Pebble is the indie band of smartwatches. Ever since the startup company of the same name launched its record-breaking Kickstarter campaign four years ago, it has attracted an enthusiastic fan base of early adopters. The watches tend to look like toys, but they’re durable and water resistant, with week-long battery life. And Pebble’s homegrown, open-source software and competitive pricing have won it plenty of fans.
But it’s hard to grow a niche business, and Pebble knows that. So the company has decided to shift focus a little bit, and is now emphasizing one particular feature on its newer watches: health and fitness tracking.
I know, I know: not another one.
The new Pebble 2, which went on sale earlier this month, comes in two models: a $99 base model, and a $130 version that has sensors on its underside for tracking heart rate. The latter will record your heart rate continuously throughout the day and while you’re exercising.
The Pebble 2 also has a workout option, tracking runs, walks, and generic workouts; and even if you don’t use the workout function, the smartwatch will automatically know when you’ve started ramping up your activity levels.
The result is… well, it’s not a very good workout tracker. It’s good at passively tracking your movements throughout the day, but I wouldn’t say this puts Pebble in the category of fitness wearables. You can’t see much of your workout data on the watch itself, and it’s hard to find recorded exercise sessions in the Pebble mobile app. More importantly, my tests of Pebble 2’s heart rate tracking showed dismal results.
But as crazy as it sounds, if you love the earlier Pebble watches, you might still like the Pebble 2. Here’s why.
The Pebble 2 looks just different enough from the original Pebble to justify an upgrade. It’s a polycarbonate watch with a 1.26-inch, black-and-white e-paper display with a Gorilla Glass lens. The display isn’t touch-sensitive; Pebble has always designed its watches with physical buttons, and this one is no exception.
SLEEKER THAN THE ORIGINAL PEBBLE, BUT STILL ANGULAR IN ITS DESIGN
It’s thinner than the original Pebble, and perhaps more notably, it has a smaller bezel than the first-generation watch, which makes the display seem larger even though it’s not. It’s also water-resistant up to 30 meters, and has a built-in microphone, something that is new to the entry-level line of Pebbles. This is so you can respond to text messages on your wrist with your voice, although there are some limitations with this on iOS, namely that it only works with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile phones and you have to remember to register your number in the Pebble app first.
I can appreciate the hardware changes with the Pebble 2, but still prefer the design of the sleeker Pebble Time or Pebble Time Round (both of which run Pebble’s Health software, by the way, which means they do all of the same health tracking minus the heart rate sensors). There is something undeniably more elegant about both of those, more ready-for-dinner than the Pebble 2, which I found myself taking off sometimes just because I didn’t like its angular looks. Also, the one-size-fits-all strap that comes with the Pebble 2 was too big for me.
But if you flip the more expensive Pebble 2 over you’ll notice another hardware addition: optical heart rate sensors. These flashing green lights aren’t new to anyone who has worn a Fitbit Charge HR or Apple Watch or Moto 360 watch before, but they’re new to Pebble, and they’re part of a larger effort around health tracking.
Pebble’s efforts started with the rollout of a Health app late last year. The company’s approach is a little different from that of other tech companies making health-tracking wearables. Pebble veered away from the "10,000 steps" metric that many others use as a kind of baseline goal; the watch shows wearers a variable step count instead. Pebble also based its activity-tracking software on an algorithm that was developed by a Stanford University PhD candidate in neuroscience. The idea, Pebble explained, is that this algorithm will eventually become public as it’s used in ongoing health research and published in white papers, unlike the proprietary (and very private) algorithms used by most other wearable makers.
PEBBLE'S ACTIVITY NOTIFICATIONS STRIKE THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN IGNORABLE AND ANNOYING
And the reason why your daily step goals are constantly changing, rather than striving for "10K" every day, is because Pebble wants people to use their own personal bests as guideposts rather than an arbitrary number. Just now, I received a notification that my steps today were 11 percent below my normal Monday number of 8,031 steps. Thursdays tend to be pretty good for me; Sundays, not so much. Pebble takes the same approach with sleep-tracking, if you trust wrist wearables to record your sleep.
