Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display 15-inch

Do not buy the latest macbook pro - not worth it - you will be disappointed, read below – I have both a macbook pro 2014 an macbook pro 2019 with touch bar. The only good aspect about thew new macbook is a littte more power and I use intensive graphics. 1) Macbook keeps shutting down randomly when connecting external items to the ports and when goes to sleep. Rang help but could not solve. Now taken my 1 year old laptop to service… Read more

which will be there for 2 weeks. Should have bought a Dell where they come to your house and fix it on the spot as I use for business.

2) Bluetooth connectivity is hopeless in the macbook pro 2019. Again I use the same devices on my macbook 2014 and all bluetooth devices work and never drop out. 2019 macbook pro drops out all the time and hard to connect genuine ear buds, trackpads etc.. actually non apple products have a great connectivity than their own products.

3) When connecting external screens and sidecar apple does not seem to know or understand that the 2014 Macbook pro actually allows the independent swiping of each screen so you can go to different desktops independently which is a great feature on sadly on the 2019 macbook pro all screens move left and right together. I called help but as usual the Aussie help gets as far as how to turn the macbook on or off...maybe a bit sarcastic here but not too far off.

4) The keyboard is vastly inferior but I suppose this can come down to personal taste. If you enjoy typing on a hard bench then use the 2019 macbook pro.

5) There really is not much different between the 2 laptops and not worth spending $4000+ dollars for a laptop that is almost identical and in fact inferior as already outlined above. Touch bar is nice but thats it....nice.

6) I have provided feedback to apple but as large companies go do they really listen????

6) Overall rating for the new macbook pro would be 2-3 stars considering the issues I am having with it and with the overall advancement from the previous macbook pro as this is a step backward clearly.

Worst Apple product ever made – The problems with the 2016-2019 range of Macbook Pros are well documented. i purchased a top-spec top dollar one that broke the day I purchased it. I restored a time machine backup and the machine never booted up again. I tried every conceivable way to enable Apple recovery service but nothing worked. I must have spent 12 hours trying to… Read more

resuscitate this machine.

returned it the next day but was a huge pain and waste of time

Dont touch this range of Macbook Pros

Keyboard keys damage screen – Purchased this Macbook in mid 2018, only to realise a year that overtime the keys on the keyboard had damaged the screen and left permanent marks on it that cannot be wiped off. The design of the new keyboard keys mean that when the Macbook is closed the keys will wear away and rub on the screen and leave permanent marks. I have a nice outline of… Read more

a spacebar on my screen, as well as outlines of the actual keys on my screen. I recommend if purchasing this laptop to keep a thin protector between the screen and the keyboard. Or just don't buy it until Apple decides to change the design of the keyboard to be a good balance of function and aesthetics.

Excelente!! – Working as the first day I bought. Using it for photography and artistic designs, never got a virus like my old windows or frozen even that I use apps that requires a lot of memory ram and power. An absolutely monster!! Show details

Amazing, will never go back – I cant live without this Mac. I used to have an Mac air and I loved it until I got my hands on this. The Retina display is incredible and I love the size of the screen and how far the screen goes to the sides. Its very fast and I have no complaints.  Show details

The Mac Book Pro 2 Terabytes Storage is Awesome – The all new models of the Mac Book Pro with the touch bar are fantastic. They are so fast and connects to the Internet super fast. I was amazed with the product from the date of purchase. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who can splash out to reach that price tag.  Show details

Less user friendly than before – Using usb c as a charging port replacing the MagSafe is a terrible idea: can’t tell when it’s full charge except to look at the display and different to plug-in without adequate ambient lighting (does not easily snap in like MagSafe)

Unbelievable - WORST keyboard and working laptop ever – Purchased a Macbook Pro 2018 (over 4,000 Euros!!!) and it's the WORST laptop and keyboard I ever had. This device is not for professionals (how could it be if you cannot even type on it properly!?), it's for people showing-off or wannabe cool kiddies. Stay away if you want a proper working device. Show details

PORTS – The most annoying feature of the Mac Book Pro that I purchased this year is the fact that I am unable to connect anything to it as they have changed their connections again. I have purchased other donkey devices so that I can run my 2 back up drives but I am unable to run the apple disc drive from these devices. It continually informs me that my… Read more

disc drive needs power and says, I quote, connect "Apple USB SuperDrive" to a USB port on this Mac. The Superdrive has a conventional USB whilst the Mac Book Pro has the latest USB. I have used and have Cygnett light-speed adaptors Alogic adaptors and Belkin and continue to have these problems. I find it extremely frustrating. I have many discs that I need to transfer to my hard-drives. Scream, scream does or can anyone help with a resolution to my problem. Otherwise, the MacBook Pro is an amazing computer and is user friendly.

