Hobie’s 16” MacBook Pro Initial Impressions

So, like the rest of the world I’ve had to adjust to spending more time in my home. Luckily, I am blessed that I can work from home for most of my duties as an IT professional. I’ve been at the university for a few years now and I was due for a computer upgrade. I had planned on waiting until the fall semester because life has been kinda crazy lately because of this Coronavirus mess, but this crisis kinda forced my hand since I could not take my iMac home with me. I waited for weeks and got by on my personal laptop, but it just wasn’t an ideal situation since I’m not really supposed to be using a personal laptop with the university network and I plan to repurpose the older iMac for other operations when we return in the summer (hopefully) to the office. So, enter 16” MacBook Pro into my life.

I have had every major revision of the Macbook Pro since 2009 now. My first MacBook Pro was a 15” model without a GPU, which I got when my white MacBook in college became a lemon and Apple let me upgrade for the $200 delta between the two laptops at the time. My previous job provided a 2013 15” MacBook Pro and when I got the university I opted to get an iMac because I needed a GPU and I got more bang for my budget. I purchased a 2016 MacBook Pro (I jokingly refused to it as the MacBook Air Pro) for my personal/educational usage and that has been my computer paradigm for the last 4 years now with lots of iPad Pro usage. I work as a system engineer at a small college so I also have endusers that I support across a variety of platforms (About 55% Mac, 45% Windows 10, and 5% ChromeOS) and on top of that I have been known to host virtual streaming events around campus, edit hours of video with Final Cut Pro, and a lot of the time be on the go with a lot of this. I had been using the iMac as my Imperial Star Destroyer and the iPad Pro as my Imperial Shuttle to get between jobs (With my personal laptop always in my book bag anyway that I would sometime lean on), but with the Coronavirus forcing us to work from home I really felt like I needed to take that iMac experience and make it portable. That, and the iPad Pro has gotten capable enough that going forward I’m strongly considering making it my primary home computing device with the release the Magic Keyboard case next year.

So, with that use-case in mind, what do I think of the laptop itself? Its fantastic and the MacBook Pro I’ve wanted for years. I love my 2016 MacBook Pro because of the modern design, larger trackpad, bigger keyboard keys, Touch Bar, brilliant screen, and good speakers (Yes, I actually like the Touch Bar, bite me). The 2019 16” MacBook Pro though, restores the better keyboard of the 2013 with the butterfly mechanism that is much more quiet (And hopefully more reliable) and because of the extra travel I feel like I’m a faster and more confident typist than I ever was with the 2016 MacBook Pro. The speakers are the BEST I have never heard such excellent speakers in a laptop and I find myself using them a lot now that I’m working from home. The sound appears balanced, but the laptop has an amazing amount of bass for such a thin design. With that being said, the machine is definitely thicker and heavier than the 2016 MacBook Pro and more like the 2013 Model. I’m fine with that. The machine feels a bit more substantial in that way and I kinda like that. I can tell the fan kicks in a bit more, but I’m fine with that since this is the i9 model with 32GB of RAM (I work with Windows VMs a lot for testing so its been nice this week). The return of the physical power button and esc keys are a God-send and grounds the keyboard a lot better when I put my hands on the keyboard to get work done I can find my way around it faster than before. I wish the Touch Bar could have some haptic feedback and FaceID would have been nice now, but I guess we can’t get everything we want in one release. The larger screen is appreciated. Its not life-changing, but it is definitely appreciated and something I have noticed as a nice touch like the bigger trackpad was on the 2016 model. The microphones are excellent and I no longer feel the need to use my Yeti Blue microphone for Microsoft Team or Zoom calls. Whenever we get back to traveling to tech conference I think I’ll leave my Yeti Blue at home. I do love the true-tone display a lot, it makes writing, email, and reading a much more pleasant experience when different lighting scenarios.

Overall, I am thrilled with this machine. Yeah, its thicker and heavier, but I kinda love that because Apple has acknowledged that this laptop is a workstation class machine and that’s OK. It doesn’t need to be thin and light and I’m okay with it having just OK battery life since its essentially a portable 5K iMac. If I want a long-lasting, thin and light machine, I’ll buy the excellent 2019 MacBook Air or consider the iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard. I no longer fear taking my laptop with me in public for fear that dust or crumbs are going to wreck my livelihood with me having to pay a lot for repairs or be without the computer for a few weeks. I think we are at the best point in Mac laptops in the last 5 years of Apple (With the exception of the absent 13” Model for now). There is a logical line between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro and the lines are different enough that they play to the wants and desires of each audience. I’m OK with not every Apple product being for me. I tried the 2019 MacBook Air for two weeks and I just hit the ceiling with it more often than I needed to be productive with the machine slowing or the fans flaring at inopportune times like when I was trying to do an audio recording or edit audio. This feels like a homecoming of the 2013 MacBook Pro that was my daily workhorse for years before it unceremoniously died two years ago when the logic board took a shock from a bad battery that I had neglected to replace on time. The machine feels solid and powerful with a high ceiling to support all of my work over the next few years. Its a big workstation with the ability to last for hours if I’m writing or cut through video I’m editing like a warm knife through butter. I feel like this machine is just solid like my 2013 MacBook Pro was and not something I have to handle with care for fear of a speck of dust ruining it or hitting a thermal limit because the case is a little too thin. I haven’t been this excited about a laptop in years.