Pebble now does automatic exercise tracking, too. Even if you don’t use the Workout option on the Pebble 2 (accessible from the middle button on the side of the watch), the watch will still give you a digital thumbs-up for getting off your butt.
This has been my favorite feature of Pebble’s relatively new health features. Whether I went for a hike, walked to dinner, or hustled across town for a meeting, the Pebble 2 watch would show me notifications like, "Enjoying the great outdoors? You just walked for 26 minutes!" when I was done. This kind of passive tracking is something that a lot of wearables are doing now, but few achieve the right balance between ignorable and annoying. Pebble strikes that balance.
But the heart rate tracking on the Pebble 2 was inconsistent with the readings I got from a Polar chest strap during workouts, which consisted almost entirely of indoor cycling sessions.
When the chest strap reading was 156 beats per minute, the Pebble read 121bpm. When it was 153bpm, Pebble said my heart rate was 136bpm. And so on. I asked Pebble about these discrepancies, and a spokesperson said it should work great during high-intensity workouts, including cycling. The company also suggested, as many do, that movement of the watch on my wrist could impact the readings, but the Pebble was pretty snug on my wrist and I wasn’t pumping my arms on the bike the way I might while running.
DISMAL HEART RATE TRACKING
Even when I wasn’t working out, I observed some bizarre readings, like a heart rate of 195 beats per minute when I was asleep at 3AM last Sunday. I wasn’t awake then, as far as I know; I only saw this later on in the Health section of Pebble’s mobile app. It’s possible that my hardware was defective, but I haven’t had the chance to try yet another loaner watch yet.
Aside from Pebble's health features, the smartwatch’s software is mostly the same as it has been on Pebble for awhile. There’s a Timeline feature that gives you quick access to your day’s events just by pressing on the bottom button on the right-hand side of the watch. There’s a Quick Launch option that lets you program the physical buttons as shortcuts to your favorite apps.
And the Pebble 2’s battery life lasted somewhere between five and six days on a single charge, so it’s consistent with previous Pebbles.
YOU'LL STILL LOVE YOUR PEBBLE
If you disregard the heart rate tracking — and that’s something I would very rarely suggest doing when it’s a key feature of a new product — the Pebble 2 is actually a good little smartwatch. It’s improved over the first Pebble: it’s thinner, with a much smaller bezel and an added microphone. Its battery life is still longer than most smartwatches. It reliably showed me notifications from my smartphone. And it’s far less expensive than an Apple Watch or similarly equipped Android Wear watch.
I still can’t get behind Pebble’s design choices, nor do I trust the heart rate tracking right now. And I can’t help but think that if Pebble is going to grow up, its aesthetics and functionality are going to have to evolve along with it. But that’s like saying that indie band with a cult following should grow up and go mainstream. The point is, Pebble’s most ardent fans don’t really want that.
LG’s V20 is an Android phone I’d recommend to people who insist on having one of the device’s four cornerstone features: a replaceable battery, elaborate manual video camera controls, excellent audio recording capabilities, or a hi-fi headphone listening experience. If you don’t need anything from that list in your next smartphone — and a lot of people don't — you’re better off buying a Google Pixel XL or iPhone 7 Plus.
For upwards of $800 depending on where you buy it, the V20 is priced to compete with the very best phones on the market right now. But it just doesn’t. To be clear, it’s fairly good at what LG designed it to excel at. It’s a gadget for Android nerds and checks all the boxes on high-end specs, build quality, display (yes, there’s still a tiny second screen on the front), and performance. It ditches the modularity gimmick that quickly fizzled out with the G5, and the design is a little classier and safer than the rubber-clad V10 from last year. But it’s also a very big phone — too big, honestly — with ugly software, no water resistance, and a lack of the cohesion that makes Apple and Google smartphones feel so excellent.
