Mark sent me a note from some random person about how MacBook Pro’s are the stepchildren of the Apple world. The complaints which I’ve heard quite a bit come down to:
- The keyboard isn’t great.
- The updates have been slow.
- It doesn’t have enough ports with only USB C.
I’ll be a little contrarian about these points, but in addition to reliability and having AppleCare, having used these laptops for a while here are some considerations:
- Keyboard. It is a really short throw keyboard that some people find hard to deal with. But at least for me, my favorite keyboard was the SUN workstation with an incredibly short throw that felt so responsive. And with a keyboard cover, it feels pretty good. That’s the main thing, don’t let the butterfly keyboard get clogged with stuff.
- Updates. This is mainly an issue with Intel. For whatever reason, they’ve been slow about moving from 14nm to 7nm as ARM and Apple have been doing, so performance is about the same. But the move to 16GB is pretty good for most common uses.
- USB C only. I think this is the one I most think was the right long term choice. Most devices are moving to USB C and it is nice to have a uniform set of points. The adapter from USB A to USB C are just $5 now and most devices are supporting it. So I think this will go away. Also, many folks say they want an SD card. Well, most of the time I think the use of digital cameras is falling like crazy and most of these now do Wifi upload. Having a good Bluetooth and Wifi connection matter way more than Ethernet or HDMI.
