Don’t be fooled by the outward appearance that seems the same as machines 3 or 4 years old. I find myself taking it everywhere, and I’ve been a lot more productive on it. Using the fullscreen capabilities most OS X apps now have, I rarely feel cramped. Sometimes, if I need more room for something, I’ll jump into a 1680×1050 mode. Normally, I choose the 1280×800-equivalent Retina resolution, with perfect pixel doubling. Bright, colorful, and super high resolution. Lastly, the screen on the 13 inch MacBook Pro is phenomenal. Glide your finger, and click where ever you end up. No more lifting your finger and reaching down, or relying on your thumb to rest in a “click-friendly” zone. The ability to click anywhere on the trackpad is game-changing. But of course each was moving the same amount (which is to say, almost not at all). The other seemed to bend and delightfully click at my touch. The off one’s trackpad was a rigid object. In the Apple store, they showed me two machines, next to each other. You cannot convince yourself that the pad isn’t clicking. Second, know that the “Force Touch” trackpad absolutely blows the previous one out of the water. First know that the previous mechanical MacBook trackpad was probably the best trackpad in the industry.
This was the first Mac to get the new “Force Touch” trackpad. I went with the standard 8GB instead of 16GB. The processor (I went for the 2.7GHz i5, not even the fastest) is quite speedy. Let us arrest the tyranny of “thinner, lighter” and actually get devices that last a day. I want Apple to look at the compromises they made for this machine (more weight and more thickness for more battery) and apply them to the iPhone. Even if I know I’m going to be using it all day, for serious work. I take it places and don’t even consider bringing a power cord. I’ve also gotten more (on a long flight, with Wi-Fi off). The recessed screen not the MacBook Air was massively annoying to me, as it collected lots of dust and dirt and lint. First, the screen is glass instead of plastic, and the bezel is flush with the screen, whereas it is recessed on the MacBook Air. The build quality on the MacBook Pro is better than the Air. I wouldn’t call either machine “light” - not in the iPad sense - but neither is either heavy. In a backpack or a bag, I notice no difference. The extra weight is only really noticed when I’m carrying the machine around by a corner. The MacBook Pro has a thicker front edge that feels more comfortable in any position. Reclining on a couch, it would stab into my stomach, leaving a lovely red line below my belly button. I actually found the knife-sharp front-edge of the MacBook Air to be annoying. And I’ve gained some fractions of an inch in thickness. I’ve gone up half a pound from the MacBook Air I was using. I’ve enjoyed several of my previous Mac portables, but none so intensely as this.
So, last month I decided to upgrade my portable, to a 2015 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air wasn’t really improvement in that regard… it was just massively mobile. But for single threaded stuff, the GHz weren’t measuring up. It destroys at multithreaded tasks like video encoding, with 16 v-cores. But at six years old, it’s starting to feel its age. I upgraded the video card, upgraded to dual SSDs in RAID-0, upgraded to a PCI-e internally-RAID-0 SSD card, added a Blu-ray drive, bought a 30-inch screen in addition to the 24 I had. But way before that, in 2009, I got a Mac Pro tower. In 2012, I got a 13 inch MacBook Air (3 pounds). In 2010, in an effort to atone for my sins against gravity, I “downgraded” to a 13 inch “unibody” MacBook Pro (only 4.5 pounds!). In 2007 I upgraded to the ridiculously large 17 inch MacBook Pro. I started in 2005 with a 15 inch PowerBook G4.
My history with portable Macs has been all over the place.