The V20’s design is a big departure and do-over from the rubberized back and steel rails of the V10. That phone looked pretty unique, but LG plays it way safer this time. Up front is a 5.7-inch QHD LCD display, with the second screen above it at the upper right. The screen is LCD, so it’s not as punchy or saturated as the Pixel or Galaxy S7 Edge. And that’s fine, since some people dislike the exaggerated colors produced by OLED displays. But LG’s LCD isn’t as impressive or well-calibrated as the iPhone 7, and it also lacks the expanded color range that gives that phone added vibrancy. It’s fine, but feels a little average for the V20’s high cost.
My main problem with the V20’s design is the device’s sheer size. I’ve found myself doing hand gymnastics and adjusting my grip with this phone more than any other in recent memory — and I’ve got enormous hands.
It’s slightly taller (6.28 inches) and equally as wide (3.07 inches) as the iPhone 7 Plus, which is already oversized compared to the competition. It’s lighter than the iPhone, though, probably thanks to the plastic materials used at the top and bottom of the phone. The removable rear battery door is aluminum, with cutouts for a fingerprint sensor and dual-camera setup at the top. LG chose this mixed design to preserve the impressive drop endurance of the V10 and its MIL-STD-810G rating. But the result is a phone that doesn’t feel quite as sleek as other flagships or even something like the OnePlus 3. It's also not water resistant — likely because of that swappable battery. You can feel the seams that separate the various pieces of the V20, and again, it’s a chore to use one-handed — even with software features that can shrink down whatever you’ve got on-screen.
The fingerprint sensor is actually a button since it also doubles as the V20’s power button. Instead of pushing down, you can just rest your finger on it to unlock the phone, which I prefer since the button’s clickiness is pretty unsatisfying and a bit cheap. There’s no raise-to-wake for activating the display, but double-tapping it is a quick way to turn it on and off again. At the bottom is a headphone jack, speaker, and USB-C port, with volume toggles on the phone’s left side and a button on the right that releases the back shell if you want to swap batteries or add a microSD card (up to 2TB).
NO ONE HAND CAN COMFORTABLY HOLD ALL THAT POWER
The 2.1-inch secondary screen is brighter than last year’s. It’s where your notifications will pop up, and you can also swipe between various screens: favorite apps (up to 5), quick tools (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, flashlight, etc.), and media controls. The other two functions, signature (literally just a line of text) and recent apps, I find to be completely gimmicky. It’s just easier to use the app switcher for multitasking. You can turn off whatever second screen features you don’t find useful or just disable the whole thing to stick with the primary display. I left it on and put everyday utilities like 1Password and Authy up there, but the second screen remains in a position that’s completely out of reach in most cases, so I rarely found myself tapping it. By default it stays on when the bigger screen is off, putting the time, date, and battery status a quick glance away.
If the outside is a little bland, LG at least put flagship hardware inside the V20. It’s got a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, and either 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage. LG has made a big deal about the Quad DAC system built into the V20 that’s meant to produce incredible headphone listening for audiophiles or anyone with a high-quality music library. Frankly, I didn’t notice much difference between this and Apple Lossless files played back on my iPhone. I’m sure it makes a very real difference if you’re plugging in headphones that smartphones normally struggle to drive. But the V-Moda M100s I’ve got don’t face that problem, and if you’re using Bluetooth headphones, the DAC setup won’t add anything extra; it’s only for wired connections.
One thing I do love about the V20 is its array of three high AOP microphones. LG designed the system to record anything from voice memos or quiet guitar practice in your bedroom to a live rock concert without any audio distortion or clipping. And it works great. The V20’s HD Audio Recorder app handles these special recordings, and you’re able to capture at lossless, hi-res 24-bit audio quality. This microphone setup is super cool; when you’re listening back, it’s very immersive — almost like 3D audio.