Macbook Prada, not Pro – The Macbook Pro is an amazing piece of product development and OSX or macOS as its called now is hands down the most user friendly operating system on the market and a key reason why I keep coming back to Mac products. However, calling the Macbook Pro a Pro model is a bit of a stretch. It’s powerful for sure and I don’t want to go into whether… Read more

or not there is something on the PC side of the equation that is even more powerful because it misses the point. A Pro laptop should get out of your way to achieve your objectives and macOS delivers that seamlessly.

So why my 3 star rating?

Frankly the laptop doesn’t feel like a rugged laptop. Everything is so incredibly super thin that it just feels like any impact would damage the laptop. As a pro device we would take a laptop like this to a site into the rough and while it doesn’t need to be a dust and mud proof laptop it should feel like it could handle a few bumps here and there. Then comes the USB-C madness. Sure by all means make USB-C the key plug but please include some of the other key plugs as alternatives it’s just too radical to have everything on a plug system that hasn’t been widely used yet. I need to be able to keep working when I happen to forget my dongleS somewhere.

Last but not least please stop dumbing software down. Why did you discontinue Aperture and instead provided Photos? To this day Aperture is still a great piece of software except less and less camera RAW formats are accepted - a shame. Now we are left with a Photos app that doesn’t even manipulate the RAW files but applies edits on the embedded JPGs (go figure), worse still I always preferred Aperture over Lightroom and now we are stuck buying Adobe when Aperture was better for many uses.

Also the ability to “save as” a document is widely accepted why Apple removed this functionality from Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Text Edit and Preview is a mystery and it has resulted in me losing a lot of original documents as a result!

Awful for typing/coding, clunky for the stuff you need to add to operate it – I have been using the Macbook pro for about two years and I now find typing very stressful as I constantly have to correct myself over and over and over. I now use a standard keyboard that I need to plug in to the macbook pro to type which kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop and makes it clunky. I think the Macbook pro is somewhat a great… Read more

computer but apple made a very big mistake in releasing the Macbook pro with the flawed butterfly keyboard and those aweful usb-c ports.

Here is what I'm not happy about:

- Keyboard keys always get stuck, you can't feel it being pushed down or the letter doesn't print.

- Keyboard keys sometimes double repeat a letter.

- You need to use a separate keyboard to fluently type. I've had issues with the external keyboards many times over also.

- To run a normal USB stick or any peripheral, you need to add a convertor making your macbook more of a hassle to use and clunkier, when you loose your convertor it creates stress also.

- When you buy it, you don't think you'll need the hard-drive upgrade but the whole unit being overly expensive as it is, this will be a head-banging mistake as you can't upgrade it in the future and will need a clunky external HDD that hangs unsightly like a sheep dag.

Also you can't update the internal hard-drive so you need to run it externally, making it even more clunkier.

When I attend meetings, it makes me look like a douche bag with all these clunky bits sticking out and setting it up with chords, connectors, keyboard. Whereas with my old macbook pro, i use to just flip the lid and be ready to do business. Yeah thanks apple, I can see who's not looking out for the user experience but are more inclined of rushing it out to market with design flaws and asthetics over practicality included.

I don't believe it deserves to be called a 'Pro' as there is nothing about being professional when it helps you constantly make mistakes and makes you spend more time correcting them and it's definitely not a conventional laptop that you can just use.

Overall horrible and frustrating to use and a big waste of good money. Next time I buy a laptop, I'll be smart and buy a non-apple computer as at least i'll have the money left over to replace it immediately if I can't just use it as a regular laptop.

