New 16-inch MacBook Pro Sends the Butterfly Keyboard Flying

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The CalDigit TS3 Plus is my choice of Thunderbolt dock for 15-inch+ MacBook Pros; it’s also been The Wirecutter’s pick for Thunderbolt dock. It delivers up to 85W of power, many others deliver only 60W which is fine for 13-inch models but is insufficient for larger models under heavy load. However, I see the 16-inch MacBook Pro has a 96W USB-C power adapter so you may want to look for (or wait for) a Thunderbolt dock that delivers that much power; the Wirecutter says the HP Thunderbolt Dock 120W G2 delivers up to 100W.

If you decide you’ll use the Apple power adapter and the dock for connections only, you can save some money and get a lower-power dock; the Wirecutter lists a number, I’ve purchased the Plugable TBT3-UDV for 13-inch MacBook Pros. With any dock, pay attention to which built-in video port it has; I prefer DisplayPort but some have HDMI.

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I’m still deciding. First I was waiting for >16GB RAM. Then for the butterfly keyboard debacle to go away, then for the ESC key to return. 16" is really a bit to big to lug around, so I’ll wait now to see if there’s a 13" (or 14" ?) refresh with a proper amount of RAM. I’d really like a better ports solutions too :-/

edit: pleased to read I’m in the same camp as @ace !

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Marco Arment was talking about this on ATP episode 353 last night (episode is not out yet, I was listening live). He’s still waiting for the return of the SD card slot on the MacBook Pro.

It’s just not going to happen.

The 16" is Apple’s “apology” computer: the keyboard, the escape key, the inverted T arrow keys… these are all the concessions that we’re getting.

There won’t be USB-A ports. There won’t be SD card slots. There won’t be more ports. There won’t be MagSafe.

This is it.

The sooner we accept that, the easier it will be.

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I agree. It was surprising enough to see Apple finally backtrack on the keyboard issues, and I can’t see the company backtracking on anything else at this point.

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I agree about not expecting any backtracking on “legacy” ports. MagSafe was pretty innovative when introduced, I wouldn’t rule out Apple innovating on connectors again but I would expect it to still involve the USB Type-C interface.

Don’t hold your breath, but I don’t know that the Touch Bar will stay forever. It doesn’t seem that successful, it’s a “Pro only” feature (i.e. not included on the MacBook Air), and they haven’t introduced an external keyboard with the feature. In 2016, when they embiggened the TrackPads on the MacBook Pros (same year they introduced the Touch Bar), there was some speculation that Apple was laying the groundwork for it to become a touchscreen (at least I speculated). If that actually happens, I think there’s a good chance the Touch Bar would go away.

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I’m thinking the opposite. The fact that it’s there on the 16, despite Apple’s backtracking on numerous other unpopular aspects of the design, makes me think they’re committed to the TouchBar.

Yes, it might remain a Pro-only feature, but that is a nice Pro distinction and just because it’s not in consumer-level products doesn’t mean it’s going away.

I just hope that this means Apple will expand support for the TouchBar, make it better and more useful, and make it easier for developers to add support for it. Right now it still isn’t used in enough apps to make it an essential feature.

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I got the 32GB of RAM, which was one of my main reasons for getting the new machine. I do a variety of different projects all the time, switching between them frequently (mainly writing and programming) and 16GB just wasn’t enough (typically I had 7-10GB of disk swap). But already, with just a few standard apps open (Mail, Dropbox, Xojo, Safari, BBEdit) the 16" is showing it using 22GB of RAM and even using a tiny bit of disk swap!

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. I have 16 GB on my 2016 MacBook Pro and only 8 on my 2017 iMac, and I notice that a few apps that load their entire presence into RAM when launched (SEE Finance, for one) can take more than a minute just to display a single data window on first launch. I think that’s because my 1 TB internal drive is formatted as a “Fusion” drive coupled to a 28 GByte PCI-e stick on the motherboard, and next week I’m going deep inside the iMac to replace the Fusion Drive with a 1 TB OWC Aura Pro 2x SSD stick, which will become my boot volume (I’m told that when no longer logically fused with the SSD stick the 1 TB internal rotating platter drive will function as a bootable stand-alone slower volume). While I’m in there, I’ll quadruple the RAM to 32 GB

Oh, the keyboard.

That’s the sole reason I’m waiting to get my fingers positioned on one of these old/new keyboards (according to iFixit, virtually the same as what we had in 2015 and earlier). If I had an MBA and an Apple employee ID card, I’d be advocating for an extraordinarily bold repair program for ANYONE afflicted with butterfly-keyboard disease. This would require engineering some way to get a scissors keyboard mechanism into their existing chassis, and offering that replacement at a price point at or below $750. I don’t need a new laptop, but I do need to be able to make the “.” and “>” glyphs appear in my documents without the musculature of my right hand ring finger slowly morphing into a sad parody of Rod Laver’s forearm size disparity. This repair would be offered regardless of whether, when, or how a user spilled something on the keyboard. I know that Cervantes and Dr. King had less “impossible” dreams, but a whole generation of MacBook Pro users have suffered the indignity of the butterfly keyboard,

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. Coupled with Siri’s capricious autocorrect choices, it can lead to interesting outcomes.

Having moved recently from the Bay Area (where Apple’s stainless steel facades are almost as prevalent as Peets and Starbucks) to rural Montana, where the nearest Apple emporium is 275 miles away (and where not even the University of Montana bookstore sells Apple equipment) I’m googling the local Best Buy inventory pages almost daily!