THE BEST PHONE IF YOU'RE THAT PERSON WHO RECORDS EVERYTHING AT CONCERTS
The rear camera carries over the same two-lens approach we saw in the G5 earlier this year. The first is a standard angle, 16-megapixel camera with an aperture of f/1.8 (meaning this is the one to use in low light), and the other is a very wide angle 8-megapixel shooter with f/2.4 aperture and a smaller (1/4-inch) image sensor. You get a really cool 135-degree field of view with the wide angle lens, which lets the V20 capture shots that other phones simply can’t pull off. That’s a fantastic thing to have when traveling, for example, but gaining that unique perspective means settling for a drop in image quality. Even with the regular lens, I’d rate the V20’s photo output as good, but not at all great. Optical image stabilization helps in low light, HDR shots look good, and white balance is spot on. But colors can be oversaturated, and noise reduction is way too aggressive in some environments, giving images a weird Prisma-like oil painting effect that I’ve encountered on previous LG phones. You can eliminate that issue by shooting in RAW, but other devices like the Galaxy S7, Pixel, iPhone 7, and HTC 10 produce better out-of-camera shots without requiring expert settings.
For those who do like to take total control, LG’s camera app offers robust manual options. A standout feature from other phones is that these precise controls also extend to video; you can tell the V20 to record video (either 1080p or 4K) at a higher bitrate than normal, or even focus the microphones in a certain direction — in front of or behind the phone. It’s really fun to just mess around and play with this stuff. The V20’s video stabilization isn’t the best, but if you had a stabilizer like the DJI Osmo, I could see this being a really useful creation tool for video. You can record lossless audio alongside your video clip so that you won't lose quality when editing later. As for the 5-megapixel selfie camera shoots at a very wide angle as well, just like Samsung’s phones, though you can switch to a closer framing that basically just crops the image. One last note about the camera: there’ve been some reports about the glass that covers the rear cameras unexpectedly cracking. That hasn't happened with my review device, but LG does include a layer of protective film on the glass (with cutouts for the lenses) that's surprisingly difficult to remove. It might be worth just leaving that on if you're concerned about damage.
Back when LG announced the V20, the company made a big deal out of the fact that it’d be the first phone to ship with Android 7 Nougat out of the box. That’s true in most countries, but here in the US, Google’s own Pixel phones technically beat it onto store shelves with a newer version of Android. So much for that selling point. Sure, the V20 offers Nougat’s headlining features like split-screen multitasking, improved Doze battery management, new emoji, and bolstered security. But LG is making some very strange, poorly thought out decisions with its own Android customizations. The most baffling of those is the launcher, which completely throws away the traditional app drawer and requires you to find a spot (or folder) for every installed app somewhere on the home screen. You can restore the app drawer in settings, but it should be there from the start. This forced approach of trying to make Android feel more like iOS just doesn’t work, and companies like LG and Huawei need to stop doing it.
Elsewhere, LG’s interface changes are mostly inoffensive, but they result in a phone that feels less smooth than the Pixel. Worse still, the carrier bloatware situation is completely out of control on this device. There are over a dozen AT&T apps on my review unit, and apparently Sprint’s version of the V20 ships without some of LG’s own software. Verizon also strips out certain settings. The fact that this phone’s user experience can vary to such an unpredictable degree based on where you buy it is really, really unfortunate. Even the prices don’t make sense. How can Verizon sell this phone for $672 while AT&T wants $829?
THE V20 IS GREAT FOR CREATING, BUT JUST OKAY AS A PHONE
The V20 is able to run Android’s best apps and games without any hiccups, but it’s everywhere else that things get weird. As for battery life, it falls short of other phablets like the Pixel XL and iPhone 7 Plus, but if you’re eyeing this phone, you’ll probably have no problem carrying a spare battery in your pocket. In that case, sure, swapping batteries will get you way longer endurance than pretty much any other phone except for maybe the Moto Z Play. There's no wireless charging, but because it supports Quick Charge 3.0, the V20 refills very quickly when plugged in.
