.

LIH Prem

FYI .. looks good. Hope they can deliver. I'm in for 2.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-m/description

Got my mbp13 W/touchbar Friday .. replacing a mid 2010 MBA 13, which is still in excellent condition, just slow when starting up or restarting chrome. Otherwise still quite usable.

Other than accidentally hitting the escape "key" a few times, not having any issues with the keyboard etc. using a third party (Cable Matters) USB-c/t3 to DisplayPort cable for my monitor.

chx1975

I wonder what would be necessary to make people actually stop buying Macbooks. Class action suit? Really? Just return that crap and get a better notebook.

bocastephen

There are much better laptops on the market, unfortunately there are no better operating systems. If Apple would license MacOS to other device manufacturers, we wouldn't be having this problem.

stimpy

But then OS X would become Windows, slowed down by having to support all that crazy 3rd party hardware. You might as well run a Linux variant.

But I'll repeat that my Mac Air works very nice. It's a slick piece of hardware.

tmiw

OSX itself wouldn't need to support everything, just the bare minimum needed to boot and get internet access. You'd just install drivers for specific stuff as needed--kinda like now, actually.

Of course, this is all mostly moot since Apple makes most of their money in hardware (for now) and doesn't want to lose that gravy train quickly if possible.

nkedel

That's highly subjective. Sadly, I've yet to find one OS that does everything I need, but MacOS X does even less of what I need than Windows does.

Apple tried it ages ago, although I think the clones only made desktops.

These days laptops have pretty darn homogeneous hardware, and Apple could absolutely if they allowed licensing of the OS limit the range of supported hardware.

Windows is limited more by having to support compatibility with a very, very long tail of old versions of Windows (and a great deal of weird manageability and security options almost nobody uses) than by hardware support.

WIRunner

The current systems are basically a Windows machine, but with one mouse button instead of two.

LIH Prem

Really, really miss the magsafe connector?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...?ref=user_menu

wco81

Apple might shut that down. They managed to prevent any third-party magsafes.

tmiw

USB-C isn't an Apple standard, so I'm not sure how they'd be able to pull that off.

wco81

Not the plug itself but the form factor of the plug that allows it to be easily detached.