Mac book pro 15 inch with touch bar's display is flickered with in 2 weeks of purchase – I have recently purchased "Mac book pro 15 inch with touch bar(2017 model)" and there was an issue with display. Display was flickered 4 times on a single day and I have captured the same. However, Apple support team confirmed that they have not found any issue during diagnosis. I am really unhappy about the Apple Product quality.  Show details

Stick to Windows – After finally transitioning to a MacBook for the first time, I can honestly say I REGRET it. Apple computers are incredibly difficult to master and in so many ways are inferior to WINDOWS. In addition to this, the 2017 MacBook Pro does NOT have any USB 2/3 ports, no HDMI port, no SD card reader and no DVD/BLURAY burner meaning in order to use… Read more

these features you are required to purchase USB-C adapters to use in the MacBook Pro’s 4 Ports only. Seems the more you pay the less you get. If that’s not bad enough, you have to make sure you buy the correct size HDD as they are hard soldered into the motherboard and unlike any WINDOWS laptop, you CAN’T update the hard drive. Taking all that onboard, in order to use a Mac computer effectively you have to go through lengthy shortcut set ups just to do what windows computers do naturally. Apple computers have major limitations when you try and perform a simple task like copy and paste individual pictures to an external HDD, all you can do is transfer entire files. Time and time again I find tasks on a MacBook are far more difficult to use requiring added steps to perform the same task on a windows pc. Another frustrating issue is you MUST manually eject EVERY external memory device every time, from a tiny thumb drive to a 5 TB HDD or you will corrupt the disk and it may result in being unrepairable by the Mac as was in my case. To fix the HDD I needed a WINDOWS PC which was able to repair and restore my files and HDD. Even Apple Support COULDN’T repaired my HDD. My personal feelings regarding Apple computers are simply this. If you are not used to Apple computers then DON'T buy an Apple computer. It’s one thing to use iPhones or iPads but Apple computers are certainly at the top of my NEVER to buy again items due to their over complexities.

Times Have Changed - Poor Product! – Purchased just over 3 years ago a top of the line MacBook Pro 15” w/Retina (2.6gHz processor, intel Core i7 w/16GB memory) that cost me $4500. That’s a lot of money and I would have expected this product to have lasted a bit longer than 3 years. Now, with this laptop I get less than 4 hours battery life. At the same time the rubber gasket… Read more

around MacBook Pro screen is peeling off. I find it very frustrating that now my $1000 iPhone 5S screen has popped out and is peeling off as well.

I have been an Apple’s customer for decades, enjoying their products and knowing how good they were. Times have changed NOW. It seems their product quality is not the priority for Apple any more.

It’s time for me to reevaluate my relationship with Apple seeing that they seem to have taken a different direction towards quality of their products. Shame on them!

A fantastic update let down by a poor keyboard and lack of ports – I got my first 15" MacBook Pro, 3 years ago. It’s the best laptop I have ever owned. As a designer, my MacBook is constant companion allowing me to work untethered to a desk. At the end of 2017, I started having severe battery drain and overheating issues. So I was more than excited to upgrade to the newer MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. The Space… Read more

grey version was every bit as gorgeous as I imagined. Apple has somehow found away to make it thinner and lighter than previous models. The glowing Apple logo is gone but the all black one blends very well giving a sophisticated look.

Turning to the left side, are only two new USB-C ports. Well done Apple; welcome to to 2018. Gone is the infamous MagSafe power connector; the MacBooks now use USB-C to charge. On the right side are another two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. That’s it — no other ports of any kind.

This was my first warning that this might not be the happy–ever–after that I was expecting. How would I connect my USB 3.0 hard drive to transfer my content or even sync up with my also newly acquired iPhone 8 Plus? I set those fears aside for the moment.

Opening up the lid revealed Apples improved LCD Retina display which I love. In design, having a great screen to work with isn’t an option. It has better colors, contrast and a AMD Radeon GPU driving it.

On the bottom half of the laptop is the usual keyboard, trackpad and speakers. The new trackpad is massive, taking up over half the space where you naturally rest your palms. With my palms resting on the trackpad, I worried about random movements of my cursor. But the TrackPad does an excellent job distinguishing between my palms and fingers. It’s pretty awesome for a variety of multitouch gestures and has great feedback.

"The trackpad is so good that i’ve not used a mouse in years"

A new addition is Touch Bar and Touch ID that sits on top of the keyboard where all the function keys used to be. The Touch Bar will display different functions depending on what you are doing. In Safari, it will display tiny images of your open tabs or my favourite; a button to pop out YouTube videos from a page. In Notes or Office Suite, it will show word predictions or Emoji selector. With Spotify, it will show your scrubber and music controls. Nifty but nothing you can’t do without.

The righthand section shows common system functions like volume, spotlight search and brightness. You can customise these to your preference. I leave it to audio player controls, volume and brightness which is what I use the most. I’m not sure the Touch Bar helps me work better or faster but it’s still very cool.

