Yeah I agree. The 2016 MBP officially started the Mac Dark Ages which lasted until the M1 was released.

The 2015 and 2014 models weren't that great either since they were using old 4th gen Haswell Intel CPUs which ran super hot.

My 13” 2015 rmbp is my favorite notebook of all time. My dad uses it now.

I didn’t find it to run that hot and generally found it to be the best windows laptop (via vm) money could buy at the time.

Only the 15 inch 2015 model still had the Haswell CPU, therefore your laptop had a slightly newer processor... That [older] generation was left in the bigger model without the yearly upgrade due to the limited supply / production capacity on Intel's side.

Ah, I lucked out then!

I wholeheartedly agree. I finally moved to an M2 MBP in 2023. I regard the 2023 the same way I do the 2015. It was a worthy upgrade.

My only complaint is that Apple’s keyboards have become significantly less resistant to finger oils and staying on top of cleaning them is much more demanding than it used to be.

I had a 2015 15'' MBP and it ran so hot I simply couldn't use it on my lap. Fans became super noisy even with trivial processes. Ended up selling it.

The rest of the computer was great though (display, keyboard, trackpad, ssd).

When they came out with the 16" in 2019 it solved most of the issues (no more touch bar, good keyboard, etc)

...and I excitedly bought one. And then a year later the M1 came out, and I was kicking myself

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure the 16" models from 2019 also had a touch bar, although as you said the keyboard was much better.

Ah you're right, it had a physical escape button and TouchID button, but a touch bar in between them

>Apple finally reversed these decisions and made the M1 MBP

They didn't. The new keyboard is still not old scissors keyboard with 1.5mm Key travel. If I remember correctly it is 1mm or 1.2mm. And it is still a huge difference for me.

Yeah, the keyboard never went back to be as good as it was before.

My late 2011 Macbook Pro's keyboard is certainly way nicer than my M1 Air's keyboard.

And even that gen keyboard pales in comparison to the old silver ones from the Al PowerBook and non-unibody MacBook Pros.

My 12” G4 PowerBook has the best keyboard of any laptop in my house.

Yeah, I don't think the 12" MacBook was anywhere near the most controversial, because it was always clear that it was a niche product. I had one and loved it. Those who it wasn't right for didn't buy it.

The 2016-2019 Pros on the other hand replaced a machine that was universally loved. there were entire podcasts dedicated to complaining about them for four years.

I had the last non-butterfly MBP, and work tried to get me to move to a new one for years - i fought to keep mine.

Then I switched jobs, got a butterfly MBP and the laptop was honestly one of the worst I've had. After 2 years, I had lost a number of keys (i simply never used the built in keyboard when possible) and the battery started expanding. I couldn't even make it to the normal refresh cycle. Maybe bad luck, but such a POS. Apple phoned it in the generation prior to M1.

> Whoever had the reigns when Apple finally reversed these decisions and made the M1 MBP

They shoulda kept the touchbar and restored the functions keys (including restoring volume controls etc to function keys). That would have been amazing. There was so much opportunity for cool custom functionality with touchbar, but it needs to be dedicated to that, not doing double-duty as physical keys.

The M1 MBAir I think is better than the M1 MBP in terms of sheer utility and price/performance. Until the new $999 Air that launched this week, the M1 Air was the best laptop ever launched, IMO.

Yes, it was. Previously, I had an XPS 13” that was pretty decent, and then an Intel Air, which was even better.

I bought an M1 Air, base model, at launch, and was blown away. For once, a manufacturer wasn’t lying about battery life. What Apple has achieved with their SoC is nothing short of revolutionary. They make the best laptops by any conceivable metric, and it isn’t even close.

Yeah, I thought the article would be about the touchbar macs. Although if most people hate it, it's not controversial right?

> Touch Bar

… shivers

I liked it - particularly the volume and brightness controls, and for convenient hotkey access in apps that I didn't use too often to memorize. But it was extremely badly implemented and then basically abandoned. At the very least, it should've never replaced function keys.

Touchbar is very fun to use, that alone makes it a great feature (thanks to mountains of work done to get amazing integration across system and many apps)

It's sad to see all that work going to bin.

Did you know that you can get touchbar on ipad that you connect as a second monitor? Excellent way to keep it alive, except, oh, it does not work, unless you drag the window to the ipad first... I mean... Somebody went and designed it to work like that, on purpose...

From the security perspective, having some UI that cannot be controlled by apps (a led, a touchbar, whatever) is very important for signalling app privilege levels. oh well