16" MacBook Pro is here!

The first revision of a board. There are usually minor issues that come up and are fixed with the Rev B board. Sometimes these happen quietly, not necessarily with a 2020 update of the machine.

WiFi 6 would have been nice for future proofing, but I donā€™t count it against Apple to not include it, as only a few computers have it yet.
As for 720p webcam, that is listed on the features page.

Sorry @Shruggie I should of worded that better, itā€™s the inclusion of only a 720p camera, at this price point a higher quality camera might of been expected (just about every review marks this as a negative).

What was the upshot? If we may ask after all this time. How do you feel about it now a few months later?

Finally saw one in the wild yesterday. Surprisingly large (OK the coffee shop tables were tiny) and reminded me of the old 17" form factor.

In coach on some airplanes I can wedge the screen kind of under the folded-up tray table, with the keyboard in my lap; that arrangement doesnā€™t look possible with the 16".

Memory plays tricks. I just replaced my 2011 15" MBP (same era there were 17" MBPs) with the new 16" MBP. The 16" is slightly smaller! The 15" retina models were smaller than the earlier non-retina models which is why the new 16" seems so big.

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Iā€™ve been using one for about 3 weeks (Apple offered me $1750 to trade-in my mid-2017 15" MBP(!)) and I can say that itā€™s the best computer Iā€™ve ever owned. Itā€™s so wonderful to be able to run several VMs at once without hitting swap! (Specs for those curious: I maxed everything except SSD, which I kept at 2GB.)

I would not have upgraded had I been able to get the 2017 model with 32GB RAM. Having used the 16" now, I still feel the same way.

As far as size goes, it is slightly heavier and bigger than the 2017, but slightly smaller than the 2013 model that I have running as a home server, and much smaller than the 15" 2011.

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They offered me less for a 2018 6-core with 32GB of RAM. Iā€™m not really surprised though. I expected the prices to plummet after they put out the 16", which was basically just a fix for that model.

This was well after the 16" came out, but I forgot to specify Canadian dollars, so somewhat inflated when compared with USD. They gave me back about 1/3 of what I paid for it, 2.5 years after I bought it.

That makes a little more sense. I got back half of what I paid nine months later. I might have been able to do better on eBay, but I didnā€™t want to deal with that, and while the ā€œbuy it nowā€ prices were higher, the actual bids on that model werenā€™t far off of what Apple gave me for trade-in value.

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Do you think it is worth getting the 32GB Ram option on this John? I am now back on considering this for my next machine now that the keyboard looks fixed. My 2015 is going strong with 16GB at the moment.

Personally, I would. Having said that, part of my use is scientific computing. My 2015 has 16G, and my iMac Pro has 32G. I kind of wish Iā€™d gotten 64G on the iMac Pro, but it was $1200 at the time ($400 now, grrrr).

I think 32G will help with future-proofing the laptop, and if you decide to sell it, will make it more desirable in the future when 32G is becoming commonplace.

Let us know how you like it!

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Thank you again for the advice John. So you can use Mathlab? Wish I was doing more of that kind of thing now even. I will take your advice then. Just in caseā€¦

Yes, just about everything I do is in MATLAB (not yelling, itā€™s just capitalized).
There is a free alternative called Octave. Iā€™ve never tried it.
There is a lot going on in the Python and R communities too, both of which are free. Julia is another up-and-coming language, more efficient than Python, and could even reduce the carbon footprint of doing science (especially things like machine learning).

Stick a toe in, the water is fine :slight_smile:

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