Touch ID sits at the right end of the Touch Bar. iPhones and iPads have had this feature for years so it’s wonderful to see it here at last. It works as well as on the iPhone. You can unlock your MacBook with a light touch instead of typing a complex password several times a day. I love the convenience of just tapping to unlock. Bye-bye laborious complex passwords.

I’ve also been able to use it for Apple Pay and some system settings will let me use it as well. One inexplicable thing is that it won’t work with Apple ID. I still have to enter my password to download new things from iTunes.

On each side of the keyboard are the usual excellent speakers that output loud and rich bassy sound. It’s always a pleasure using them for music, video and calls. But if you have a good pair of headphones there is still a headphone jack. I say still because headphone jacks are dying breed. Thanks to Apple and others, headphone jacks are being eschewed in favour of USB-C or Bluetooth. So it’s good to see that is not the case yet on MacBooks.

Finally, there is the undeniably weakest feature of the new MacBook Pro — its keyboard. It’s been redesigned with Apple’s 2nd generation butterfly key mechanism. Apple says this improves responsiveness and comfort — i say it does the exact opposite. The keys sit so flush with the body that you can’t position your fingers well. They also have such a short travel distance with poor feedback. It almost feels like you are typing on a touch screen yet not quite.

This is my least favourite thing on the new MacBook. If you’ve ever tried to do full screen touch typing on a tablet, you know that it’s not the best experience. There is a disconnect between your brain and your fingers where you expect to hit a key and depress it. Even with haptic feedback, the sensation doesn’t work for comfortable typing.

As a result, my typing speed has reduced and my errors increased from hitting the wrong keys so often. I have to look down at the keyboard to get my bearings. Even though the Touch Bar offers word predictions as you type just like your phone, I find this useless.

"As a writer, the keyboard of the MacBook is a daily demotivator."

The keyboard on my previous MacBook Pro was easily my favourite feature. It was a joy to use and I could type for hours without difficulty. This isn’t the case now and for the first time, I’m seriously searching for an external keyboard. This irks me because MacBooks have always appealed to me a complete package.

As a writer, keyboard is extremely important for me and I’m not one of those people who likes the whole seperate stand, monitor, keyboard and mouse setups. I enjoy the all-in-oneness of my MacBook sans accessories — which is now a necessity with these new ones. The lack of alternate ports forces you to get dongles to use your old accessories.

Your external drives, printers, cameras, VGA monitors, wired network and even your iPhone all need adapters now. Yes, the iPhones still use Lighting connectors to USB-A so you will need to buy new cables. I still haven’t connected my iPhone to iTunes on this Mac as a result.

Thankfully, there is a huge accessories market and you can find a wealth of dongles to meet your needs. Apple has some simple ones but third parties like Anker and Satechi offer a wider variety; all at a better price.

I doubt that it would have cost Apple much to keep at least two regular USB ports.

That said, consumers should not have to spend extra for dongles because of a MacBook upgrade. I doubt that it would have cost Apple much to keep at least two regular USB ports. That would give enough wiggle room to buyers.

I honestly had high hopes for this new MacBook. I expected everything I loved in the old, only better. And in many ways it succeeds. Better performance, screen, battery and build quality. The addition of Touch Bar and Touch ID are welcome though not revolutionary.

But in the end, the lack of ports and a woeful keyboard prove to be this MacBook’s Achilles heel. It’s enough to topple it from its previously undisputed title as king of laptops.

Try Find Me A Better Laptop – Best laptop I've owned - AND I'M A WINDOWS GUY!!!! Fast, responsive, best screen ever, fluent typing experience, instant on, trackpad smooth as silk, good sound, quick drive. I'm going to stick with Mac as my laptop from now on without hesitation. (BUT - Windows Explorer has a way better filing system than MAC OS which isn't the… Read more

laptop's fault - it's the folks at Cuppertino! Apple do yourself a favour and just pinch the Windows version of managing files.)

Gotta say it, love my MAC!

