Apple's MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is worth the wait
In the long history of Apple MacBooks, there is finally a touchscreen. That fact may or may not sit well with the ghost of Steve Jobs, Apple's founder and late CEO who once said it’s “ergonomically terrible” to touch a laptop screen.
The redesigned 13-inch MacBook Pro is, of course, not a traditional touchscreen device. The big, brilliant 2,560 x 1,600 Retina display is not gesture or touch-ready. Instead, there’s a strip of touchscreen technology below it, on the keyboard.
The OLED-based Touch Bar replaces the traditional row of function keys, a fact that may disturb some users, but only if they're somehow trying to convince themselves that they still use function keys. To be fair, there are other important features in that row that now share real estate with a smorgasbord of ever-changing Touch Bar options.
You see, that's the core benefit of trading in a row of fixed function keys for touch: The screen can be anything and, in the case of the Touch Bar, it pretty much is.
The Touch Bar on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is more than just a sexy — if relatively tiny — new touch screen. It’s an important strategic shift in the future of Apple’s pro-level laptop line.
Design language
As I noted in my review of the "regular" 13-inch MacBook Pro (with no Touch Bar), this is a smaller (11.97 x 8.36 inch), lighter (3 pounds) and thinner (0.59 inch) MacBook Pro, and part of that trimming process involved shedding almost all legacy ports (save the 3.5mm audio jack). The decision to include only four USB-C ports (the entry-level model has just two) caused so much angst and controversy that Apple finally decided to offer pro users a life-saver: steep discounts on USB-C accessories and cables.
Both the entry-level MacBook Pro and the Touch Bar Model have two USB-C ports on one side.
But the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar adds another two USB-C ports on the other side.
Removing all those ports was certainly a risky move for Apple, but, in truth, the most you could fault them for is maybe leaping a little too far into the future. Apple is not the only company adopting USB-C. It's a standard, after all, and just like USB spelled the end of the line for parallel and serial ports, USB-C will eventually be the port to rule all ports, and those peripherals you're clinging to will someday, in the not too distant future, be deemed too slow or feature-poor to keep you competitive.
Is “Dongle Hell” a real thing? In the short term, yes. In the long term, a single multipurpose port will always be the winner.
As for how the ports function right now, they do just fine. As promised, I can charge the MacBook through any of the four ports, and I do appreciate the convenience of not having to shift around the laptop to find the one port that can charge the computer. Will i miss the MagSafe plug that can easily slip the bonds of its magnetic tether without dragging the computer with it? Sure. Is it cause to rise up? No.
I've also seen reports that the Thunderbolt 3 speeds promised on all four ports actually varies on one side or the other of the MacBook Pro. I did an anecdotal test, transferring the same 1.3GB video file from an external USB-3 external hard drive (yes, I used a USB-to-USB-C dongle) to the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The transfer took almost exactly 30 seconds every time.
Apple did provide me with a Thunderbolt 3 cable and a USB-C-to-Thunderbolt adapter. So I found the nearest 21-inch Thunderbolt display and hooked it up. My desktop expanded to the large screen almost immediately. As I type this, an HD video is currently playing in the background through iMovie. No issues on the performance front, I’d say.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro can easily drive another screen.
Of course, you will need a dongle.
To understand more about the design, giant trackpad (46% larger than the trackpad on the last MacBook pro) and Butterfly (second generation) keyboard, read my entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro review. The excellent keyboard and trackpad work exactly the same on both aluminum-clad devices. There is also a relatively small performance bump on the this 13-inch model thanks to a dual-core 2.9GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, as opposed to the 2.0GHz Core i5 on the entry-level model. I could see the improvment in the Geekbench scores, but didn't notice it much in day-to-day use. Interestingly, the MacBook Pro’s GeekBench scores did beat a 2.81GHz Core i7’s single and multi-core scores. 3,658 (single) and 7,240 (multi) versus 3,795 and 7,693.
Both laptops, by the way, got hot in almost the exact same way: along the rear edge of the base, nearest the hinge. This surprised me a bit since Apple said they had fully redesigned the thermals in all their MacBook Pros. I just think there’s no getting around all the heat these components will produce in a now even tinier space.
The MacBook Pro 15-inch has a much bigger track pad.
Of course, it is a much bigger system.
I did get to spend a little time with the larger, heavier (four-pound) and more powerful MacBook Pro 15-inch. The laptop has a larger Retina display, which accommodates more pixels (2,880 x 1,800). While its keyboard and Touch Bar are the exact same size as the 13-inch model, the trackpad is insanely big (7.25 inches measured diagonally vs. 6.25 inches on its 13-inch little brother). The speakers are a lot larger, too.
