The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review embargo is apparently over. From Review: Apple's late-2016 15" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar:

The 15 inch model has two base configurations: the first ($2399) using a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Skylake (6700HQ) with 6MB shared L3 cache...

If that's right, and I'm a little surprised to see it, the $2400 entry-level 15" MacBook Pro has exactly the same processor my $850 Lenovo Y700 has.

Wow. I got 15" MacBook Pro internals over half a year earlier for a third of the price. Okay, okay, my battery life STINKS and the keyboard & trackpad aren't nearly as nice as the MBP's likely are, but wow. The Touch Bar & Force Trackpad simply aren't worth $1500 to me.

YMMV, of course.

<rant>But this is why I hate articles like this one that ended up on DaringFireball:

On the 27th October Apple unveiled their new line of MacBook Pros. Since then half of what I read online seems to be “Professionals” (those guys), telling me it’s not Pro at all, not Pro enough or not the right kind of Pro. How many of these people have even touched the new devices?

Very few.

I’ve been using the new 15” MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) for the last week or so for actual work, so here’s my “Professional” opinion.

Oh, like I have to touch it to know it's really worth an extra $1500. (Even more ironic now that we know I've been using the MBP 15"'s processor for six months.) Or that fact that it works great today means that it's a good deal and well spec'd out. Would you rather buy a brand new box in two years and still have spent $700+ less than you would have buying a MBP today, or would you rather be stuck with something that's already debatably underspec'd for the next three or four years?

So what is he doing?

From co.uk:

I’m an editor at Trim Editing in London, where we cut high end commercials, music videos and films. We’re a small company and choose individually what we want to edit with. I happen to use Final Cut Pro X (If you’d like to debate with me endlessly about the Pro’ness of FCP X, you can do that here) So I’m in a good position to try out the new devices and see what they are/aren’t capable of.

Oh, oh good. Video editing. With Final Cut Pro. Yes, I'll readily admit the MacBook Pro is a better box for FCP users than a Windows box. /sigh

I understand that if money's no object (and nowhere does that review mention "price" or "$"), this is a great computer. Would I like my Lenovo to have a great keyboard, insanely great trackpad, more battery life, and a fancy function key replacement bar? Yes, yes I would. But I do worry about price. We all should. Heck, imagine the amorphous "good" you could do donating $1500 somewhere. If you have to use Final Cut Pro, well, there's no conversation to have. But FPC !== Pro, kk?

Or this...

From Daring Fireball:

MacRumors forum member, in the first comment after the announcement of new MacBook Pros:

Well, I’m sure I’ll be attacked for this, but I’m gonna say it anyway:

Tiny harddrive, barely enough RAM (and not upgradable to the “enough” level), no dedicated graphics, only dual-core processors. It certainly isn’t bad, but Apple just took the “pro” out of the 13-inch line. And come on - it’s freaking expensive. […]

The 13” is NOT a pro device in my opinion. It’s more like a beefed-up and slightly heavier MacBook Air. For that, it just costs way too much.

This isn’t a new comment. This was posted 4 years ago, in response to the last major MacBook Pro redesign. Déjà vu. (Via.)

Clever. Sooooo the reaction's been the same for two generations (at least) of MBP. As if that made the overall lack of Mac updates bearable. If anything, it just reminds me that the Mac Tax returned earlier than I gave it credit for. Why am I waiting years to get a new processor in a mini or Pro again?

Look, if you need macOS to do your work, I get it. This $2400 beast is your new laptop. If your work is OS agnostic, the chasm just keeps growing. Stick with Windows or Linux and enjoy your fat wallet.</rant>

Labels: business, gruber, hats of money, macbook pro