Horrendously overpriced – I paid $3000 for the 15" MacBook Pro back in September 2014 and I can not tell you enough how much of a rip off it is! For the same price I could build or buy a PC that would leave the MacBook Pro in the dust, I understand MacBooks are built better and they have Mac OS but your really just paying for the brand name, it performs very poorly for the price paid for it, would not recommend it.  Show details

A very bad battery experience - Macbook pro 15' 2017 – When you buy a macbook pro at $4500 you expect to get a professional tool. It's expensive and so you want the best. With this laptop I get less than 4 hours lifespan. Here I have been recommended not to use photoshop or InDesign when I'm on the battery or to plug the laptop to a socket while using those softwares. Same with everything the only… Read more

experience you can get when on the battery, which is supposed to last up 10 hours, is to have no keyboard backlight, a dimmed screen, no use of any pro software. Basically this is the biggest rippoff ever made and the answer is putting the blame on the customer, like we are not using properly the laptop. The help I received is very frustrating and dishonest.I blame the whole mac system of answers to cover their bad products. Stay away from that product.

Very good but expensive – I am using this laptop for work, with windows 10 and it is great. I also use it at home with mainly video usage' If I have to highlight something bad, than it would be only the battery time, which has gone down drastically over time, when unatached the battery is poor and the overall cost is expensive but i must say it is a good laptop  Show details

Reliable, with decent screen size – I work from home so need a decent sized computer with fast processing. Aesthetically, I liked the look of the mac and it is lightweight enough for transport. The fan goes off quite quickly on hot days and it doesn't cope that well. I also found that mac have a lot of update pop ups which can get distracting. Still good overall.  Show details

Good graphics and improved speed however poor battery life and repairability and not compatible with – I purchased the Macbook pro A1707 2.9Ghz i7 with 16Gb Ram and 1Tb SSD and touch bar as an upgrade to my last Macbook air from 2012. Once it arrived I installed most of my old programs only to find many were now incompatible with the new OSX version that shipped. Load times were quick however this was offset by a dramatic decrease in battery… Read more

operating time. I contacted the company who suggested turning down the monitor brightness and shutting down programs, however this did not impact battery life much. I found compared to my old Macbook air from 2012 I was getting only 3-4hours of use with moderate word processing and some email and internet browsing compared to a whole day of use with the Air. I then had to purchase another smaller battery pack in order to take on the road and purchase additional dongles for accessing SD cards and older USB 1.0-3.0 devices as well as an HDMI external monitor. I could no longer use my 120Mhz monitor as no USB type C dongles could sync at that rate.

An accident from a customer led to water damage to the laptop later in the year. I attempted to have the device repaired at which they stated that the whole logic board and device would need replacing. This included my hard drive as it was soldered onto the logic board. They stated the logic board would be swapped with a new one from Apple however this was meaning sensitive data of clients would potentially be exposed as they requested the password for the laptop to do repairs as well. I declined and stated I would like to keep the logic board and get a new one so I could dispose of my data and drive under my supervision. This was not acceptable to Apple and when I escalated the matter I was offered an option to buy the damaged logic board and get a new replacement board. This had to go through an Apple reseller as they stated they were unable to offer this through the Apple store.

I through this was quite absurd and not sensitive to the nature of my profession and that the design of the computer with a non replaceable hard drive was fine however they needed to ensure a system which meant that data was not at risk to consumers. In the end I had to search for a way to connect my old Macbook pro to the new laptop in target disk mode and then completely erase the entire system drive before eventually having the laptop repaired. A process none of the Apple staff on the phone or in the Apple reseller store assisted with and was researched by myself online.

I would highly recommend using only external hard drives or personal cloud server for sensitive data and not storing anything on the laptop for the reason of inability to control the drive if the laptop ever required servicing and maybe in future versions the battery life may be better. I wonder if Apple has designed some sort of similar program to deliberately slow the laptop as they did in the old iPhone models? In the meantime I'd recommend for people to stick with the old Macbook Air for its better battery life and accessibility with ports to use all devices.

I Love This and still going Strong! – Got rid of my last IBM after losing all my photos/files to a virus. Replaced with Macbook and haven't looked back. A stunning slick looking computer. Gets used constantly for work, home, education, movies, TV etc. Never a virus, never a glitch. Am sold and would definately recommend and repurchase. $3200 I paid initially was money well spent and do not regret.  Show details

An amazing piece of technology from Apple – A great piece of technology. Amazingly fast. Superb screen. Touch strip saves time. Large touchpad with haptic feedback. Top quality OSX software. Super brilliant screen. Quality. Had a previous 2015 Macbook Pro. Differences are the new one no longer has the ‘lit’ apple logo. The new one had only USB C ports whereas the old one had USB 3.0 / SD… Read more

Card / HDMI Ports. Overall the 2015 Macbook Pro was a great model but for me the speed difference is the plus and what made me upgrade.

