Ok, time to do some reading and maybe reevaluate what for me is the single biggest practical problem I have with Apple: its laptop keyboard. https://twitter.com/techledes/status/1194629888935743491

Good news after reading @jetscott’s take: the keyboard is based on Apple’s external Magic keyboard, which I love, and has inverted T arrow keys and dedicated escape key, which is great. Bad news: still has the Touch Bar, which I hate. https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-new-16-inch-macbook-pro-gets-a-bigger-screen-and-a-brand-new-keyboard/

Better speakers is impressive. This, along with the durable unibody design and superb touchpad, are undervalued parts of the MacBook family. Bigger battery is also welcome, though I never got close to 10 hours with my current 15” and doubt I’d get close to 11 with this one.

4 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports is probably OK for most people, but I’ve had that design for four years and I still use USB-A a lot, so Apple is showing more courage here than I’d prefer. Makes their cold-turkey decision 4 years ago look even more customer-unfriendly.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro 0.03 inches thicker. I’m outraged! Disgusted! No, just kidding, it’s no big deal. 0.3 pounds heavier is a bummer, but worth it for me IMO since I very often am in battery anxiety mode.

It’s expensive, starting at $2400. You might be able to scrape by with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD if you can use external and cloud storage, I wouldn’t touch this with less than 32GB. My next laptop will have 64GB/1TB minimum. With better CPU & GPU, it’s $2800 and up.

Upgrading 16–>32GB costs +$400 of nearly pure profit margin for Apple. Going 16–>64GB costs +$800.

Upgrade 512GB–>1TB SSD is +$200, –>2TB is +$600, all the way to 8TB is +$2,400!

Interestingly, the power brick is 96W, up from 87W for last-gen 15.4-inch MacBook Pro models.

It’s too soon for me to tell how this changes, but I think one of the problems with the butterfly keyboard was that keys were wider, with smaller gaps. Looks nice, maybe butterfly reasons to do that, but harder to navigate by touch. Looks like 16-inch scissor keyboard keeps that.

I hate the Touch Bar: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-macbook-pro-touch-problems-commentary/

Suffers from false positives, slower for volume/brightness adjust, have to do that while watching instead of just tapping keys with muscle memory. Software support is weak even 4 years in. I’m bummed Apple didn’t dump it.

I was one of those people whose old MBP butterfly keyboard got replaced for free because of problems (bonus: new battery!). I have to say the replacement has better (less bad) touch and I’ve had only one jamming/dust incident. So I could wait a year for the 2020 16-inch MBP.

I’m glad Apple separated the Touch Bar from the keyboard a bit to reduce false positives, but that problem for me is not “minor” as Phil Schiller characterizes it. Worst is when I hit browser reload or search buttons and wipe out data in a website form I was filling out.

One example of a top-tier developer blowing off the Touch Bar: Adobe with Lightroom. I talked to them about it,and their view was a clear “meh, not a priority.” One problem: lots of MacBook Pros, but also lots of programming/UI work that doesn’t pay off on other laptops.

Most of the time in the @RogerWCheng interview with Phil Schiller about new MacBook Pro you can replace the word “passion” with the word “anger.” Maybe there are mixed feelings about the Touch Bar, but I have not seen a single person express fondness for the butterfly keyboard.