The LG V20 just doesn’t hit the mark for me. I’m a big fan of its audio recording capabilities, but after more than a week with the phone, that and the wide angle camera remain my favorite things about it — and there’s not much else. I’ve been using a Pixel XL alongside this and LG’s effort just doesn’t match up. Google's first phone reminds us of the wonderful complete package that's possible from a company with unified control over everything. The V20 can't do that, so instead it tries to appeal to power users with specialized hardware and, yes, some lingering gimmicks. I think it's possible for LG to pull that off with focus, precision, and a rethinking of software. This phone isn't that, but if those niche functions it does well fit your needs, there's not anything else quite like it.
If you’re a fan of Apple laptops, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news: Apple has finally updated its Pro laptop line with some genuinely new and powerful options. Even better, the new MacBook Pro has been shrunken down to the degree of serving as the MacBook Air’s spiritual successor, which is what many of us had been hoping for all along. The bad news? Apple isn’t just giving, it’s also taking away.
At first blush, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, sans fancy Touch Bar, looks like the perfect replacement for my aged MacBook Air from 2013. It’s the thinnest and lightest Pro ever, and it provides the display and performance upgrades my three-year-old laptop has been in desperate need of. Costing $1,499, it sits right in the middle between Apple’s $1,299 MacBook and the new $1,799 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar and four Thunderbolt ports. It’s like the Air, in that it bridges the gap between Apple’s most portable and most powerful mobile computers, but it does so in an interesting new way.
Without the much-ballyhooed additions of Touch Bar interactions and Touch ID on the pricier new MacBook Pro models — which won’t be shipping for weeks — this more basic MBP is essentially the professionalization of the 12-inch MacBook. It’s a bigger and significantly more powerful version of that super-thin machine. More of a pro MacBook than a MacBook Pro.
Why does it feel more like a MacBook? Well, just look at it. The familiar MagSafe charger is gone, retired along with Apple’s SD card reader, HDMI output, and old-school USB ports. This $1,499 MacBook Pro strips connectivity down to just a headphone jack on its right side and two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 on the left. That’s it. You also get the new option to style it out in a handsome space gray and an upgraded version of the MacBook’s super flat butterfly-mechanism keyboard. All of this, along with the solid-state Force Touch trackpad, expresses Apple’s modernized laptop design, whose signature change is the frenzied push of USB-C as the unitary replacement for all the world’s ports. Apple is determined to force the future into existence, and this laptop is just the next logical step.
Logical though it may be for Apple, this MacBook Pro presents a dichotomy. Professional video editors and photographers have been waiting for a new Pro laptop — but this midrange MacBook Pro probably isn’t that. Instead, the world’s coffee shops are filled with nomadic professionals seeking an Apple computer to replace the much more ubiquitous, but now dated, MacBook Air. So while Apple has been busy crafting the Pro MacBook, the way it will be received by most people is the way that I’m addressing it today: as a Pro MacBook Air.
The MacBook Air kicked off the ultrabook trend among laptops before Intel even coined that term. Its familiar wedge shape has been copied by almost everyone, and it has served as a benchmark for thinness, battery life, and industrial design in its category. But the Air design hasn’t changed in six long years. In the meantime, Lenovo’s Yoga laptops reinvented the hinge, Dell’s XPS 13 reinvented the display, Razer reinvented the keyboard, and Microsoft reconfigured our entire idea of a laptop. The Air once stood alone as an ultra-portable with negligible compromises, but now there’s competition, and the Air has fallen dramatically behind with its anachronistic, washed-out screen.
So Apple’s first task is to simply get its slimmest 13-inch laptop back on par with its Windows rivals. And it all starts with the industrial design.
The new MacBook Pro is precision engineering at its absolute finest. Run your finger along the spartan, portless side of this laptop and you won’t detect even a millimeter’s discrepancy between the bottom chassis and the top lid. They are two separate parts, but when the MacBook Pro is closed, they feel like one cohesive, solid slab of aluminum. The final vestiges of plastic on the exterior have been shorn off, replaced by a metal bottom to the display and a sapphire glass Apple logo that no longer lights up. Yes, this is very much the MacBook design scaled up.
(One advantage to the new Apple logo is that you’ll no longer see its ghostly presence on your screen when there’s a strong light behind your laptop. That used to frustrate me on sunny days with the Air, and it felt like a distinctly un-Apple-like oversight in the overall design.)