The 15-inch MacBook pro includes a 2.6GHz, quad-core Core i7 CPU and discrete graphics, the AMD Radeon Pro 450. The 41,620 Geekbench Computer Benchmark number is eye-popping (the MacBook Pro 13 with Intel Iris Graphics 550 scores 30,628). While it's a number that will be music to the ears of most Mac-devoted video, design and audio professionals, Microsoft's new Surface Book with Performance Base featuring Nvidia's GeForce GTX 965M scored 63,964 on the same test.
The marvelous Touch Bar
The biggest difference between the two 13-inch systems I reviewed and what I want to focus on the most here (admit it, it’s what you care most about, too) is the Touch Bar, an excellent piece of engineering and design that is both intuitive and useful, but not as essential as Apple would like you believe.The Touch Bar is multi-touch display with 2,170 x 60 resolution that runs almost the full width of the keyboard. It’s bright enough for virtually any light situation. I could easily read it indoors and out in bright sunlight. Covered in glass, the Touch Bar is a pleasure to, well, touch, and thanks to the matte finish, my fingers glide over it. The best way to understand the difference is to run your finger across your standard smartphone screen. The glossy surface will always cause a bit of drag. There’s virtually zero drag on the Touch Bar.
On the far right of the bar is a shiny black physical button (it’s covered in sapphire glass). It doubles as power, which you'll use rarely (you can now tun on the system simply by opening it up) and a Touch ID, which you'll likely use often. For symmetry, there’s a black square on the far left, but it serves no purpose.
In repose, the Touch Bar features the buttons most generally useful to the system: “Esc” on the far left, as it should be. The center is dark and on the right side is brightness, volume, mute and a colorful Siri button, which, just like the now ever-present Siri button in macOS, launches the voice assistant to let you speak a command. The 13-inch MacBook’s three microphones were able to hear me even when I spoke just above a whisper.
Yes, Siri is a part of the new Touch Bar
I did not have to shout for Siri to hear me.
Using the buttons on the right gives you a clear sense of how the Touch Bar will work in general. Instead of tapping a physical brightness button repeatedly to raise or lower screen brightness, you tap the brightness button once, which then transforms the whole bar: Everything disappears and in its place is a slider. As you slide the control on the Touch Bar, the screen brightness smoothly adjusts. Volume control works the same way. Owing to its flexibility, there's another Touch Bar option that does let you tap over and over again to make the screen brighter and system volume louder.
One of the nicest surprises of Touch Bar, even at this early stage, is how many core Apple apps work with it, and not in small useless ways, but in smart, essential ways, often surfacing the subset of features you use most often.
Of the 18 items on my dock, the Touch Bar works with 15 of them. Finder, for instance, lets you quickly view, share, tag a file or delete a file; each action represented with an icon, most match the options you see on screen (although the Touch Bar’s quick view “eye” is notably absent from the screen).
Email makes the most of the new Touch Bar with functions like reply and send, as well as word suggestions and access to emojis.
In Safari, open tabs appear as tiny thumbnails on the Touch Bar. You can also use the area to add another tab.
To manage the relatively limited amount of Touch Bar real estate, Apple chose to nest some features, So the file sorting options are hidden under a grid icon. Select that and you can access all the file organization options available on the big screen.
There are sexier app interactions than those you’ll encounter in, say, Contacts and System Preferences.
Final Cut, for instance, lets you scrub through a movie on the bar: the filmstrip appears on the tiny screen and you use your finger to quickly move back and forth through the footage. I had already tried out the filmstrip on one of Apple’s demo systems at the launch event, so I decided to instead download iMovie to see if it replicated some of that functionality. While it does not offer a similar scrubbing feature, I can splice my film by selecting — seriously — a razor blade icon on the Touch Bar.
Apple’s Photos app may do the best job of illustrating the fun, power and mutability of the Touch Bar.
Photos serves up a tiny thumbnail strip on the Touch Bar that you can scroll through with a swipe.
Want to to edit your photos through the Touch Bar? Not a problem.
When I first opened Photos, the Touch Bar didn't change at all. However, when I expanded the app to full-screen, the Touch Bar transformed. There are buttons for favorite, rotate or edit. The latter is actually an entry-point to a set of much deeper photo controls. Next to those controls is the colorful thumbnail slide. Your images are there on the Touch Bar, but are too small to see clearly. Even so, I found that using the thumbnails slider bar was a great way to quickly scan through and find photos. I just watched the large screen while sliding my finger on the bar below.
