Why I return my MacBook Pro 2016

My previous MacBook Pro has three years (bought in December 2013). I usually change machines every three years, so as soon as Apple introduced its new machine, I ordered it, even if the ad had nothing to be exciting on paper and even though prices seemed prohibitive.

I spend my time on my computer and I like to have what is best under the eyes. So I chose a 13 inch with 500 GB of storage, an i5 processor clocked at 3.1 GHz and of course the famous touch Bar with a touch Id all at the end. Invoice: €2319, I pass cables and adapters.
December 6,I get my new MacBook Pro and pose it next to my old model. It is more thin, smaller, but closed it is has the same look, which is frustrating. I could believe that I did not disburse a good package of euros for this machine.

Still, aesthetics is not my reason for switching Windows to MacOS. I did it because Apple has been producing silent laptops for years with superb keyboards and screens, I've done it too because of a writing software, Ulysses, which I find on my iPhone and my iPad. The Apple range is very consistent, it is a great pleasure to work with these three products under more and more homogeneous bones.

I also have no desire to go back to Windows. I bought two weeks ago an XBox for kids and I found that at Microsoft they were always as messy, still as obnoxious graphically. These guys will never understand sobriety, it's not in their DNA. Yet I confess that the Surface Book is very tempting.

Without more taking my head, my choice being done, I'm starting to set up my new Mac. First surprise, for use, the keyboard is just crappy. The stroke of the keys is so short that my fingers quickly encounter an obstacle, which irritates me the pulp, propagating vibrations to the nails.

It seems that one eventually gets used to this touch, probably by hitting less loud (we get used to everything, it seems). I have some doubts. The old Apple keyboards were instantly enjoyable. It was one of the first qualities of Macs. Advantage lost.

The most surprising is the sound of the keys. Really, it's too noisy. Even if I work alone in my office, the rattling is unbearable for my own ears. It's a blast.

Why is this keyboard shitty? Because Apple wants ever finer machines, but a real keyboard cannot be finished.

I try to write, to see if the words flow with more fluidity, no, it will take time to forget the old keyboard (I have to lose the habit of what was nice all this to gain a few millimeters of thickness, look for the bug).

December 7,On the second day, I still don't see the usefulness of the Touch Bar, even though Ulysses has just released a compatible version. Worse, it makes me waste time, because the few function keys I use regularly are not immediately visible (I have not found any personalization application, which if it does not exist yet will not be soon). So I have to click, unwind, waste of time and still waste of time.

As a bonus, I have the purplish icon of Siri under my eyes for a long time, while I don't use Siri and I haven't activated it. I have the proof that the touch Bar is a poorly integrated innovation in MacOS, obviously a step towards the touchscreen, after Jonathan Ive claimed for years "never on Mac." Is he afraid to contradict himself and to go frankly?

When my hand is on the touch screen of my iPad Pro with an Apple keyboard (proof that a touchscreen machine with keyboard, (it is conceivable even by Apple), it changes plan, changes logic, while when it remains on the plane of the keyboard, my brain has Difficult to integrate the brutal need to change gestures.

Passing on the same surface of the steep strike to the touch touching the touch Bar, it's as if in the dark, I walked into my room and suddenly collided with something soft and gooey. It will take me a long time to accustom myself to this strangeness (I do not look at my keyboard when I write, I'm like in the dark).

I just have trouble grasping the logic of Apple. When you look at the keyboard of the MAC, from the front to the back, we first have the huge trackpad, great, super sensitive Super pleasant, a sensual softness, then we switch to the keyboard, dry, violent, before switching to the Touch Bar which offers a third Sensitive experience, again all in voluptuousness. That's a lot of erogenous areas for a surface not larger than an A4 sheet.

The trackpad requires my hands to leave the keyboard. I have to back them up, which is enough to put me in another mode (all this without that I need my eyes). The Touch Bar does not give me the same feeling, since it is at the fingertips, as the function keys (and as it continually redraws, it systematically invokes the look). For me, the keyboard is the area of the touchdown alone. My eyes, I want them on the screen and not elsewhere (that's why a touch screen is possible).

I am very skeptical about this Touch Bar, especially seeing that at Ulysses they did not know what to do with it, if not to show me buttons to the keyboard shortcuts that I know by heart. All these icons even tend to distract me more than anything else. Gadgets that have nothing to do on a machine decked the moniker "Pro" (when we write, the Touch Bar suggests words like a phone, it's ridiculous, fortunately we can disable this function, looking good, because no specific setting For the Touch Bar).

