Gadgetory

hey what's up guys I'm could be HD here and this is the 2016 MacBook Pro with touch bar very expensive but very interesting laptop kind of fits right in with 2016 so there's plenty of new things about it and plenty that you might not even care about one of the things is the new Apple logo on the back that little metal one doesn't glow anymore you might not care but I think I think this was the last glowing Apple logo before they replace that and it's a slightly new aesthetic pretty similar to last year so again you might not care but this is actually a big deal when it comes to the story of this laptop all of this generations MacBook Pros are thinner and in a smaller footprint than last year's and now all in this very boxy sharp shape like the edges are literally sharp I kind of like the aesthetic even if you don't like this as like your favorite laptop you still got to admit that the metal unibody construction kind of makes all plastic and rubber type laptops feel a lot more cheap so at least you might feel like you're getting your money's worth when you pick it up and hold it now I don't know who is asking for a thinner MacBook Pro but I can say you know as someone who carries it in a backpack all the time having it be a little bit lighter is actually kind of nice but that's pretty much the only design change on the outside that will differentiate it from last year most of the character of this laptop is on the inside so inside the display is new the keyboard is new the trackpad is new the speakers are pretty much everything's new the display is great it may be my favorite part of the whole laptop it gets brighter than before up to about 500 nits so pretty insane levels of brightness and I rarely need to max it out even when I'm outside it's the same resolution as before but it now supports a wider p-3 color gamut so it's a pretty great looking Retina display the new keyboard moves to the second generation butterfly switch keys and these definitely take some getting used to I originally preferred you know the quieter deeper travel chiclet style keys from last year's machine again but after using it for a few weeks I've gotten super used to these keys and I don't mind it the lesser travel is still kind of weird with the arrow keys being all bunched up in the corner but everything else is fine and I type just as fast on this as last year now and the trackpad is now huge like I don't even think you understand it's super massive it's nearly the bottom half of the laptop it's bigger than most smartphones bigger than most people's whole hands so on one hand it's nice to have because such a huge surface will let you take the mouse from corner to corner without lifting your hand so I guess it solves that problem but on the other hand palm rejection isn't quite as good and there's still times where I touch the trackpad by accident and that kind of gets annoying so this is definitely something that I haven't completely gotten used to but I welcome it the new speakers flanking the keyboard are pretty good but I think maybe I expected them to be like way better because of how good they were on the little tiny 12-inch MacBook but actually that the grille on the sides of the speaker's is actually a bit of an illusion the speaker itself is only you know small half inch circle near the bottom but they still sound very good and get very loud for a laptop and then of course above the keyboard replacing the previous row of function keys is the new touch bar I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's actually really cool it's not the touchscreen laptop that some people wanted but I don't I've never really liked touchscreen laptops because it always seems like I'm pressing against the hinge and typing and using that it just doesn't seem natural to me it's also a little bit more fatiguing to be up here instead of down here but that's just that's just me so what is the touch bar the touch bar is a 1085 by 30 resolution OLED touchscreen that sits above the keyboard and displays a customisable group of buttons and controls depending on what app you have open so the two things I would immediately be concerned about our viewing angles and fingerprints viewing angles because you never really look directly down at the touch bar you're always looking at it at a sort of an angle and finger prints because it's a touch screen um so the viewing angle they actually did a really good job with it's pretty much never difficult to read brightness is great clarity is great and it's a matte finish so it also does a really good job with fingerprints and speaking of finger prints all the way to the right of the touch bar is a power button with a touch ID sensor on top so this is a fingerprint reader this is awesome I've gotten super used to doing touch ID purchases and especially logging in when waking up the machine it makes typing a normal password and seem super inconvenient so I really really like the fingerprint sensor so then the rightmost section of the touch bar is a persistent set of keys that always shows up so you can kind of memorize their position this set is customizable through the touch bar settings so I replace the usual Siri button with a spotlight search because I use that way more than theory and you can expand it with an arrow to show the entire normal set of function keys so it also be kind of weird if those are always two taps away so you can also just touch and drag along those controls with one touch so it's not extra presses to get to things like brightness and volume there's still one tap away like they were when the whole thing was there but then with some Apple apps you get new functionality new buttons to show up in the middle so if you're in an app that doesn't support the touch bar it's just a big blank space and there are plenty of apps that don't support the touch bar that I'm waiting for an update for but since Apple has had time to work on it they've developed their own apps for the MacBook Pro to work with it so since it's a super wide thing it sort of works well for like sliders or a timeline so in QuickTime Player you can quickly and really smoothly scroll through a video you're watching so scrubbing is really neat and in the Photos app for example it becomes this slider for scrolling through all your pictures or videos in a library and Safari is definitely where I think it's the best though so in normal browsing you have you know your typical buttons your back button your search button for a new URL your new tabs and then in the middle you get some tabs switching so you can switch between