A new Mac
I recently wrote about why I don’t want to upgrade my Mac right now. But last Saturday, it stopped working again due to that graphics card issue and is in for repair once more. So, I had to buy a new one, because I couldn’t afford to go without my computer for close to two weeks. And I also wanted something reliable again.
I decided on a current 13-inch MacBook Pro, with a 2.3 GHz Quad-Core i5, 16 GB of RAM, an 1 TB SSD, the Touch Bar and a keyboard with German layout.
I bought it refurbished, because that was the only option to get something fitting within two days. Plus, the price was nice. Which luckily means, concern No.2 from my previous post is lessened. But the other points are still a concern for me.
Anyhow, here are some initial observations:
- The new high-resolution display is absolutely gorgeous (and True-Tone seems nice as well)!
- The trackpad is super nice. Annoyingly, though, I can’t trigger drag-and-drop reliably.
- The Touch Bar is not bad. I actually like some features. But while the software Esc-key somewhat works so far, it’s not ideal, as I sometimes either don’t hit it, or hit it accidentally. But maybe I simply need to get used to it more.
- Touch ID is neat.
- The whole computer looks and feels great.
- Only 1.37 kilograms for such a powerful machine is absolutely fantastic.
- The keyboard is very nice to type on. But I really hope it’ll keep working.
- The German keyboard layout is driving me nuts! I’m slowly re-adjusting, but it’s still pretty frustrating to use.
On the one hand, upgrading to a model that’s more than seven years younger feels amazing. On the other hand, it’s simply another computer I can do my work with again. But no matter how I look at it, I’m very happy so far with this new machine.