I'm getting old, maybe I'm becoming resistant to change. The Touch Bar has at least the merit of having made me discover one of my tics. I was on Chrome reading a blog post. I wanted to click on a link, but it wasn't working. The mouse cursor flickered, then the MAC started to emit weird borborygmes. In desperation, I planted Chrome. A few minutes later, the same problem repeats itself. I need a good time to understand its origin.

When I read, my left hand rests on the keyboard, ready to intervene, it sometimes rests quite high, a finger accidentally placed on the Touch Bar, which, it, frightened, does not support the slightest touch.

I admit that with a little practice I should get to the new keyboard and the Touch Bar, remains that I am far from having the crush on my new machine, while I literally fell in love with my old MacBook Pro.

December 8,More doubt, when I'm working on this Mac, I quickly get headaches. The screen has something different from my old model, even when I adjust them exactly the same way, in brightness and definition. The new is very beautiful, but not for my eyes.
I'm very sensitive, I know. But when I open the same page on both screens, I can't help but experience a blur effect around the characters displayed on the new one, even though all the chroniclers have called this beautiful screen.

I may have an explanation for this phenomenon. My glasses have progressive lenses. So I have to lower my head in a particular way to be in my comfort zone on screen, and this screen is slightly lower than on the old model, which forces me to adjust my posture. For the moment, I have not succeeded, perhaps because I work on both machines side by side.

Another thing of the puzzle, the USB-C connectors plug in and go away with difficulty. Do they need a small break-in before they gain flexibility over traditional USB? In any case, the junction is so strong that it is not advisable to take the feet in the power cable (small pinch in the heart, because I liked the MagSafe with its magnet).

As for them, the perfs are not hair-raising. When I run Photoshop or InDesign, it goes faster, but not enough to change my life. I can feel that it's turning with a lot of fluidity, but not with the speed expected on a machine three years more recent.

Now my fingers have dragged back to the Touch Bar and my screen is gone in a spin even as I wrote (this text). I even managed to slip into the operation my Ulysses writing sheet in a mysterious folder, and I need a moment to find it. Something that never happened to me.
It's 2:00. I work on the kitchen table. The MAC has been disconnected for an hour, at most. I still have 4:15 of autonomy. I have to remake the addition, I am far from arriving at the ten hours announced by Apple. Promised, I did not do video game, nor video editing, I did not even watch video, I just recovered data from my NAS (and the machine is well hot). I find out later in the day that many users have battery problems. Maybe I should have disconnected the Wifi to arrive at ten o'clock!

After getting the kids back to school, I get stuck in front of the screen, but my ophthalmic migraine only makes increase, even though since noon I totally flipped on the new Mac.

I've already known that a couple of years ago with a Dell screen that blew my eyes off whatever the settings. I'm afraid it is so with this MacBook Pro 2016. I can accept his other flaws, I would have learned to live with, but if I continue to work on this machine I will hurt myself.

So I make a request to return. I have more than to print the label and switch to the Apple Store (I dine Tonight with friends in Montpellier, it will only take a little detour).

Balance sheet: Not impressed with the perfs, even if the machine is faster of course, very skeptical about the touch Bar, the touch Id why not (even if sometimes it fails to get the computer out of standby mode and still need to enter a password) , the trackpad is superb, the lightness appreciable, although when I want to be light I go out with my IPad Pro + keyboard + stylus, I then have to 0.5 kg (vs. 1.3 kg for the MacBook Pro 2016).

In conclusion, I would wait a year next generation, hoping that the keyboard and screen will be more to my liking.

9 DecemberI'm finishing this article on my old Mac. I feel the remnants of yesterday's ophthalmic migraine, but my eyes no longer suffer.

I am very annoyed by this case, totally subjective, impossible to prove. We're going to think I want to pay Apple for the fun. But no, I have two iPad, an iPhone, three Macs at home, and no problems with the other screens. Is it because it is brighter, it sends me more harmful radiation to the eyes?

I would soon have glasses with a blue light filter, maybe it will suffice to make me appreciate everything else the new screen of the MacBook Pro. I hope.

On the merits, I question Apple's strategy. Their rejection of the touch screen, the machine convertible type Yoga or Surface Book, is simply incomprehensible, except to want to keep the product ranges well separated, all that to make us pay more and more.

I've read Ive's answers about it, really not convincing. Apple is struggling to renew itself. We are still living on the Steve Jobs legacy. It will not last forever, especially for Pro users.
By the way, I still have the pulp of the fingers innerved after my two days spent on the MacBook Pro 2016.