The interior of the new MacBook Pro is another spot that will be familiar to MacBook users, but largely foreign to everyone else. The keyboard’s keys seem to have been melted down into millimeter-thick slabs: they’re wider and a little more densely packed than on an Air or earlier Pro models. I found them alien at first, but once I stopped "testing the keyboard" and just started typing naturally, I found my rhythm and was quickly up to full speed — after a while, these larger keys start to feel like big input islands that are hard to miss. Their key travel is a shallow 0.55mm, which won’t be to everyone's taste, but this updated MBP keyboard definitely has a better feel than the practically flat one on the MacBook.
Apple’s touchpad on this year’s MacBook Pro is something special. It spans the entire height of the wrist rest and half the width. It’s enormous, limousine-sized, and seemingly excessive, but I love it. The vastness of this thing means it’s alwayswithin easy reach, and because it’s built using Force Touch — simulating the tactile response of a click without ever moving — I can click the top of it in a way that I can’t do with the mechanical switch of my MacBook Air. I also like this new touchpad for the sheer visual appeal: compared to older versions, it looks like a display that’s had its bezels removed; like cutting-edge, space-maximizing technology. Not being mechanical also means it’ll stay this way for years, whereas my Air’s more conventional trackpad has developed a slight creaking habit.
Compared to my MacBook Air, the new Pro has a much smaller footprint, yet feels larger and more accommodating in use. That's mostly thanks to the touchpad, but the larger keys on the keyboard also help. The display’s bezels are vastly thinner and with the stereo speakers sitting either side of the keyboard, Apple has basically left no wasted space on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. There’s even a double-wide Escape key, perhaps to make up for its loss on the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.
I’m writing this entire review on the 2016 MacBook Pro and I frankly don’t want to go back to typing on my Air. It’s a universally better experience. If you were still harboring reservations about either the flatter keyboard or artificially clicking touchpad of the MacBook, this new MBP is sure to allay them in a hurry.
The absolute biggest upgrade for any Air user will be the display. The new Pro’s 2560 x 1600 display is gorgeous, from literally any angle, and it matches the wider color gamut of the latest iPhone 7 models and Apple’s 5K iMac. Even for existing MacBook Pro users, this is a nice step up in contrast and brightness (now 500 nits versus the prior model’s 300), both of which are 67 percent higher. Apple may be killing us softly with all these incremental upgrades, but they really do add up to a supremely well-designed machine.
THE SAME WIDE COLOR GAMUT AS ON THE 5K IMAC AND IPHONE 7, NOW ON A LAPTOP
Beside its great build quality and fantastic display, the new MacBook Pro also performs superbly. I am swiping between desktops and darting in and out of heavy-duty apps like Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop with perfect ease and fluidity. The external polish is very much matched by the internal performance, and I struggle to imagine scenarios where anyone would feel constrained by this, the so-called entry-level, Pro laptop. It’s not a cheap computer by any means, so you should expect nothing less, of course.
I would go further and say that if you’re not involved in high-volume, high-resolution photo or video processing, you should just stick with the basic 2GHz Core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM. Anything else would be overkill for most people.
Any doubts about why this new MacBook Pro exists while being so similar to the MacBook should really be extinguished by its performance. The Pro has a much more powerful processor and smoother graphics to go along with a significantly improved keyboard and a titanic trackpad. The MacBook is still the better computer to take on a flight with you, but the MacBook Pro approaches its level of portability while offering vastly more power and a longer-lasting battery.
It’s at this point that I would have expected to be able to say to Air users that they can stop reading and should just go buy the new MacBook Pro. But Apple’s futurism has expressed itself in less advantageous ways, too. The Cupertino company has both given and taken away.
