How's the battery doing for you guys? I'm getting 5-6 hours at most with regular usage
Do a smc reset
same here..Mine's not due till 23-29 Dec..
Just got mine (yay!). Reinstalling the OS now (both because people say it fixes SMC glitches, and i need a case-sensitive FS)
So it's about time I joined this thread. I've had half the day intensely using the 13" BTO.
- It's a really nice build
- The keyboard is nice (but I already knew this, I spent some time at the Berlin Apple Store last week typing on one)
- I have yet to find a good use for the Touch Bar and find I'm accidentally clearing out text or cancelling modal dialogs way too easily, especially if I'm trying to press tilde (~). I removed Safari's tab preview control immediately, who seriously thought that was a good use of the Touch Bar? I'm finding it too distracting that I'm testing keeping it on the Control Strip only (which then means I paid 300€ for a digital version of the media keys etc - hardly worth it). I'm a pro-user and using the keyboard for a lot, including memorised shortcuts (doesn't every "Pro" learn these?). I think the rule of thumb will be if you're a heavy Alfred kind of user, the Touch Bar will seem like this inherent waste of time except for those hunt-and-peck typists.
- I don't like that I can't quickly reduce volumes through multiple-taps of the volume up/down physical button. I know you can press and drag to move sliders, and to me that's a concession that Apple's UX wasn't thought out so greatly here, that your finger moves a slider 5cm to the left of your finger. Imagine if touch input on the iPhone / iPad was that inaccurate... The only way to solve this is to make the touch bar always show the control strip.
- FileVault is on, and no glitches (why are people suggesting they turn this security feature off?). I've had it enabled for years and the performance hit is minimal. Well actually, one glitch - my profile picture on the boot screen doesn't appear and uses a really low-res placeholder, and I'm not sure why.
- I'll probably survive with the port situation, as I'll really only ever have headphones and power when I'm away from desk plugged in. Just glad the 3.5mm port is still around (for now).
- Speed-wise, compiling is not really too much of a difference from my maxed out 13" MBP Late 2012 machine, but I kind of knew that given the processor differences. Sometimes it even feels slower, but I'll do a side-by-side clean build to see later. The extra RAM is helping app-switching a lot though, and the SSD definitely seems to make browsing large folders/folders with large files fast.
- Speakers are a bit clearer and definitely louder, but nothing to really call home about. I have both laptops here running Spotify and I'm using Spotify's neat little external speaker routing to compare.
- I miss that little space above the trackpad and the spacebar, where I often rested my right-thumb. Now the trackpad (which is huge, but so far not proved annoying) is just a few mm's away from the spacebar. Maybe that was already gone on MBP's since 2012.
- Touch ID with 1Password is probably the best thing ever. Touch ID in general is really useful when it allows you to use it.
- Battery life on first cycle (I always do a battery calibration) is around 5-6 hours. Hoping that's going to improve, as I would love a 10hr machine but I really don't think with all the compiling I do, that I'll ever reach it. Apple doesn't really mention running battery calibrations anymore, but you can find the process detailed at https://www.lifewire.com/calibrate-macbook-air-battery-2260856
My MPB should hopefully be arriving tomorrow. I've seen a lot of posts about reinstalling the OS before I set the machine up. What's the best way to do this, there are a few conflicting posts on this thread. Some have said that I should erase the disk first and some just say to install it over the top of the existing OS?
And that should hopefully sort any SIP, NVRAM issues that it may have had?Erase and install on top, super easy to do
And that should hopefully sort any SIP, NVRAM issues that it may have had?
Great review. Being a Developer myself I totally agree with all your points. I'm a huge Quicksilver user and at this point the touchbar is more of a nuisance than an added value. I can't even imagine what developers could do to make this actually usable. I believe the only case I see use is scrubbing through videos, that I find useful.
I actually disagree in regards to the speakers. I think they are a huge step up in regards to previous generations, as well as the screen which was my biggest surprise since when placed next to each other one can see a clear difference.
Interesting you mentioned the space between the trackpad and the spacebar key. My finger always rests there and at this point I'm not exactly sure how to type properly on this keyboard. The thing is that the way I press space is more a diagonal movement which is not allowed since there's no space to rest the thumb. I really struggle to understand why Apple had to make this gigantic trackpad. I thought that the Apple pencil would work on this, but not even that, so what's the point?
