<story><title>16-inch MacBook Pro</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/11/apple-introduces-16-inch-macbook-pro-the-worlds-best-pro-notebook/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wwweston</author><text>It turns out that people who buy laptops -- a mobile-ish form factor differentiated from a tablet by its keyboard -- might &lt;i&gt;really really care about keyboards&lt;/i&gt; as the main interface between user and device.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d concluded that Apple didn&amp;#x27;t really think much of laptops anymore, and had simply moved on to caring more about other form factors: it seemed a logical conclusion if one assumed that people at Apple were in fact competent.&lt;p&gt;This shows some real care regarding laptops as a form factor and puts them back in the running for a lot of buyers, including me. But there&amp;#x27;s still one major issue that I don&amp;#x27;t see people talking much about -- the way that Apple&amp;#x27;s decisions regarding storage (namely soldering it to the board AND making it so that there&amp;#x27;s no way to access it in the event of a logic board failure) increases consumer risk as well as decreasing consumer choice:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&amp;#x2F;Apple-removes-the-Customer-Data-Migration-Tool-connector-in-the-the-2018-MacBook-Pro-with-Touch-Bar.318186.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&amp;#x2F;Apple-removes-the-Customer-Dat...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It increases risk of data loss&lt;/i&gt;. That&amp;#x27;s a choice that impacts the day-to-day experience much less than the keyboard, which explains why the keyboard has gotten much more attention, and it really is nice that a company arguably built on attention to experience returned to that aspect of it. But this kind of choice makes a huge difference in a moment of failure, and it&amp;#x27;s at least equally user-hostile, especially in a product bearing the name &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; where data recovery can be a matter of business continuity.&lt;p&gt;I suppose that one can argue a responsible professional will be using network and external backups (and of course all responsible professionals worth considering or selling anything to &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; do this, right?), and so this isn&amp;#x27;t necessary, and Apple&amp;#x27;s thing (wise or unwise) is that they frequently reconsider and eliminate things that aren&amp;#x27;t crucial. But redundancy in some areas is wise, and I can&amp;#x27;t see what they think eliminating both removability AND emergency direct access when it come to storage actually buys them. Even if one assumes it&amp;#x27;s a lock-in action for service, it makes the actual service more difficult and costly.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m liking the keyboard correction. I just bought a 2014 MBP to replace an older failing MBP, so I&amp;#x27;m not in the market for something else for a year or two, but when that comes up, I&amp;#x27;ll be seriously looking at the 16&amp;quot; as an option. And this will be what I&amp;#x27;m thinking about.</text></item><item><author>throwanem</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m astonished and pleased to see they walked back the two worst things about the original Touch Bar MBPs - the lack of a physical Escape key, and the full-size left and right arrow keys.&lt;p&gt;The lack of physical function keys remains regrettable, and the Touch Bar is still no worthy substitute, but perhaps this is a sign that Apple is finally interested in listening to feedback from its long-term customer base, even if that feedback conflicts with the design team&amp;#x27;s desires.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkonofalski</author><text>&amp;gt;It increases risk of data loss.&lt;p&gt;I realize that this is idealistic of me but &lt;i&gt;data loss should never be an issue&lt;/i&gt;. This is 2019 and backups have been drilled into everyone&amp;#x27;s heads for years and years and years. You can still access the drives in these via Target Disk mode (and I&amp;#x27;ve had to do a few recoveries through that so I know it works) and it&amp;#x27;s likely that the pros outweigh the cons.</text></comment>
<story><title>16-inch MacBook Pro</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/11/apple-introduces-16-inch-macbook-pro-the-worlds-best-pro-notebook/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wwweston</author><text>It turns out that people who buy laptops -- a mobile-ish form factor differentiated from a tablet by its keyboard -- might &lt;i&gt;really really care about keyboards&lt;/i&gt; as the main interface between user and device.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d concluded that Apple didn&amp;#x27;t really think much of laptops anymore, and had simply moved on to caring more about other form factors: it seemed a logical conclusion if one assumed that people at Apple were in fact competent.&lt;p&gt;This shows some real care regarding laptops as a form factor and puts them back in the running for a lot of buyers, including me. But there&amp;#x27;s still one major issue that I don&amp;#x27;t see people talking much about -- the way that Apple&amp;#x27;s decisions regarding storage (namely soldering it to the board AND making it so that there&amp;#x27;s no way to access it in the event of a logic board failure) increases consumer risk as well as decreasing consumer choice:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&amp;#x2F;Apple-removes-the-Customer-Data-Migration-Tool-connector-in-the-the-2018-MacBook-Pro-with-Touch-Bar.318186.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&amp;#x2F;Apple-removes-the-Customer-Dat...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It increases risk of data loss&lt;/i&gt;. That&amp;#x27;s a choice that impacts the day-to-day experience much less than the keyboard, which explains why the keyboard has gotten much more attention, and it really is nice that a company arguably built on attention to experience returned to that aspect of it. But this kind of choice makes a huge difference in a moment of failure, and it&amp;#x27;s at least equally user-hostile, especially in a product bearing the name &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; where data recovery can be a matter of business continuity.&lt;p&gt;I suppose that one can argue a responsible professional will be using network and external backups (and of course all responsible professionals worth considering or selling anything to &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; do this, right?), and so this isn&amp;#x27;t necessary, and Apple&amp;#x27;s thing (wise or unwise) is that they frequently reconsider and eliminate things that aren&amp;#x27;t crucial. But redundancy in some areas is wise, and I can&amp;#x27;t see what they think eliminating both removability AND emergency direct access when it come to storage actually buys them. Even if one assumes it&amp;#x27;s a lock-in action for service, it makes the actual service more difficult and costly.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m liking the keyboard correction. I just bought a 2014 MBP to replace an older failing MBP, so I&amp;#x27;m not in the market for something else for a year or two, but when that comes up, I&amp;#x27;ll be seriously looking at the 16&amp;quot; as an option. And this will be what I&amp;#x27;m thinking about.</text></item><item><author>throwanem</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m astonished and pleased to see they walked back the two worst things about the original Touch Bar MBPs - the lack of a physical Escape key, and the full-size left and right arrow keys.&lt;p&gt;The lack of physical function keys remains regrettable, and the Touch Bar is still no worthy substitute, but perhaps this is a sign that Apple is finally interested in listening to feedback from its long-term customer base, even if that feedback conflicts with the design team&amp;#x27;s desires.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nextos</author><text>The paradoxical thing with recent Apple laptop keyboards is that their Magic Keyboard 2 is pretty darn good. I haven&amp;#x27;t bought any Apple products for more than a decade, but I keep recommending and buying their Magic Keyboard 2 for Linux workstations.&lt;p&gt;It has a very good mechanical feel, and it reduces latency perhaps due to shallow action point and&amp;#x2F;or firmware tweaks [1]. Also, it&amp;#x27;s really easy to source ANSI layouts outside the US.&lt;p&gt;I do in fact prefer it to my blue ALPS keyboard for long typing sessions.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;danluu.com&amp;#x2F;keyboard-latency&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;danluu.com&amp;#x2F;keyboard-latency&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>