So I've officially joined the "I have as Mac Pro as my daily driver" club........ A couple of observations on day 2 of the adventure.....
1) The Touch Bar, IMHO, has been way too heavily trashed by the articles I've seen in the past. Typing this comment gives me basic typing shortcuts in the Touch Bar, which I've always wished were their own hotkeys for a long time. It's well built, even if it's lacking at times. It has been a little confusing relearning Final Cut with the addition of the Touch Bar.... and to that I have to say "It's annoying, but it's a good change."
2) For being a base model Pro laptop, where the damned air current is guided through the friggin keyboard (I still can't get over this as a functional thing), and being someone who likes to smoke while editing... I'll just say this about performance on the base model: I had this Macbook sitting on a small towel, on top of a very hot stone table, air temperature being 100+f, sitting under an umbrella, and it did struggle with video playback, this being due to multiple inputs from me and rendering a video while asking it to play said video at the same time. I think a combination of poor heat dissipation and the CPU being properly thermal throttled (aka lower clock speed from the "boost") became the cause of that. Then again, I like to think that's a great way to test the CPUs and graphics performance under a high stress environment, without needing to overload it with processes. I was actually satisfied with what I saw, the overall "wait time" before the computer caught up and said "I'm sorry, was a little hot, but I'm done with that thing that bothered me... what do you need?" It just got back up with no sweat, no more playback problems, and my stripped down 'editing' sprint continued. Not sure exactly what made a 30 second system wide lag occurr, but I'm not complaining about that with it being used in a desert setting.
3) My biggest gripe is the lack of MagSafe, but I'd much rather make inputs/outputs an actual options list to pick from, and the MacBook gets made to fit that spec. Why? I'm that eccentric, I guess?
4) For the amount of money I personally spent upfront, and the financing deal I got, I have to sum it up in two points. It's definitely an affordable piece of equipment, but it is extremely limited in real world video editing capabilities for someone who is stressing each core (basically, non turbo clock speed sucks hard, and better heat dissipation would mean better turbo performance, and to that I say "gimme better performance for $1400, please".... and the second is just "I got what I paid for, but I'm quite concerned about real world performance if I had bought a better spec'd CPU." I think for the price, I accidentally found a great compromise for a computer that will get some genuine outdoor editing use during this summer, even if only in small bursts from now on (no need to kill it lol). I'm also scaling back my current services because I can't edit on the fly at an outdoor shoot right now. Why pay more for something I'm still limited with performance wise? I remember the days when I ran a laptop with the same basic specs (just non turbo/OC'd clock speeds), and I had a better spec'd laptop overall for my task... it's quite a limited experience.
I've always been one to use low end equipment to get by for a number of reasons, and my previous laptop was the '15 base model Air. This is I think I overpaid in some ways, but I also haven't. The size is right for me, overall performance in high heat environments is satisfactory for a smoke break, and I have an excuse to edit at home all the time. It'll also handle the majority of what I need, and the rest of what I offer for services I can use another Mac for. No buyer's remorse over here!
TL;DR- You lazy little... okay, I like this thing. I desire a different design and performance for my money, but what it's capable of for the tasks I will put it through (a minimalist editing/production workflow) it is perfectly acceptable. Take what you want from my ramblings. I need something to do while the tv is occupied, as I'm having "new game console withdrawals" right now ?
for my work laptop. We do a lot of text groups and things we need to snip from webpages and it’ll be so convenient being able to text directly from my laptop with iCloud messages.
