New 16-inch MacBook Pro Sends the Butterfly Keyboard Flying

[xdev (Marc Z)]

@jsrnephdoc

I’ve read that Safari tabs can use huge amounts of RAM. You say most of your files are text only, so I’m puzzled why you need so much RAM.

A lot of my writing projects require web research, so I’ll typically have 5-20 tabs open for just that one article. Since I work on 4-10 projects simultaneously (sometimes over months), I typically have about 100 tabs open. I try to keep them to the bare minimum, but it’s very hard to cull them down and saving bookmarks for temporary stuff is a hassle.

I watch Activity Monitor’s RAM usage constantly and I force quit tabs when they grow huge (over 1GB). Freshly loaded most pages use about 200MB (still absurd, but somewhat reasonable). What I don’t like is that even just sitting in the background they will grow. It must be javascript and ads that cause it.

@jsrnephdoc

The new trackpad is gigantic . Like bigger than an Plus-sized iPhone. No idea why it needs to be so big.

That’s so that your cursor can bedevil you when the base of your hand moves it to some different point in your document.

Ha! I’m sure that’s it.

@jsrnephdoc

Reviewers have endorsed Apple’s claims for vastly improved sound output. I’m not sure that’s a big deal: If I want sound to fill a room, I’ll most likely get it from another source, and if I’m watching an epic movie on my 16" laptop in seat 34F, I think I’ll be getting the sound from Bose (or perhaps from AirPods Pros), but I’m still curious.

After I sent my post I realized I hadn’t even tried the speakers, so I did, and wow, I must say, I’m blown away.

I’m certainly no audiophile, but these sound like HomePods. Not the same volume or room-filling sound, but when your laptop is in your lap the sound is targeted just right at your ears. It’s really nice. (It’s definitely more for personal use, not for a whole room.)

I was listening to a favorite song that I’ve probably heard 1000+ times and I heard a faint rhythmic tinkle sound in the background, some sort of background instrument I’d never heard before. I didn’t even have the volume above 40%, either. Crazy.

Not sure if it’s relevant, but when I play music on the 16" my dog gets all excited and runs over and looks around and seems very interested. I’ve never seen him pay attention to music before (except for my mom’s piano playing, but’s different).

Also: with iTunes broken up, the music app is only using 200MB of RAM in the background while playing. I didn’t used to like to use iTunes to play music because it took too many resources. It’s nothing at all on this machine. So another win!

Since my HomePods are stationary and I like to move the laptop to different rooms for working, being able to play music that sounds this good is very nice. I can’t wait until next spring/summer when I can work outside in nice weather. I bet these speakers will still sound great outdoors.