- Apple finally dumps the butterfly keyboard, automatically making the new MacBook Pro a winner, while adding a host of significant improvements
- It’s still expensive compared with other laptops and requires Apple-specific accessories for some basic tasks, but for creatives there’s nothing better
As one of the world's most valuable and influential tech companies, Apple faces a lot of scrutiny when it comes to its products " perhaps more than any other consumer tech producer.
Often, any negativity is mostly overblown hype, like when people realised they could bend the iPhone 6's chassis if they sat on it for prolonged periods. As if gadgets should be able to survive such abuse?
The universal backlash, however, over Apple's ultra-flat "butterfly" keyboards that have been used in every MacBook since late 2015, is completely justified. The keyboards are not only uncomfortable to type on, with minimal tactile feedback, they seem to malfunction at a higher rate too.
Apple has finally conceded defeat and for its new 16-inch MacBook Pro it has reverted back to the scissor-switch-style keyboard which was used in MacBooks before 2015 and is used by virtually all other laptops. This automatically makes this the best MacBook in years.
Hardware and design
From the outside, this 16-inch MacBook Pro looks virtually identical to 2018's 15-inch MacBook Pro, with the same smooth and symmetrical finish all around, the iconic Apple logo, and that sturdy hinge. Opened, however, MacBook regulars will notice the screen fills the available space more, with the bezels having been shaved down by 25 per cent on the sides a little bit at the top.
Laptops by Huawei and Dell still have slimmer bezels, but Apple has trimmed enough that the case for this 16-inch screen is roughly the same size as that housing last year's 15-incher, with dimensions of 358mm x 246mm x 16.2mm. It is quite heavy at 2.0kg (4.3 pounds), however.
The speaker grilles on the left and right side of the keyboard have been redesigned, with a new "force-cancelling woofer" system featuring speaker drivers mounted back to back to cancel each other's vibrations " meaning less sonic distortion.
The touchbar returns " that touch-sensitive display panel strip at the top of the keyboard that replaces the traditional F keys " but Apple has brought back a physical Esc key, which in years past had been digitised as part of the touchbar.
The six-speaker system and the triple-mic set-up are the best I've ever experienced in a laptop, and the improved thermals cool the MacBook Pro better than any other computer I've used. These are all legitimate industry-leading hardware features.
The cooling system is much needed because this machine is an absolute powerhouse. It ships with either a 9th-gen Intel Core i7 or i9, overclocked at up to 4.6Ghz, with a minimum 16GB of DDR4 RAM going all the way up to 64GB. These specs are about as powerful as it gets right now " this is a machine for people like professional video editors, musicians and coders.
Software and features
The MacBook Pro ships with MacOS Catalina version 10.15.1. The best new addition is "Sidecar", which allows users to connect an iPad Pro to the laptop and use it as a secondary display or even a drawing/writing pad, as Apple Pencil is supported too. I imagine this is a game-changing feature for illustrators and graphic designers, but since I'm neither, I mostly used the iPad as a second monitor during video editing.
Other Catalina features include a system-wide "dark mode" that gives most of the UI a black or deep-grey shade that makes it easier on the eyes. iTunes is nowhere to be found, killed off in favour of Apple Music.
Performance and battery life
With just about the best specs possible for a portable computer, this MacBook Pro performed like a beast. I was able to export a multiple-track, 10-minute 4K/30fps video from Final Cut Pro in four-and-a-half minutes, and the machine barely heated up. It can apparently easily handle 8K video editing too, though I wasn't able to try because I don't own a camera that can capture at such high resolution.
The 16-inch LCD display has a resolution of 3072 x 1920 with a maximum brightness of 500 nits. It's just about flawless. Colour accuracy reaches DCI-P3 levels " a standard used by Hollywood film studios " but I have, however, been spoiled by superior OLED panels with higher refresh rates used in top phones.
Back to that keyboard: while it is a major improvement over the butterfly keyboards, the overall key travel (about 1mm) is still shallower than other laptops on the market.
The Huawei MateBook X Pro, for example, still offers a better typing experience in my opinion. But still, the MacBook's keys are springy and generously spaced, with bright backlights for those who like to work in the dark.
The battery is huge too at 100Wh. This is, in fact, the largest battery allowed to be taken on a plane in the US because of federal restrictions.
For basic office work, such as typing word documents and surfing the web, the machine can go 11 hours. When I put the machine's large screen and best-in-class speakers to use watching movies, I found that two hours of watching drained about 25 per cent battery life, which means the laptop should be good for eight hours.
When carrying out power-hungry tasks like editing 4K videos on Final Cut Pro, a three-hour editing session only knocked about 40 per cent off the battery bar. These numbers are all excellent.
Conclusion
Although Apple fixed the keyboard, many of the knocks that PC users have about Apple machines are still true with the 16-inch MacBook Pro: it's still expensive compared with other laptops (though, to Apple's credit, it offers more storage at the base level while keeping the starting price the same as last year); it doesn't have the most cutting-edge design; and you're more likely to need a dongle or an Apple-specific accessory to carry out basic tasks like transferring files or outputting to an external display.
But there's a reason why almost every creative professional " video editors, music producers, graphic designers " choose to work with a Mac: this is the most capable machine, with the most intuitive software and app ecosystem.
Dimensions: 358mm x 246mm x 16.2mm
Weight: 2.0kg
Display: 16-inch 3072 x 1920 LED panel
Battery: 100Wh
OS version reviewed: MacOS Catalina 10.15.1
Processor: 9th-generation 2.6GHz Intel Core i7/2.4GHz Intel Core i9
Camera: 720p camera
Memory: 16/32/64GB of RAM; 512GB/1TB/2TB/4TB/8TB SSD ROM
Colours: Space grey, silver
Price: Starts at HK$18,999 for the base i7/16GB RAM/512GB ROM model; up to HK$47,739 for the best possible i9/32GB RAM/8TB ROM model
Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