One day of usage mostly spent on migrating stuff (I couldn't use the migration assistant)
- I absolutely adore the screen. Coming over from a non-retina 2011, this is pure poetry. Not only the resolution, but the colors. The blur is gone, and I can go back to using decently-sized fonts (had to bump it up to 14-16 before)
- I can live with the keyboard, although i mainly hear it, and not feel it. That's good enough for me, but I can see people hating it for a reason.
- Touchpad is ok, didn't have problems with palm rejection yet. I wish that force touch gimmick could be used for right click, but I guess it'd be too error prone? The faking of the pressing is uncanny, gotta admit that, and I force touch just to see/feel the trick again. It really DOES feel like I'm pressing it in!
- Touchbar is fun to play with, i finally figured out, after all those years how to use emoji, so I guess thanks for that apple? The support likes to "disconnect" frequently, I guess that's the maturity of the support. However, same as @jonyiveswhiteroom it bothered me a couple of time that I didn't have immediate volume control.
- Had a few graphical glitches - in 2-3 different occasions the screen would flash to black for no apparent reason. Stopped after a couple of seconds. The drivers are garbage as usual.
- Didn't enable FV just yet, but will
- Didn't have any problems with adapters as of now. Tried USB-A -> usb-c, gigabit ethernet and connecting a Nexus 5X. And it rapid charges my 5X
- The wifi stability is kinda garbage at the moment. Iperf3 shows me extreme variations on packet loss, however I'm not sure if it's the driver in the mac, a garbage Chinese chip (it's not a broadcom anymore!), problems in LEDE and ath10k or just the consequence of using VHT80. Or maybe it's the damn p2p mode mucking things up. I'll investigate this more as time goes on since it's critical to me. I'd advise against playing ping-sensitive games on this.
- Speakers are nice, but the subs get limited after a certain volume is reached, and I'm genuinely scared of burning them out, as people here complained that they can do that, and do.
- Thermals seem to be ok, but I didn't push it yet. Maybe i'll play with shadertoy tomorrow.
Literally the lightest use possible. 6 hours isn't enough for me, my 12" MacBook got more than that! Hopefully the replacement I eventually find will be better. I will also try a fresh macOS install on that too.That's actually not bad, mine is way worse than that
One day of usage mostly spent on migrating stuff (I couldn't use the migration assistant)
Edit : I claimed apple doesn't use broadcom chips anymore, yet in system profiler i now see
- I absolutely adore the screen. Coming over from a non-retina 2011, this is pure poetry. Not only the resolution, but the colors. The blur is gone, and I can go back to using decently-sized fonts (had to bump it up to 14-16 before)
- I can live with the keyboard, although i mainly hear it, and not feel it. That's good enough for me, but I can see people hating it for a reason.
- Touchpad is ok, didn't have problems with palm rejection yet. I wish that force touch gimmick could be used for right click, but I guess it'd be too error prone? The faking of the pressing is uncanny, gotta admit that, and I force touch just to see/feel the trick again. It really DOES feel like I'm pressing it in!
- Touchbar is fun to play with, i finally figured out, after all those years how to use emoji, so I guess thanks for that apple? The support likes to "disconnect" frequently, I guess that's the maturity of the support. However, same as @jonyiveswhiteroom it bothered me a couple of time that I didn't have immediate volume control.
- Had a few graphical glitches - in 2-3 different occasions the screen would flash to black for no apparent reason. Stopped after a couple of seconds. The drivers are garbage as usual.
- Didn't enable FV just yet, but will
- Didn't have any problems with adapters as of now. Tried USB-A -> usb-c, gigabit ethernet and connecting a Nexus 5X. And it rapid charges my 5X
- The wifi stability is kinda garbage at the moment. Iperf3 shows me extreme variations on packet loss, however I'm not sure if it's the driver in the mac, a garbage Chinese chip (it's not a broadcom anymore!), problems in LEDE and ath10k or just the consequence of using VHT80. Or maybe it's the damn p2p mode mucking things up. I'll investigate this more as time goes on since it's critical to me. I'd advise against playing ping-sensitive games on this.
- Speakers are nice, but the subs get limited after a certain volume is reached, and I'm genuinely scared of burning them out, as people here complained that they can do that, and do.
- Thermals seem to be ok, but I didn't push it yet. Maybe i'll play with shadertoy tomorrow.
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.21.171.47.1a8). When looking at the ifixt teardown I can't see a bcm chip there, and the 13 inch didn't have one either. I'm not really sure what's inside here..
Edit2 : It looks to be a bcm4360 https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless-connectivity/wireless-lan/bcm4360