The Edit tools are a good example of how the Touch Bar may nest controls two or more levels deep. After selecting the Edit tool under Photos, you still have to choose which tool to use. Once you get to a tool like Light, you're presented with a slider. I found myself watching the big screen as my finger slid back and forth across the Touch Bar slider. There were some inconsistencies. I could not, for instance, find a "Reset" in the photo editing tools, though a few did offer an "Undo" option.
Some of the apps let you customize the Touch Bar by opening an options menu on the big screen and then dragging and dropping function icons from the desktop to the Touch Bar. Yes, it looks as cool as it sounds. Photos, unfortunately, is one of the relative few apps that does not let you edit the Touch Bar.
Maps is one of Touch Bar's more impressive integrations.
Touching the Touch Bar while watching the screen is not as odd as it seems.
I’m still not certain if, by surfacing some features, the Touch Bar is saving me time or, by forcing me to go a level or more deep, is actually costing me time.
Time gained or lost aside, this raises an important reality of the Touch Bar. There is, depending on application and circumstance, sometimes important or useful information on the Touch Bar (for example, the right word suggestion in a writing app, or a suggested contact for an email). The problem is that, quite often, I’m looking past the Touch Bar and at the screen. I can, in other words, ignore the Touch Bar without meaning to.
I've actually been writing this review in Pages on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but I only occasionally glance at the Touch Bar (where’s it’s suggesting I write “time” and “table” instead of “touch”) and almost never tap for the word suggestions. I did do it a bit more often in Mail, perhaps because “Reply” and “Send” are right there on the Touch Bar (as icons, not words).
One app where the Touch Bar really shines is in Messages. It’s the place where you access the widest array of full-color emoji. They look amazing and are entertaining to scroll through. The list starts with Frequently Used, but to the left of that is the category selector where you can find Food, Sports, Animals and more. It’s probably the easiest way I've ever scanned to find the perfect emoji for my current emotional state.
Apple built the Touch Bar as an open platform, one that any third party can program to (but not for web apps since there’s no HTML or Web API). There’s also no guarantee that companies like Google will ever write to it. In my tests, Chrome, obviously, has no interaction with the Touch Bar. I somehow doubt that Chrome will ever work with it, but its also clear that many other third-party developers will be happy to tap into the visual touch panel with the ability to accept up to 10 fingers of input at a time. Adobe has already committed to a Touch Bar-ready Photoshop by the end of this year and Touch Bar abilities are also coming to Microsoft Office, Pixelmator, 1Password and Live Home 3D.
If you don't like the Touch Bar (really? why?) you can always go into Settings and force it into the "Expanded Control Strip" mode, which puts an expanded version of your key controls across the entire width of the bar and doesn't let any of your apps alter it. It's basically like bringing back the fixed Function Keys, just touch-ier.
Touch ID
While Touch Bar is showy, useful and fun, I have to say I was especially pleased that biometric technology finally made its way to the MacBook Pro. The Touch ID button on the right side works exactly the same as it does on the iPhone and iPad. To register a finger, you follow the on-screen instructions. It took me about as long as it does on the iPhone, which is to say not long at all.I registered two fingers and had no trouble unlocking the laptop with one of them each time. The Touch Bar helpfully reminds me where to place my finger to unlock the computer with the words “Unlock with Touch ID” and an arrow pointing right next to the Touch ID sensor. Touch ID can also be used with Apple Pay.
Other 13-inch MacBook Pro features worth noting are the speakers, which are loud and crystal clear, and the battery life, which consistently gets me through an entire day of computing. 10 hours is a fair estimate.
The speakers on the new MacBook Pro can best be described as powerful (for their size).
Nope, that logo does not light up. Apple says you waste less screen light this way.
Apple will never wins awards for affordability. This 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, Core i5 system starts at $1,799 — $300 more than the entry-level, traditional function-key sporting MacBook Pro. There are cheaper Windows 10 systems out there that offer better specs and full touchscreens. A 13-inch Core i7 HP Spectre x360, for instance, lists for $1,149.99 (the Mac offers slightly better graphics, an Intel HD Graphics 550 as opposed to the 520). If, however, you are a Mac fan, this is an excellent upgrade with a fascinating and highly extensible new Touch Bar.
By building a touchscreen into the keyboard of its pro-level laptop, Apple has successfully dragged laptop line into the touch age, without violating one of Apple Founder Steve Job's core principles. It’s really quite a trick.
