Hi everyone,
a couple of things I wanna talk about first:
Obvious one perhaps: English ain't my mother tongue, but I do try. Second: I've tried to reach r/apple on reddit about this topic but, for some reason, moderators thought it didn't fit there. Don't ask me why.
So in february this year I decided I want to upgrade from my ThinkPad E480, which accompanied me for two years and was a great piece of hardware for my Bachelor-thesises and generally my daily driver, to a newer, bit fancier piece of hardware for my master-thesis. I've tried the ThinkPad P53 and Dell XPS 15, but returned both due to mostly hardware, but not unrepairable issues (well, my P53 was basically completely bent but it's not like a replacement unit would've been automatically too), and decided to drop around 2900€ on the higher end base model, which is not CTO and usually available in stores (at least here in Germany).
And for the first few days I was... okay, I wasn't extremely happy with but there was nothing I couldn't cope with over time. E.G. not having access to 32bit-software is annoying, but as it mostly affects games and I wanted to use it for work and less for gaming, I thought I'd be okay with it.
Short sidenote here: There're still games being released for macOS that aren't 64bit, so... I guess that's not absolutely Apple's fault, but it's still stupid.
Three months in... yeah, I am far from happy with it. In fact, I use it so little that I haven't even noticed that I was without my power brick for two weeks.
So what are my issues with it?
Well... why don't we get started...
First things first: The keyboard. It's nice, for sure. Subjectively it's nicer than the XPS 15's but absolutely nowhere near the ThinkPad keyboards. Honestly, from using it in stores I didn't mind the butterfly switches, but I digress. What's objectively worse than at least the ThinkPad-keyboards is the time it took to show wear. After three months of irregular use my keyboard is shiny as hell. My ThinkPad E480 didn't show as much of wear a year in and I used that one a whole lot more. And I am absolutely not the only one with that issue - if you look up used MacBook Pro 16s on eBay you'll definitely find pictures of keyboards showing that smooth shine.
Battery life: So, okay, I have an eight-core and a dGPU in my Mac. Naturally battery life wouldn't be amazing. But the often reported and reviewed 8 hours or more were never achieved. I'd be happy if I got 6 hours from doing barely more than webbrowsing, using MS Office applications or even daring to code will drastically reduce it to 4 hours. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, my battery is at already 28 cycles, but it's apparently still at about 95% capacity. Even turning off a lot of background stuff like Outlook, Mail, Webex-apps, etc. won't help that much. It's still better than while using my Mac with Windows 10 - but I'll get to that later.
Speaking of unnecessary drain: Powermanagement. It blows. For whatever reason the dGPU gets activated every now and then, which is especially annoying in battery mode. That I can't use any built-in GUI-function to turn off dGPU completely is stupid enough, that I have to rely on terminal-commands for that shows me that there are options for that, but Apple just doesn't bother to give their users the option of choice. What's even more annoying is that I can't use an external monitor without relying on the AMD GPU - which, for whatever still unfixed reason will then lock into at least 15W power drain, causing not only the system to warm up and get loud (oh, and believe me, it can get LOUD), but, again, resulting in unnecessary power drain. And under load the MacBook will emmit noise at about 46db(A). I was able to hear my MacBook two rooms away while watching a movie, and it still runs hot, barely touchable around the Touchbar. Workaround for external display: Close the lid. ...yeah, thanks, it's not like I'd want to use two screens when I have two screens.
Stability: I've heard so often that macOS just "works". I don't know if my usecase is just so different. Twitter crashes at least twice a week, the software for my Game Capture HD 60S crashes the entire Mac regularily. Using the false USB-C-Dongle can not only crash the system while simply plugging in any USB-stick, but can also cause Bluetooth and WiFi to stop working at all. Well, what about approved USB-C-solutions, like an eGPU-enclosure. Apple's implementation of eGPU is actually pretty great, unless you want to boot or reboot your system while having it plugged in, trying to log in will case a login-loop in which you have to manually shut down the system, unplug the eGPU and turn it on again.
So you might think - well, most problems are related to macOS, why not just run Linux or Windows 10. Well, basically no Linux-distro will work well out of the box because most hardware, like touchbar or Wifi, doesn't have any open source drivers. And Apples implementation of Windows 10 is pretty much the worst thing ever. You can not only just copy paste all problems with macOS onto it, with Apple deactivating the iGPU and the resulting absolute non-sense for eGPUs - AMD GPUs barely work in Windows 10 so you'd basically need an additional Nvidia eGPU for Windows 10 - the system gets so much bottle-necked by the software it's barely useable as a laptop and with about 2 hours of battery life becomes a really bad desktop-replacement.
And the cherry on top: Eventually I returned my eGPU-enclosure, I simply couldn't get ethernet to work and with my RX 580 being barely faster than my Pro 5500M, there was basically no use for it anymore (besides the thermal issues I encountered later on). As I still wanted to use my 4k display with it, I decided to get Apples USB-C dongle with 4k-HDMI. For 80€ it's actually a decent price because it can display 4k60, normally you'd have to pay more... and it works! ...as long as you use it with an Apple device. I've tried it with my E480 and it can only output 4k30 - like any 30€ dongle... My guess is that the Apple dongle communicates with the T2 chip as it also won't work with the 2016 MBP 15, which didn't have it.
I've heard bad stuff about Apple before I've decided to take a peek into the cult. But I did not expect it to be so bad. I don't know if my usecase is just so special that barely any to no reviews touch the problems, but I can surely not be the only one that wants to connect its computer to a display and not have it run hot and loud. After all - even the Pro Display XDR is compatible with it.
This entire journey left me saddened and disappointed, especially as not all problems can or will be solved via updates or a replacement device, as they are hard-wired by, honestly, bad design choices. I'd love to love my MacBook Pro 16, and some parts I really enjoy. The trackpad is as good as everyone says, the screen is amazing and the speakers make me almost forget that I have pretty good external speakers lying around here, too. In the end, unless the retailer is for some reason incredibly cool I'm stuck with a system I've so far dumped 3500€ for, as I've got myself Apple Care Plus, a case, a sleeve and two stupid dongles.
All it did though was helping me appreciate my desktop PC even more.
TL;DR: In my eyes the MBP 16 is a design failure and I wonder why noone talks about the following:
Horrible wear of keyboard after short time
Inconsistent battery life
Constant usage of dGPU with external display
Regular system instabilities
Disastrous implementation of Windows 10
Inconsistency with eGPUs
Unnecessary hampering of their own peripherals
If you want to use your MacBook Pro 16 exclusively as a laptop, sure, go for it. But in my honest opinion noone should buy or even recommend it.
