My biggest issue concerns the battery life which is disappointing. It's a step-up from both of my previous laptops (the 2012 HP managing a whopping three hours in the first year of it's life, and less than one hour thereafter resulting in it being unusable without the cable, and the 2008 replacement HP lasting a stunning zero minutes without being plugged in, literally dying as soon as the power cable is even slightly adjusted) but it isn't matching the stories I've heard of MacBooks lasting ten hours or more without needing to be charged. With only very light usage (keyboard backlighting off, screen brightness at about 25%, Siri turned off, auto-brightness off, Bluetooth on [connected to my Solo3's but not playing anything and connected to my iPhone/Apple Watch for Continuity and Handoff features], and Safari the only open application) I'm down to 83% after using it since just after 10:15am (one hour and twenty one minutes ago). This percentage and rate of depletion is quite misleading though; if I watch anything on VLC Player or even with QuickTime it drains faster, so even lasting eight hours is quite optimistic. In general I'd say I've gotten between five and seven hours of continuous use on it which is a bit of a disappointment. I'm uncertain as to whether the main cause of this is the addition of the TouchBar, the reduction of the battery size, or both (which is what I suspect), but it simply isn't worth it.
This may be a case where it simply is what it is, but given Apple's reaction to the battery reviews, this may be a case where this is a software bug, and something that will be improved in a software update over the next few months.
I love my new 15" Pro. My only issues, which I can group into fixable via software and fixable via hardware:
Software:
-The Touchbar software is buggy, as you would expect for new functionality. I've ran into issues where the sound adjustments stop working, or a graphical object persists on the bar until a reboot. Both should be a simple fix.
-The trackpad's palm rejection is buggy, preventing you from using gestures. I've subconsciously changed how I use the trackpad, but Apple should fix this, and it makes me somewhat worried about a bezel-less iPhone in 2017.
-The graphics drivers are unoptimized/buggy, as you can see from a handful of threads online about the new 15" Pros. This'll be fixed in the first or second update I'm sure.
Hardware:
-The screen is only 8-bit. I get it. A 10-bit panel would be a lot for the 530 GPU at 1800p (Thanks Intel), but I really wish they would have gone all-in with the display, rather than this stepping stone of 8-bit wide-color gamut.
-The screen is only 1800p, not 2100p, even though Apple is now scaling to 1050p by default. See the 8-bit reasoning above, but Apple clearly recognizes the need for a higher hardware resolution, but instead chose to cheap out and do it via software.
-The Touchbar looks terrible, especially in comparison to the primary display. It really does in real life. Dim, low resolution (at times), seemingly far from the glass surface, and with a much cooler, narrower color gamut than the incredible main display, making it look awful in comparison.
-The fans. I can (barely) hear them doing low power tasks. My old retina 13" was dead silent. This could improve with software.
-iSight camera is still only 720p. Seriously, Apple. In a time of slowing hardware advancements, this is a way you could have continuously improved your product.
-While Intel's fault, and potentially something that could be partially added through software, no UHD Premium video playback support.
Overall, I'm very happy with my MacBook. I definitely plan on upgrading again, probably when 10nm quad-cores are available (if we're not using ARM by then...) for UHD Premium video support, but until then, once the few software quirks have been addressed, I'll be really happy with my machine.
