Looks like pro users love the new MacBook Pro
Ignore the click bait, the first truly credible MacBook Pro review just arrived online.
Why is it credible?
It is written by Thomas Grove Carter, a professional video editor who uses Final Cut Pro X at London’s Trim Editing, in other words, he’s not a critic on a click whore mission, but the kind of professional critics pretend they understand.
Meanwhile Apple’s new Mac is becoming this year’s best-selling notebook.
Beats the rest
Writing for the Huffington Post, he points out that the new Macs “tear strips” off other systems, including Windows systems that appear to have superior specs. That’s because hardware and software are so well integrated.
He concedes that if you happen to use older apps that aren’t written to make the best out of running on the new Mac, you may not get such great performance – but that’s a fault with the application developers, not the system itself.
‘I’ll be in the future again’
Looking at dongles, he notes: “Which brings me to the ports, (or the dongles, if that’s the way you choose to frame it). I feel the same about this as I did losing DVD, firewire 800 and Ethernet on my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro four years ago. It might be a slight annoyance for six months and then I’ll be in the future again.”
I also think those critics will come round. One day they’ll be complaining about the move to a new completely wireless interconnect standard from USB-C. Some have probably already written that article.
‘Part of my everyday editing process’
Overall, when it comes to interconnects, performance, SSD performance he’s incredibly impressed, but the video professional positively swoons at the use of the Touch Bar as a slider. “Even the short time that I’ve been using it with Final Cut Pro 10.3, I can already feel it becoming part of my everyday editing process,” he writes.
He seems particularly excited by is that the Touch Bar enables him to easily accessed harder to find control items, and the contextual nature of Touch Bar means that the items he can quickly access are the ones he’s most likely to need for the task he is in.
“Why would I use dual-hand/multi-finger shortcuts if the button was there in front of me?,” he wrote.
Most will love it
He makes a great point about the lack of updates to Apple’s desktop range. “The absence of clarity from Apple on those other devices is a problem, but it’s a whole different conversation,” he notes. (I happen to agree, as I’ve written too many times so…)
Overall, this dude seems smitten: “I love it and I think most people will do too… once they actually touch it,” he writes. “A professional should be defined by the work they deliver and the value they bring, not their gear.”
Now take a look at 13 things you didn’t know about the new MacBook Pro.
I really like the idea of the Touch Bar, especially it’s customizability,
But its utility is a direct comment on the convoluted, hidden, compromised, inconsistent interfaces in most programs and in the Mac OS.
They used to promulgate the Human Interface Guidelnes– controls were obvious, transparent, and available. They were consistent across programs.
Alas, in both the Mac OS and the iOS, controls, menu options, choices, etc. have gone underground! The full screen mode does the usability (and the user) in. The pull down of the display to see Search or other hidden controls in, say, Safari and Mail, typify the problem. One never knows what one is going to find where!
So, Touch Bar succeeds, in part, because it solves a problem that should never have been there in the first place–hidden, obscure, or hard to use controls and options!
Sort of yes and no; Yes, controls in some apps are harder to find than others, but no — I don’t see the future of apps as being utter simplicity, or else every app would be so limited. I think the way the OS works is pretty solid — you can be productive with just a passing knowledge of the interface of most apps, but dig a little deeper and you can find all these additional commands and controls that let you achieve even more. That knowledge funnel is quite a powerful model, though I would insist that you should be able to get some use out of any app just by using obvious controls. What Touch Bar does is enable this knowledge funnel to go even deeper from the get-go, which is great.
Let’s hope the MacBook Pro doesn’t go the same was as my expensive Mac Pro Trash Can. I wanted for years for a new model, and finally had decided to upgrade my old Mac Pro with a new processor and memory when they finally came out with the new one. I got one, fully loaded, because it, unlike the old models had no options to upgrade once you ordered it. Now I’m stuck with a three year old very expensive non upgradeable machine and God knows when Apple will upgrade again. They seem to have deserted all of the professional that stuck with them all these years. I don’t need a semi-heavy duty laptop. My Mac Air is fine for travel, but for work I need a fast, tough desktop that can keep pace with all the multitude of Adobe upgrades In a year or two I will have to get a new computer with a faster processor and probably (gasp) more than 32 GB of memoir and 1 TB or flash storage, just to keep up with the new software. After 20 years a Mac user, I’ll not plunk down another $6,000 for a Mac (that’s not even counting the hundreds of dollars for new cables, adaptors and accessories that I couldn’t use with the new Mac Pro.) Apple, under new management seems to focus on the consumer products and forgotten about the serious users who had been their mainstay through the lean years. I just pray that my next machine doesn’t have to run Windows.