Credit to Brandon Havard

I put my money down and treated myself to the newest MacBook Pro this year. I was very nervous (and excited) buying it because I heard about the problems with the 2016 MacBook Pros. After much consideration, I decided to bite the bullet and click buy, even though I did not really want to pay the asking price for it.

Details

The model I ended up buying was one has the following specs:

• 2017 Space Gray 15" MacBook Pro with Touchbar
• i7 7820HQ - 2.9 up to 3.9 GHz
• 16 GB RAM
• 512 GB SSD
• AMD Radeon Pro 560

This was more than I need, but there weren't any models with my exact needs available where I live, so I had to pay a bit more than I wanted.

My Background

I was not an Apple guy before buying this laptop. Besides an iPod Touch 2nd generation I had in second grade, I had not had much contact with Apple products before buying this laptop.

I go to school, do some development, freelance design and am part of an organization called AIESEC. I've had a windows machine as my work machine at home and at school for as long as I can remember. I've also built multiple gaming PC-s.

My reasoning for buying a Mac

As I already mentioned, the decision to buy a mac did not come easy. I looked for alternatives for a pretty long time before I decided to pull the trigger on buying a mac.
However, I did talk to a few people who had a mac and a few that switched from a windows machine to a mac. For the most part, I heard nothing but praise, so I felt more comfortable making the final decision.

From a pure need perspective, I needed:

• Reliability
• Long battery life
• Power to handle my daily tasks
• A good screen
• Option to easily turn it into a travelling workstation down the line

The MacBook seemed to fill all these criteria and then some, so I decided to finally go for it.

First Impressions

To say that I was excited when I got the package is a huge understatement. I was like a little kid opening a present, but the present was sent to myself by myself.

When I opened my present, I fell in love with the design of the device. It looked absolutely stunning and felt incredibly premium, something Apple is known for and it definitely rang true in this case.

The keyboard felt a little weird at first (more on this later) and the touchpad felt fantastic and predictable.

Thoughts

I've been using the MacBook as my daily driver for over a month now, coming from a dual monitor desktop. I genuinely think that out of everything in this post that I've mentioned, this is the most valuable piece of information, so let me say it again.

I went from a dual monitor windows desktop to a MacBook Pro and I prefer the laptop for most of my work now.

If you want to hear my thoughts in more detail, then keep reading, traveller.

Design

Simply excellent.

The device looks stunning, the feel is premium and is an eyecatcher for sure. For the coffee shop hipster, it's a superb choice of laptop. Nobody will question if the laptop is legit and they can instantly tell that "that person over there has the new one."

Screen

Bright. Crisp. Fantastic.

The best way I can describe the crispness is that my 21.5" 1080p monitor looks blurry now.
I love watching online content on the MacBook Pro's screen, the colours and contrast are fantastic on this screen.

Touchpad

Huge. Predictable. Tactile.

No other laptop comes even close to matching the MacBook Pro's touchpad and I think most people would agree with me on this.
It's fantastic, the acceleration is predictable, so that more often than not you will not miss what you're aiming for even if you're moving the cursor quickly.
In addition, it's huge, leaving you a lot of room to move the mouse around if you need to. As the touchpad is huge, you have more space to perform the gestures you need with less worry about running out of space.
Furthermore, the palm rejection is outstanding. I haven't had a single accidental click that I can remember in my month (and a bit) of usage, which is saying a lot.

Clicking on the touchpad feels extremely realistic and the ability to click everywhere on the massive touchpad is simply wonderful. The clicks feel tactile, you always know exactly when you haven't clicked, when you have clicked and when you have force clicked.

Keyboard

Tactile. Accurate. Annoying.

The keyboard is a mixed bag of feelings. People either hate it or love it. I happen to love it, coming from a Cherry MX Blue Ducky Shine 3 mechanical keyboard. The tactile click and bump feel fantastic to the point that the low key travel does not bother me one bit.
However, the low travel comes at a cost. The butterfly switches used in the MacBook Pro are susceptible to stickiness and can stop working very easily. In the second week of usage, I had a dust particle get under the N key, which didn't immediately affect the feel or functionality of the key. After one week though, the key suddenly stopped working unless I pressed down really hard on it or would press the key multiple times.
Apple's guide on how to clean the keyboard is often not a permanent solution either, leaving me scratching my head thinking how people should actually deal with this problem in a more permanent manner.

Touchbar (and TouchID)

Cool. Lots of potential. Fucking useless.

Although I don't use the function keys often, I think the touchbar was honestly a fairly useless addition outside of the controls for media, volume and screen brightness.
However, I think that the feature has lots of potential once developers figure out what the touchbar is good for (hint: slide to the left... slide to the right!).

On the slightly more positive hand, TouchID is a lovely addition. Unlocking the device has never been faster.

Speakers

Loud. Crisp. Good.

They're laptop speakers, so the bar isn't set exactly very high, but for being laptop speakers, they are very good. There is virtually no distortion even at loud volumes and they do get loud.

macOS

Simple. Intuitive.

I've been a Windows person all my life, having rare collisions with macOS. From what I had heard before switching, the OS is fairly good and simple to use, with a lot of the developer tools already built in.

MacOS was also a factor for me buying a MacBook Pro because a fair share of design software comes to macOS first or even exclusively just to macOS. So to have access to modern tools, macOS was quite an important factor, although it wasn't a make or break situation.

The port situation

Annoying. Understandable. Good.

I considered the port situation for a while before buying the laptop, but I realised that it would not affect me as much as it may affect some other people. I think that it's fantastic that I can charge my laptop from literally all four USB-C ports on the device. I didn't have a laptop at all before buying this one, so I also didn't have accessories that would have been out of date. So far I have bought just one adapter to connect my laptop to projectors/monitors via VGA and that's it.

Conclusion

Should you go buy the MacBook Pro 15" 2017? Probably not, unless you are picky about what you like. It's overpriced and most certainly not worth the money unless you can justify the cost to yourself. Unless you need macOS-specific tools, you do not need a MacBook Pro.

If you're thinking about buying a MacBook Pro and have the money to burn, then yes, I absolutely would recommend the machine to you.