I will be returning mine and going back to my late 2013 MBP 15" for now:
I'm sorry you don't like your machine, but I have a few notes on these comments:
- The response time on the panel is much worse on the MBP 16". I do see ghosting when scrolling text.
- The new scissor switch keyboard is better than the butterfly keyboard for sure, but even after three weeks I still can't get used to it. Not enough travel and too much tactile feedback.
- I really don't like the touch bar. It's distracting and I don't find it useful. I figured out how to turn it off with BetterTouchTool but I still get a lot of accidental touches when using the number keys. There's no way to change the brightness or turn it off completely in System Preferences. I need real function keys for development work. I prefer real physical buttons to adjust brightness and volume.
- [MOVED by me] No MagSafe, and it's awkward having this 1-inch USB-C cable sticking out the side constantly. No doubt one day I will bend the connector accidentally and have to shell out for a new power adapter.
- The annoying "MacBook Pro" logo beneath the screen. My late 2013 MBP 15" had no such vulgar branding.
- Sucky webcam.
- No Wifi 6.
These vary from preferences to non-issues. The response time is is plenty good given the refresh rate. The text scrolling thing is doesn't impact my machine and ghosting isn't a problem at all. Otherwise the TB is weird, I agree, but it is what it is at this point. Your only option is to live with an older or much lower power machine from Apple, a desktop or a windows machine. The MagSafe thing is another pro/con issue. You can now use a variety of plugs and cables to power your computer, it also provides video/data streams. The last things on the list there are just silliness. Pure and simple. The logo? Really? Wifi 6 isn't exactly the norm just yet, even for other very high end computers, like the ThinkPad P series, many still lack Wifi 6.
- The lack of USB-A ports is more of an issue than I realized. Most of my peripherals are USB-A, and searching for and fiddling with dongles every time I want to plug something in is getting tiresome.
Get a good docking solution. Its the way it is now and in someways it is better. I know its a pain at times, but again, how long are you going to deal with a machine from 2013 just so you can plug in a USB A device without using an adapter?
- The speakers are great on paper but I don't enjoy listening to them in practice. I use Boom3D to EQ them to my preferences (I cut all freqs below 80Hz by the max dB, 200-800Hz by 2dB, and boost at 1kHz by 6dB) but it's buggy and adds latency. The speakers are loud, but distorted. It seems like Apple is trying to squeeze more sound out of them than tiny speakers are capable of producing.
There might just be something wrong with your machine. These things you're doing aren't really meant to be done on a laptop. If you need to do them for a typical song to just sound normal, something isn't right. Between this and the display, maybe you just got a bad unit?
- The trackpad is great, but just too damn big. I constantly have issues where gestures don't work correctly because my palm or a finger of the other hand is resting on the pad, and palm rejection isn't working sufficiently well. When typing there's nowhere to rest my thumbs without touching the trackpad.
I was worried about this too, but you know what, its just not an issue. My left palm can be about half on the track pad and the three finger swipe up with my right hand works fine, so does regular scrolling. Its called palm rejection, Apple has figured this out better than anyone in the industry, that's why their track pad is so big. And it works. If it doesn't, maybe you got a bad unit.
- The performance improvement over my late 2013 is not very significant in practice. I measured Xcode and Android build times on both machines, and it's only ~20% faster. My desktop Hackintosh is 2x faster at the same tasks (and cost half the price).
Well yeah, a desktop is likely to be faster, but I am seriously suspecting your numbers here. Only 20% faster than a Haswell chip, but half the speed of a modern desktop....? Not likely. Speeds should be about 50% to 100%+ faster (single vs multicore) from current gen to Haswell. And the only way you're getting 2x faster speeds even on a current desktop is with very long running tasks and very high end processors. I've benchmarked my own workflows with the 2.4 i9 vs the 12 core in the 2013 Mac Pro, and its a dead heat.
- No upgradability and poor repairability. My 2013 MBP 15" has now needed to have every component replaced apart from the SSD, and it was expensive, e.g. a RAM replacement cost $1000 because the entire logic board had to be replaced while the actual DRAM board itself would have cost less than $100 to replace myself.
This has been an issue since the machine you currently have. Most other vendors are also doing this to a degree. You just can't get away from it now.
All in all, I'm quite disappointed, especially for the price. I paid ~$4K, but I can get an equivalently specced Windows laptop for ~$1600. It would make sense if I loved the laptop, but as you can see, I really don't. It just doesn't make sense to keep it.
What windows laptop did you get for $1600 that was "equivalently specced" as the $4K MacBook Pro? I smell BS all over this post of yours, but we're certain now. A $1600 laptop like that doesn't exist. But I'd love to be proved wrong.