Vjeran Pavic
For starters, the SD card slot is gone from the new MacBook Pro. A company that built up its entire product line on the adulation and money of professional photographers is now turning its back on them and blowing up the best bridge between the tools of their trade: camera and laptop. Without an SD card slot in the computer, we’re left having to tote an adapter everywhere ($50 when bought from Apple), or buying a USB-C cable for our cameras ($30), or relying on entirely unreliable wireless transfer apps. Maybethat’s fine on the MacBook, but it’s not okay on the MacBook Pro.
Apple’s solution for everything cabled is now a combined Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C port, of which the company provides two on the Touch Bar-deprived MacBook Pro I am reviewing. Is there any technical reason why this computer couldn’t have four, like the $1,799 model with a Touch Bar? Nope, it all comes down to price. Two USB-C ports are still double the number I’d get on a MacBook, but they’re both on the left side of the MBP and are compatible with nothing I own other than, amusingly, my Android phones.
The cool thing about the pricier MacBook Pros is that they split their USB-C ports evenly, two on each side, and since you can use any one of them to charge, that lets you pick which side to plug the charger into. I’ve always thought that an underrated advantage of Google’s Chromebook Pixel, but in Apple’s world, $1,499 is apparently not enough to unlock ambidextrous convenience. The MacBook Pro does have a headphone jack, unlike the new iPhone 7, but that’s hardly a consolation since buying the two devices together would mean either carrying around two sets of headphones or always having yet another dongle with you.
Apple has chosen one unifying port for everything that plugs into the Mac, and it has one unifying port for everything connecting to the iPhone. But the problem is that they’re not the same port. If I want to plug an iPhone into my MacBook Pro, I’ll need a dongle or a new cable ($25 from Apple), and neither is provided with either Macs or iPhones. And there’s no interchanging iPad peripherals with MacBook Pro ones, even as the two devices continue along a path toward converging into one.
If I want to connect an external hard drive to back up my MacBook Pro data, I’ll need a USB adapter ($19).
If I want to plug into Ethernet because the Wi-Fi around me sucks, I’ll need a newdongle ($35), different from those already in existence for prior MacBooks.
If I want to connect to an external display or projector to do a work presentation, I’ll have to choose between the VGA dongle ($40) or the AV multiport dongle that includes HDMI ($69).
If I bought into Apple’s previous Thunderbolt promotions and have any Thunderbolt accessories, those will need an adapter, too ($49).
You can find most — if not all — of these adapters for less money than what Apple is charging. But many people won’t bother. And for those who do, the quality and consistency of USB-C hubs leaves a lot to be desired right now.
Stare long enough into the immaculate, minimalist symmetry of that pair of USB-C ports, and you too might perceive the alluring future of personal computers. The future. But we live in a present where Windows XP is still widely used by businesses resistant to change. A world where the aforementioned VGA port is still the likeliest way to get visuals off your laptop in a boardroom meeting. And that thing’s almost as old as I am!
Apple is forcing me to accept the loss of compatibility with USB sticks, USB drives, USB Ethernet adapters, HDMI cables, and, most painfully, MagSafe chargers, all because it’s decided to be impatient about the future. I’m not disputing the advantages of standardizing around USB-C, but I question how fast others will follow Apple’s lead here — MacBooks don’t have quite the same industry-wide influence as iPhones — and in turn how quickly this inconvenience will disappear for people like me. Apple could have at least kept the SD card slot alive, as a gesture to some of its most loyal fans and to ease the transition.
The MagSafe charger has been another mainstay of Apple laptops for years, latching magnetically into place with ease and disconnecting just as easily should the power cable get yanked away. Its plug has an LED light that indicates charging status. It gently decouples from the laptop without needing your intervention. It’s kind of perfect.
In its place, Apple’s new USB-C connector is hard to pull out and requires actual attention while doing so. There’s no charging indicator, either — though there is a little jingle, just as with your phone, when the charger is successfully connected. This change is good in that it moves Apple to a broader industry standard, but bad in that it downgrades the convenience and ease of use of the entire laptop.
