Apple’s Latest Sin
To start, I have to say that I am a little bit of an Apple fanboy. Sorry haters. That is just the way it is. My first MacBook Pro was the 15.4" Titanium MacBook Pro (MB133LL/A for those who are interested in the specifics). It was a late 2008 model and to be honest I loved it. The funny thing is it did not love me back. Maybe eight months after purchasing it the motherboard failed. I was heartbroken. But then I called Apple. They said that’s ok will send you one of our new MacBook Pro’s to replace it. It was a mid-2009 glorious machine that I instantly fell in love with. I missed the titanium but loved the aluminum. This thing was great, stable, sexy, just simply awesome. I held on to it until the mid-2012 retina MacBook Pro was released.
The same week the mid-2012 was released, I went to West World Computers (in Edmonton, Alberta) and grabbed the last unit they had on the shelf, the Apple store was sold out. That thing was my workhouse for almost five years. It served me well, trouble-free, not one problem and it was flawless.
So, this brings me to today and my current computer, the much-hated late 2016 MacBook Pro. Sorry guys no hate from me. I Love it. It is so refined, so functional so…perfect. Does it have a touch screen? No, why would it? Who would want to put fingerprints on that beautiful screen? I am currently running macOS Sierra 10.12.4 Beta (16E175b) and it is working very well. Not nearly as glitchy as the last release.
Actually, as of the writing of this, I have not had one single issue with this Beta.
So, what do I like about it? First, I love the keyboard, it is so easy to type on. I like the fact that the keys are bigger and they just work for me. I found the last generation keyboard keys too small and the key travel was unnecessarily deep. I know many of you will disagree, but I ask that you give the new keyboard a try before you hate on this too much.
I also like the touch bar, I do a bunch of recording on Garage Band and I find the touch bar very useful, especially for the drum editor. I also use it with Safari, and for typing shortcuts, I am not the fastest typist in the world.
So, what about the USB-C? Well, I bought a dongle, just one and I connected to my current USB 3.1 hub and guess what? I am good. I don’t use an external monitor so for now I don’t need anything else.
The one area where I am not such a fanboy is the internal speakers. I am a bit of an audiophile so the speakers leave a little bit to be desired for me. It is not a big deal though because I normally listen on a decent set of headphones with an external DAC and headphones so who really cares how crappy the internal speakers are?
All in all, I have to say that reverting to my old MacBook Pro feels like going backwards in time as the new unit feels so much sleeker. I am not a superpower user and I think the speed and video capacity is more than I will ever use.
Do I think it is expensive? Yes, I do. Do I think that Apple priced it that way on purpose? Yes, I do. I think that Apple is convinced that they can extract a few more bucks from the loyal few and they are pushing it as far as they can to maximize profit. I would expect nothing less from a premium brand. For this, I hate Apple a little bit, cause a small part of me thinks that everyone should have access to a great computer and that they aren’t that much better than the closest competitors.
Perhaps Apple should ask forgiveness for their latest sin, and maybe I should have bought a Windows computer, but the reality is I love the most hated computer of 2016 and I will likely keep it for 4 to 5 years. How many Windows fanboys can say that?
TTFN