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.

Thanks so much for your post!
Jim Robertson

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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.

Ha! I’m sure that’s it.

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.

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I bought a MBP last year, and it took awhile to get used to the butterfly keyboard. When the space bar on it failed a few weeks ago, I went back to using my old 2013 MBP, and I was surprised to find I had grown to prefer the feel of the butterfly keyboard. The keys on the 2013 MBP felt loose and wobbly.

Last week, I decided to trade in the repaired 2018 MBP and buy the 16-inch MBP in the hopes of avoiding keyboard problems in the future. After the trade in and the educational discount, I spent about $1500 for a bigger screen, better keyboard, twice the internal drive space, and much better sound. The 16-inch also feels noticeably faster.

I do like the feel of the new keyboard. It didn’t take any getting used to. I think Gruber’s description is good: it’s like a cross between the old scissor-switch keyboard and the butterfly keyboard, taking the best from both. To me, the biggest improvement was moving the Touchbar slightly away from the Touch ID sensor. I was constantly activating Siri accidentally on the 2018 MBP, and I don’t think I’ve done it yet on the 16-inch MBP. I appreciate the return of the traditional arrow key layout as well.

Setting up the new computer was pretty straightforward. Most of my documents and my photo library are in iCloud, so I didn’t have to worry about those nor with the contents of my Dropbox. I copied the rest of my data, about 160 GB, manually over a Thunderbolt 3 cable, and that was done in around ten to fifteen minutes total, if I recall correctly.

I can’t say I miss the legacy ports. The only port I used regularly was the HDMI port, but I just use a USB-C-to-HDMI cable now. I never used the SD card slot on the 2013 MBP and used the ethernet and Thunderbolt ports infrequently. I prefer having a laptop that’s thinner and lighter, characteristics which benefit me every day, over a thicker, heavier laptop that has ports I rarely need. The only dongle I carry around these days is a USB-A to USB-C adapter, which I leave connected to a thumbdrive (which has the added benefit of making the drive easier to find in my backpack).

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Wow. I just dropped by an electronics store and saw, held, and tried the new 16-inch model for the first time. I think I’m in love. I even liked the much-maligned Touch Bar. It feels nice, and provides useful word choices when editing.

I sort of feel I wish you could touch the screen as well. It’s easier than moving the cursor and clicking.

But all-in-all it seems great. The weight also “isn’t too bad.” Not as bad as I expected.

And it’s … beautiful.

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What do you think of problem reports about the new 16" MBP? Things like reported freezing when hooked up to external monitors, sounds from the SSD, etc?

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I’m curious as well.

There is a 16" MBP in my future—the question is when, not if. TidBITS always suggests waiting after new software releases, but I don’t recall seeing such precautions on hardware. I’ve always been reluctant to buy a new model of any hardware, assuming there are manufacturing kinks to work out.

Am I being pragmatic, or overcautious?

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I haven’t noticed any problems nor was I aware of reports of widespread problems.

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Same here.

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For those here who have purchased a new 16-inch MacBook Pro, when you migrated your data to it, did you do it directly from the older Mac via Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, or did you migrate from a Time Machine backup on an external hard drive?

I’m tracking a problem with the latter approach, so I’m curious if anyone has experienced issues with Time Machine-based migrations.

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I did mine via a Superduper clone on an external HD. No issues that I’ve seen (except my 32-bit apps don’t work ;-).

It does bring up a question, though: in the old days I loved doing upgrades like that via a Firewire cable between the two Macs with one in drive mode. I’m vaguely aware that you can do that via Thunderbolt, but I’ve never tried and the whole cable mess of USB-C and Thunderbolt has obsoleted all my ancient knowledge.

I did look to see if I could find some sort of cable to hook the two Macs together, but we’re talking a 2015 MBP with regular USB and a 16" MBP with USB-C and I couldn’t find anything remotely like what I needed. Does such a cable exist and would that work? Or do you need an adapter or something? Can you only hook two UBS-C Macs together with a USB-C to USB-C cable?

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Your 2015 MacBook Pro will have Thunderbolt 2, so you can connect it to a new Mac with a Thunderbolt 3 cable and a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter. And yes, Target Disk Mode absolutely supports Thunderbolt.

USB-C is largely irrelevant, since only the tiny MacBook is limited to USB-C. Everything else that has a USB-C port is actually Thunderbolt 3, which subsumes USB 3.1. But Target Disk Mode will still work.

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Ah, that’s what I was missing. I’ve never used Thunderbolt for anything. Didn’t even know it was on the old laptop. I’ve only used USB.

The only adapter I can find is an Apple one and it’s $50. That’s pricey for a one-time use. Way easier to just use an external hard drive the way I’ve been doing.

I guess there’s no way to use USB to connect the two computers?

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I didn’t think so, but Method 2 of this article outlines a way using yet another adapter: How to Connect Two Computers Using USB.

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My son migrated the Mac side via an Cat 5e cable connecting both MacBooks.

The BootCamp partition didn’t go so well. He used WinClone to back it up and tried reinstalling it a few times. When the Restore in Winclone worked (we made a number of errors earlier which I won’t blame on WinClone) he would boot up into Windows 10 and it would blue screen. I assume a driver problem. He decided to just set up Windows from scratch and reinstall everything.

One problem with the WinClone speed is probably our use of a USB 2 hard disk.