So, really, new touchbar aside, the MBP doesn't really bring much to the table at all, does it? It's a device for pros... who already have the keyboard shortcuts for the same actions the touchbar provides long since memorized. I thought this was supposed to be a MacBookPro event - but it seems like it should be called the Apple touchbar event, really.

I personally found the suggestion that taking my fingers away from my keyboard to tap on the touchbar for autocomplete suggestions would let me "type faster" to be beyond ridiculous and even borderline insulting. Obviously Apple couldn't say - in a room full of developers - "When is the last time you used a function key?," and instead had to go with an awkward joke about no one using IBM mainframes any more...

And power users sharing MacBooks? That automatic profile switching belongs on the new iMac, which is actually a PC meant to be shared with family... oh wait, there is no new iMac, is there?

Craig also deftly avoided mention of the fact that as soon as you let go of the function key, the F1-12 buttons disappear once more - at a time when laptop developers have given up on forcing the alternate Fn behavior over the standard F1-12 buttons by default.

I'm also concerned Apple won't give a damn about making the UI of applications accessible and intuitive and simply assume everyone wants to use the touchbar instead. It seems they've given up on innovating when it comes to desktops and workstations and have decided to simply shoehorn any mobile innovations they have into their notebooks rather than come up with something -actually- useful.

I posted this part yesterday, and I'll post it again:

I just gave up on Apple ever shipping you are MacBooks and received my custom order HP two days before they announced the October 27th event. My (magnesium unibody) ZBook is as slim as my retina MBP, has a higher-PPI display, also comes with a glass trackpad, has user-replaceable battery, 2x M.2 PCIe SSDs, and upgradeable ram. I was able to pay a bit extra and get it with a mobile Xeon CPU (E3-1545m with Intel's top-of-the-line Iris Pro 580 integrated GPU) which is the equivalent of the i7 6920HQ only with more cache and better graphics, meaning I was able to buy 32 GB of ECC RAM for only $130. It has a 4GB nVidia Quadro and still manages to weigh less than my rMBP.

The only thing that sucks is the noise. It's fairly quiet even with the fan running at its highest RPM, but the frequency of the resulting noise is very distinguishable and it has a tendency to rev up and down quite suddenly (and often). It doesn't help that there are two fans, one on each side, which turn on and off independently - meaning you can suddenly feel like you've lost hearing in one of your ears until you realize the noise level is imbalanced.

I don't know if Apple will introduce Xeon workstations (update: they didn't. The crowd clapped at "6th generation Intel" because they didn't realize it meant two year old tech), but even if they did, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up my three USB 3.1 (non-C), three thunderbolt 3 (/USB-C), hdmi, gigabit ethernet, 3.5mm audio/mic, and power ports along with my function keys, home/end/page up/page down buttons, Kensington lock slot, and a proper typing keyboard that celebrates instead of denounces key travel in exchange for a more-pleasant acoustic profile.

While I might be willing to give up the ECC memory I use with my Xeon 1545m for the standard DDR4 Apple's new maxed-out MBP configured with an i7 6920HQ supports (which is otherwise more-or-less identical to the Xeon 1545m, except with less cache), I'm definitely, over-my-dead-body not willing to trade my 32GB of RAM for the paltry 16GB the new MBP offers [0].

Did I mention I've been a faithful Mac user for over a decade?

0: https://neosmart.net/blog/2016/apples-best-newest-macbook-pr...