Demaree vs MacBook Pro

I just got a brand-new 2016 MacBook Pro, with a Touch Bar, Thunderbolt 3, and all that goodness. I’ll be collecting my impressions here.

Dongles

Prior to unexpectedly getting this new work laptop — a dear colleague who had just upgraded decided to leave Adobe, and I’m inheriting his machine — I had just perfected my desk setup at work.

I have two 27" Dell displays: a P2715Q (the 4K model recommended by The Wirecutter) and a U2717D (the non-4K one they recommend), mounted on my desk with VESA arms and connected to my old laptop via Mini DisplayPort. I also use a ridiculous gaming mouse that connects via USB, which I have plugged in via a USB 3 hub.

All of these should work with the 2016 MBP, but of course, they all require adapters. If I were to replicate this exact setup on the new machine, I’d use all four USB-C ports (two displays, USB, plus power), because more than the fact that the new MBP has a whole new kind of port, it only has four of them, one of which has to be used to power the computer.

I have an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock pre-ordered that would solve all of this. It supports two 4K displays over DisplayPort, a whole bunch of USB devices, and powers the laptop, all over one Thunderbolt 3 wire. Unfortunately, until it ships I’ll need to get a little creative.

Since the non-4K display can connect over HDMI, I think I will use Apple’s multi-port adapter to connect it (plus USB and power). That’ll cover most everything, and to be honest having a big 4K Retina display is nice but not that nice. Part of me is considering just leaving it turned off until the Dock arrives.

That said, I also have a DisplayPort-to-USB-C cable arriving today, so I can just use that for the 4K display and get down to just two wires. That’s actually an improvement over my prior setup, which required four wires (MagSafe power, USB, two DisplayPorts).

This, BTW, is why I am more bullish than annoyed by the switch to USB-C. Once we’ve all made the adjustment, connecting to devices will be simpler and easier. Eventually, more display makers besides LG will make and sell 5K Thunderbolt displays; they’ll eventually be cheaper and better than what Apple would have made, just as my office Dell screens are better in most respects than the Apple Thunderbolt Display sitting on my desk at home. Having one standard port that does everything well while also being small and reversible is a total win for everyone, eventually. We just have to get over this hump.

Pro tips

Until TB or USB-C docks are shipping and have had some good testing by publications like Wirecutter, I’d say your best bets are to do what I’m doing (Apple’s multiport adapter is your friend) and/or to preorder one of the more reputable, name-brand docks. I pre-ordered OWC’s one (the successor to Wirecutter’s TB2 dock pick), but Lenovo also has a nice looking ThinkPad-branded one coming out, and their hardware is generally super solid.

If you aren’t connecting to a 4K display you’ve already bought, things are pretty simple: just use HDMI.

Likewise, if you are looking to buy a 4K display (and are on purpose not buying LG’s 5K one that Apple sells), some very good models offer HDMI 2.0, which is simpler to connect to MBPs via Apple’s adapter or some other port.

If you’re a weirdo like me and want/need multiple displays, note that you can often daisy-chain DisplayPort screens provided they’re all the same resolution. (If I had two 2715Qs or two 2717Ds, and not one of each, I could have done that.)

That Keyboard

Don’t get me started about keyboards. I have at least one of virtually every keyboard that’s been worth trying in the last few years. There are a few that are standbys, but one of the surest ways to get me interested in a new laptop or other gadget is to tell me it has some even slightly novel take on a keyboard.

My standby keyboards are either mechanicals—a WASD CODE with MX Clear switches on my desk at home, Razer’s Mechanical Keyboard Case for iPad Pro on my, um, iPad Pro—or have some useful Bluetooth-y functionality while still offering a good typing experience. I have an Apple Magic Keyboard (because of course I do) on my desk at my office, as well as a Logitech K811 which has a handy multi-switch feature allowing one to toggle between devices (Mac, iPad Pro, Surface Pro) with the press of a button.

So I’m in a pretty good position to evaluate whether a keyboard is good. And I’m willing to say, as I type on it now and having typed on it for a few days, that the new MacBook keyboard is a decent keyboard, with some quirks and flaws.

The main adjustment one has to make is that, like the little 12" MacBook keyboard before it, the new MacBook Pro keyboard has almost no travel. “Travel” is the distance a given key has to move in order to register a key press. Mechanical keyboards tend to have a lot of travel, which is good for thunder-typists like myself, whereas laptop and Bluetooth keyboards have much less travel. In my experience, the sweet spot for keyboard travel is when only a light-to-moderate press will trigger a key, but the key has a bit more travel than that, so that your typing is quieter, and your fingers get resistance from the key switches’ springiness and not from the bottom of the keyboard. The resistance is important, because it’s your best feedback from the keyboard that your key press worked.

The downside of a keyboard with little to no travel is that it’s less tactile-ly responsive, and it’s way too easy to hit keys too hard, causing them to slam against the bottom of the keyboard, which makes for a loud, annoying typing experience.

The MacBook keyboard would not be my first choice, because of the lack of travel. That said, any laptop keyboard is doomed to be sub-optimal in that department, and I think here Apple has built an ultra-thin keyboard that is nonetheless sensitive to anal-retentive typists’ needs.

It’s possible to type on it lightly enough that it is relatively quiet, and the sort-of-mechanical butterfly switches provide a subtle feedback that, once you’re used to it, is better than the rubbery membrane mechanism on the older MacBooks.

The only laptop-thin keyboard I’ve ever used that even sort of hit my criteria for goodness is the one on my Razer Mechanical Keyboard Case for iPad (also used on Razer’s Blade line of Windows laptops), and it’s still not perfect. The more I use the MacBook Pro keyboard, the more I get used to it—I’ve dialed down the amount of force I use to type, and also come to appreciate what passes for tactile feedback from this keyboard.

BTW, if anyone from Razer or Logitech are reading this: if you put low-profile mechanical switches in a Bluetooth multi-switching keyboard, I will buy it immediately. Price is no object.