Owned for 48 hours and that was too long – I had one Apple computer back in 1990, and since the PC's only. So really I don't know my way around the Apple operating systems. After years of loathing Microsoft tech support (I'm no technician yet I am usually teaching them about Windows troubleshooting) I wanted to make the leap to the other side (and spend a lot more money for the same… Read more

horsepower of a Windows laptop). I bought this in November as Apple extended their no questions ask return policy until January so I had ample time to try it out and use it. While I had 48 days to use it I didn't make it 48 hours.

While I'm sure the MacBook Pro is a great product (I really believe it probably is) the Apple store staff failed miserably. This is not rocket science. For the most part they have only 3 types of customers. Those that are Mac freaks and know their way around the operating system, people who are new to computers (albeit the small minority) and us long time Windows users. The staff should tag us accordingly but they don't. They act like they have all the solutions but there were lost in the fog (or maybe the iCloud) about setting up my multiple email accounts which use POP and Exchange Servers. What they thought would happen did not happen (as I predicted). They lack in knowledge outside a VERY narrow band and us heavy PC users (who for the most part are producing something of monetary value and not playing or viewing). I wasted a good 30 hours researching the product, going to the Apple store (all in an effort to get away from Microsoft's horrible limited English speaking tech support calls which seem to bounce around several galaxies before landing back in India or China). But Apple failed miserably. They need to understand how to deal with potential PC to Apple converts. They have the stores, they have the good (very expensive) product, but also have a team that is high on ego and low on requisite knowledge. I think they've made it to the 5 yard line but they need to get their staff properly trained in order to win a victory with the zillions of PC users who are sick if Microsoft chat box support and worthless phone support.

MacBook Pro 2017 - 15 inch with touchbar – Amazing machine. I use it for heavy video/music production and some high-end gaming, it has not skipped a beat so far. It just works. Very light, portable, and oozes great design, the Touchbar is a good addition, very useful. USB-C ports have not been an issue with addition of a comprehensive hub. And best of all retains it's value, will be able… Read more ·  1

to resell when I upgrade in a few years for a significant amount, try that with any other brand, won't happen. It's a no-brainer.

Never ever again – Talked into buying an Apple Mac Pro computer with the sales pitch you get what you pay for. Sadly this was not the case with my Apple Mac Book Pro. Told to just buy another one. No thanks at least if a PC breaks down they are not such an investment and are cheaper to have repaired. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.  Show details

I love this macbook, perfect, and without a touchbar – I am using this laptop for work, with osx, and it is great. I also have a windows on it with bootcamp, which is really really bad - only using it if it is needed, but with the base setup it is the best If I have to highlight something bad, than it would be only the battery time, which is going down over time, I guess to quickly  Show details

Great Computer – LOVE this new Macbook 2017. Speeds are incredible and the internal software make my editing job a breeze, the quality of the screen and audio is amazing. I don't know how I handled using the old Macbook pro. I think this machine is far more advanced that any other laptop.  Show details

Great customer service to resolve issue with keyboard – I love my Macbook Pro, but had serious issues with the keyboard. I bought it early 2017, and some keys were not working as they should ("sticky"). After experiencing consistent issues with my Macbook Pro keyboard, I took it to registered Apple Support provider in October. In consultation with Apple they issued me with a brand new Macbook Pro,… Read more

and gave me a free upgrade (not major, but a little sweetener for the hassle with the keyboard).

Five stars for customer service and the replacement product is perfect xxx

Best in class 15 inch laptop – I was immediately impressed with my new MacBook Pro (with 512 GB hard drive, 16 GB RAM and Core i7 processor) as it was quite a bit lighter than I was expecting for a 15 inch laptop. The screen was also a lot larger than I was expecting with minimal bezel around the edges. The battery light is slightly disappointing if you're doing anything that… Read more

engages the dedicated video card, however it will last a long time if you're watching videos or working on Office files (as it will switch to the Intel on board video card which uses less power). The touchbar was initially confusing, but it quite quickly grew on me. I've been running Parallels software to also run Windows 10 software at the same time, and this laptop handles it without issue. The biggest surprise was it being able to charge my USB-C Google Pixel phone whilst the laptop was in standby mode with the screen closed. The other surprise is how fast the laptop can charge using the USB-C charger - almost from zero to full battery in an hour which is extremely good. All in all, a great product.