the open tabs you have open and preview them a little bit you can actually see what's on the little tabs but you get the idea now anytime you have a video of any kind opened in Safari the middle of the touch bar turns into a video scrubber just like in QuickTime so if you're in a YouTube video for example scrubbing with your finger along the bar is way more fun than dragging with the mouse you can even scroll through Instagram videos back and forth rewinding and everything I don't think you can do that anywhere else so it's great in Safari and it's also legitimately useful in Final Cut Pro so I'm a Final Cut editor and there are some shortcuts that it puts there that are actually useful and really faster than what I would have been doing with the mouse like the ability to use a single button touch to add audio fades the beginning and end of any specific clip just by touching the bar is so much nicer than using a mouse and this is the difference between a gimmick and an actually useful feature I think like in order to not just be a gimmick these buttons on the touch bar have to be able to do things that I couldn't already do with like a keyboard shortcut for example pros use keyboard shortcuts select in Safari for example that new tab button it's cool that it's there and it makes sense to put it there in Safari but is taking my hands off the key bored and reaching up and looking for that button actually going to be faster or more convenient than just keeping my hands on the keyboard and doing command T probably not so the best thing about the touch bar is when I can quickly do things on it that I couldn't ordinarily do with just the mouse or just the keyboard shortcuts so like I said the quick audio trimming and final cut is awesome and there's updates coming to Adobe apps like Premiere and After Effects and Photoshop but again those are incoming updates so the bottom line is this is a macbook pro and a pro already knows your apps keyboard shortcuts so i'm hoping when apps like Spotify and Chrome and After Effects get updated that they actually have useful functional stuff in the touch bar but until then most of my time as a pro will be spent on the mouse and keyboard oh and one more thing about the whole pro name in case you haven't already noticed this laptop only has four ports headphone jack and then two USB type-c on one side and two USB type-c on the other so naturally there's a bunch of controversy over this decision but think of it this way USB type-c is the future right like that's why we get so hyped for new smartphones to have that port we want new tablets to have it new devices etc laptops are a little bit more than that so they take a little while they're a bit down the line that's more of the future these adapters these these dongles are like our bridge to the future and they suck now I know I hate using adapters they're ugly they're an extra expense you lose them etc etc but if we imagine a future where every laptop has these super high-end super high data throughput high-powered reversible badass port we're gonna have to cross that bridge eventually now it's one thing to just change the port on a phone you know if it's USB type-c you just need a charger so if you include that type-c charger on the box the user is set but if it's a laptop there's a little more that we do with laptops than just charge luckily this is Apple we're talking about so these laptops will be everywhere they're going to sell they'll be out there no matter what so when Apple comes out with their new laptop and it has a bunch of USB type-c ports in it if you're an accessory maker it's in your best interest now to make as many good USB type-c accessories as possible and as good as possible to make the most money so we're starting to see things like really good USB type-c mobile SSDs like this Samsung t3 Drive I just carrying and this really good USB type-c monitor like the LG 5k display I made a video about that there's a new USB type-c read reader and even in USB type-c headphones now but it's definitely not a hundred percent converted yet so if there's something you want to keep using where there's no USB type-c version you need an adapter and almost nobody is living an entirely USB type-c life yet like that's definitely in the future so we're still crossing that bridge but you know that might be enough of a reason right there and not to buy this generation and I totally get that but as someone who's sort of on the bleeding edge of tech alot and this happens to me a lot I'm kind of willing to make it work that being said the omission of an SD card slot is terabyte so many cameras so many pro accessories use SD cards that wouldn't have been that hard um that's just kind of my only gripe I would have also liked to seen maybe a couple more USB type-c boards like I would have been really happy with six also r.i.p MagSafe it was great while we had anyway at the end of the day the 2016 MacBook Pro is a different animal but the same beast what the fuck does that mean Kobe Bryant it still has everything sealed in it still has all the RAM and SSDs soldered or glued to the motherboard it's still pretty much not upgradable at all like before unfortunately the battery left on the 13-inch is still pretty good the battery life on the 50 inch is still not that good the new chips are great and the SSD performance is godlike which is great for mobile photo and video editing and anything that requires moving large files around but overall performance isn't going to shock you it's pretty much around inline with the bar set last year I actually would have expected a little bit better in terms of quality control not a lot has happened to my machines but I've seen especially on Twitter a lot of things everywhere from just the unresponsive touch bar graphic showing up on the display something weird like that too like a full-on graphics meltdown again none of that has happened to my machines but it's kind of weird to see it so often it's kind of strange but here's the bottom line with this laptop for me is it worth the price no this thing is definitely overpriced for sure would I still buy it again yeah I really enjoy I really like it I'm not the average person the average person doesn't make the financial decision like this and I don't think this laptop is a smart financial decision right now but if you're looking at a new MacBook Pro maybe maybe hold out for the 2017 version with more USB type-c accessories available and just skip over that bridge either way that is it thank you for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next one peace