Vjeran Pavic
Battery life on this new MacBook Pro doesn’t rival the Air’s 12 hours, but it does achieve Apple’s claimed 10 hours. I’m a writer, so my typical use may be a bit more forgiving than other professionals, however I keep seeing a perfect match between remaining percentage and hours of battery life left: 56 percent equals five and a half hours, 22 percent will get me two and a quarter hours, and so on. Apple seems to have very deliberately targeted 10 hours as its goal and benchmark. You can expect to get less if you throw some intensive photo or video editing at this MacBook Pro, but I have little to no worries about the battery; it lasts a consistently long time. And don’t forget that you’re getting a more productive machine: editing photos on the Air’s old and faded display was essentially color guesswork, whereas Apple’s new laptop would delight photographers if only it offered them a way to get their photos onto the damn thing.
While the display, build quality, and looks of the new MacBook Pro are beyond reproach, they’re no longer beyond the competition. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a spectacular OLED display. Dell’s XPS 13 has great battery life and design. HP’s EliteBook Folio has a hinge that folds out to a full 180 degrees, whereas Apple’s laptops have always been limited to opening to a little bit beyond vertical. Razer’s Blade Stealth has a 4K touchscreen, Thunderbolt 3, and the latest seventh-gen Intel processors, whereas Apple is still using sixth-gen chips. Why does any of that matter? It matters because this new MacBook Pro’s compromises are large enough to make me, a loyal and satisfied MacBook user for seven years, look outside the cozy confines of Apple’s ecosystem. Apple has built a beautiful computer with all the upgrades I wanted, but it’s taken away things that I actually need, and now I’m looking elsewhere.
To Apple’s credit, there’s no single Windows laptop that yet matches all of the MacBook line’s key strengths — touchpad ergonomics, battery life, display, and industrial design — but Apple’s changes have now created an opportunity that didn’t exist before. All a Windows vendor needs to do to convince me is to build something as good as a MacBook and then top it off with a simple SD card slot. macOS isn’t as major an advantage as it used to be, especially for someone like me whose professional life revolves around Google and Adobe’s cloud services.
When it launched the MacBook in 2015, Apple wasn’t shy about claiming it had reinvented the laptop. With the benefit of some hindsight, I’d argue Apple only reinvented its own product line. Copycat designs have arisen, as they always do, but the MacBook’s biggest impact so far has been within Apple’s walled-in ecosystem. We can see more of the new MacBook’s DNA in the new MacBook Pro than original MacBook Pro features. This is just the way Apple laptops are made now and we can either learn to like it or go elsewhere.
And that, frankly, is the problem here. Apple is trying to return to its old habit of dragging us forward into the future like a wild-eyed inventor, but this time it might have cut a little too deep into present-day functionality while trying to promote tomorrow’s technology. Apple could have been a major trailblazer for USB-C even while retaining a classic USB port and a photographer-friendly SD card slot. I don’t think those things would have disrupted the MacBook Pro’s scrupulously perfected proportions or Apple’s bottom line too much.
I don’t know if I’ll be buying this MacBook Pro, in spite of its superb design and performance, and that’s surprising to me.
There’s no doubt that this is the best computer for current MacBook Air owners to upgrade to, should they be unwilling or uninterested in giving Windows or Chrome OS a shot. I’m also confident that this 13-inch MacBook Pro is a better, more versatile, functional, and powerful laptop than the 12-inch MacBook, so I’d recommend spending the extra cash if those are your only choices. Having used Apple’s Touch Bar on the more expensive MacBook Pros, I’d say that’s an intriguing and nicely executed addition, but the price for those models is really quite silly right now.
But think carefully before you decide that you’re irrevocably locked into the Apple ecosystem. If its future is going to be characterized by such hostile decisions as the removal of the headphone jack from the iPhone or the scything off of the beloved MagSafe and SD card slot from laptops, maybe Apple isn’t your best friend anymore. Can this company continue to claim it’s looking out for its users’ best interests while discarding some of their most necessary tools?
The new MacBook Pro is as beautiful and desirable as ever, but using it is alienating to anyone living in the present. I agree with Apple’s vision of the future. I’m just not buying it today.
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