Perfect laptop for a developer – This is the second macbook i have ever owned and I love it. I purchased the high end 512 GB edition with the dedicated GPU because I knew i was going to use more than 256 GB of space. Overall, I am loving the build quality as well as the speed of the laptop and OS.  Show details

Very Expensive! – We've been pushing our 13" MacBook Pro (2016) to its limits lately, so we bit the $6,000 bullet to find out how much faster the new 15" MacBook Pro (2017) and the results were shocking. Full video review: https://youtu.be/dhSxoNL5Bys Comparison Specs 13" MacBook Pro (2016) Intel i7 3.3GHz Dual Core Intel Iris 550 16GB Ram 1TB SSD 15"… Read more

MacBook Pro (2017)

Intel i7 2.9GHz Quad Core

Radeon 560 Pro

16GB Ram

2TB SSD

To even the tests to be as close as possible, I setup the 2017 15" with a clone of my 2016 13". Migration Assistant only works via Wifi and not super-fast USB so it I left it overnight, however most interestingly I learnt that the 15" MacBook Pro can actually charge a 13" MacBook Pro.

For the test configuration I wanted to simulate real world usage I had 3 browsers open and Google Drive syncing... eek!

The 2016 MacBook Pro was hitting SSD Read speeds of 2600 MB/s

While the 2017 MacBook granted with a larger 2TB hard drive would only reach 2200 MB/s

This surprised me because I had heard that the SSD speeds had been improved for this generation.

Launching Final Cut took around the same time on both. The first launch took 1 minute on the 2016, and 58 seconds on the 2017. The second launch took 18 seconds on both.

Editing 4k Locally stored Proxy videos ran fast on both laptops.

However, on my 2016 laptop as I have lots of footage I tend to store my media on a Network Access Server. I sometimes store proxy footage on there from old projects and editing those are a complete pain. I wondered if the multiple cores would help out here, however... it didn't.

Editing a Locally Stored 4k Project was much more doable on the 15" 2017, however the jitters were still there, making proxy files a necessity.

Transcoding on the 15" 2017 was 1 second faster.

Exporting a 40 second 4k project was 6 seconds faster on the 15" 2017.

In 9 seconds I managed to launch more tabs on the 2016, but more tabs loaded on the 2017.

Compiling code was twice as fast on the 15" thanks to its quad core. However, the iOS simulator was still unusable for OpenGL on both machines.

The most interesting thing was that on the 13" the CPU was idling between 5-15% (with Google Drive taking up 60+%), whereas the 15" was idling at 65% with GDrive only reaching 8%. So maybe with better multithreaded programming design patterns in software, we could get much better performance out of it. However, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

I set both machines up with Windows via Bootcamp, and while I didn't time it, I didn't notice any difference in performance during the installation. Where I did notice the difference, and it was a big difference, was in gaming. I could never get the frame rate up in Assassin's Creed Unity on my 2016 13" MacBook, however out of the box it ran flawlessly on my 2017 15", thanks to it's dedicated GPU.

Nothing new – I had the old MBP from 2013 and found it to be a great computer, however all of a sudden I started having battery problems. It would get to about 45% and then just turn off. Called Apple and went through process and hours of calls and then just decided it was costing me too much time to be doing this so bought the new one. I upgraded to the 16GB… Read more

of ram and compared to my old one, it's very very quick. I had a look at the touch bar and couldn't really justify the upgrade. The battery life on the new one is much better, screen relatively the same. Overall, I wouldn't really say it's worth the upgrade.

Not a Novelty – Must start by saying that the Touch Bar conveniently located just above the keyboard easily within reach is very smart, and saves precious time from doing anything from web browsing to image editing. Also worth mentioning is the screen. Brilliant contrast, colour, brightness. Battery life is not brilliant however, 7 hours for normal use  Show details

NEVER AGAIN APPLE – Broken after 3 months- my brand new Mac Book Pro 15inch touch bar model, customer service sucks for someone 3 hours from the closest Apple store. Not good enough for someone who spent over 3 grand on the thing. Already a week without it and now being told its at least another week to have it replaced even!!!! Uni assignments overdue and falling… Read more

further behind each day. HOW HARD IS IT TO SEND OUT A FULL CHARGER TO SEE IF THAT WAS THE PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. They got me to spend another $130 on a charger to see if that was the problem and didn't even send the cord with it!! nope just the block. Never again will i purchase a mac after this shocking experience and lacking customer support... pretty much have been told to wait or deal with it myself BULLS**T i say.... NOT WORTH THE MONEY