MacBook Pro 2016 review: Apple's almost-perfect laptop

Apple has been remarkably consistent in two areas over the years. Firstly, it has invented new technologies and ways of using its products that wow its users. And secondly, it has often exasperated vocal sections of its user base by ditching tried-and-tested standards, from the CD drive to the headphone jack.The new MacBook Pro follows tradition in this regard.
As the first significant update to Apple’s range of high-end laptops in four years, it packs in a host of upgrades, including a thinner design, higher-quality screen, new trackpad and keyboard, as well as a power boost. It also has two things never seen on a laptop – a touchscreen strip above the keyboard known as the “Touch Bar” and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner that iPhone and iPad users will recognise.

But true to form, it has also been controversial. It is not as powerful as many users would like, it can’t be upgraded, and there is no traditional USB port or SD card slot (the only ports included on the new MacBooks are the USB-C standard). This has irritated many creative types, including musicians and video editors, whom Apple has always championed, and means most people using the new MacBook Pro will need to invest in additional dongles or wires.
This is not to mention the price, which starts at £1,449, goes to £1,749 for the Touch Bar version and rises to £2,699 for the most expensive model: a stretch even by Apple’s standards.

Design and display
There are three main models of the new MacBook Pro: a 13-inch model without the Touch Bar or Touch ID, and 13-inch and 15-inch versions that do have them. In place of the Touch Bar, the entry-level model has the familiar row of function keys atop the keyboard, as well as two USB-C ports instead of four, and a less powerful processor.

All three models are thinner and lighter than their predecessors, although at 1.4kg for the 13-inch version, they are not quite ultraportable. The screen, though, is gorgeous: even at two-thirds brightness it looks fantastic. The laptop comes in the traditional silver as well as space grey, and as you'd expect, look and feel great.

Keyboard and Trackpad

For all the excitement about the Touch Bar, it would be worth nothing if the new MacBook Pro didn’t have a decent keyboard and trackpad. Luckily, both are fantastic. The keyboard borrows the “butterfly” design from last year’s 12-inch MacBook: the keys are fairly shallow and don’t travel very far, but it is a joy to type on and I took to it instantly.

The computer’s compact form means the up and down arrow keys are a little small, and while the keyboard is a little louder than you might be used to, neither are huge issues. The glass trackpad has always been one of the MacBook’s biggest advantages over Windows laptops, none of which come close to matching it, and this is as true as ever on the new MacBook. The trackpad is enormous, making it easy to scroll from one side of the screen to the other and make multi-finger gestures. It also has special thumb-detection technology that stops it from responding when you rest your hands on it while typing. The trackpad has the same “Force Touch” technology as last year’s 12-inch MacBook and last year's MacBook Pro, so you click it to select and click harder for a different action – preview a web page in Safari or drag a section of text in Microsoft Word. For newbies, it’s a similar effect to the iPhone’s 3D Touch, and is very useful once you master it. Ultimately, the fundamentals of a good laptop – screen, keyboard and trackpad – are all executed flawlessly, but at this point we expect that from Apple. What’s more interesting is what’s new, which brings us to…

The Touch Bar

The main selling point of the new MacBook Pro is the Touch Bar, which is a thin LCD touchscreen above the keyboard where the escape key and function keys usually are. While physical buttons are static, the Touch Bar is infinitely flexible and customisable – the idea is that whatever you are doing, it will give you a useful set of controls. When typing, it can suggest your next word; in iMessage it will show you a strip of emojis; when watching a video it displays a slider you can move back and forth to pick a point in the video; open a new tab in Safari and it will show your favourite websites.

The traditional controls for volume, screen brightness and music haven’t gone away; they’re just collapsed into a section on the right side of the Touch Bar, which you can expand by toggling a button on the side. While the Touch Bar is easy to use, I haven’t found it that useful and the kindest way to describe it is a work in progress. Although it is open for developers to use, because it’s brand new, few non-Apple programs support the Touch Bar at present. If you spend all day in Chrome or Microsoft Excel, nothing happens (although Microsoft Office is coming soon).
As for those programs that do support it, such as Safari and iMessage, in testing I’ve found myself using it for the sake of using it, not because it is genuinely useful. A lot of its functions – switching tabs in Safari, for example – are more quickly accomplished using keyboard shortcuts, which are now part of my muscle memory. And, truth be told, some of the Touch Bar’s functions are just not that practical. Take word suggestions – while they can be useful on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, when you have a full set of QWERTY keys in front of you it’s simply quicker to type than to take your fingers off the keyboard to tap at the Touch Bar.