[turtle]

I made the leap to this machine yesterday and today is my first day of sort of using it. Tomorrow it will be my full time machine now that I've moved my work VM to it.

I'm overall very satisfied with the speed. It doesn't wow me or anything, even the I/O isn't impressive, it's just solid and good. I did have faster rsync speeds compared to a SATA SSD doing the same rsync in comparison to the 2010 MBP this is replacing. That was also wireless and not over ethernet because I don't have any dongles yet.

The keyboard is really weird to me. I've been using an Apple USB keyboard with number pad so this is a big change from that. My old MBP had the same keyboard as the USB one so this is definitely different. I feel like I hammer the keys on this too. Like I'm going to push my finger through the keyboard to type. I am sure that is just muscle memory from the other keys with a longer travel. I do really like the slight mechanical feel of these keys though. It is nice to know know that it's been "clicked". More satisfying in a way. I've thought of going to a mechanical keyboard for my desktop set up and this gives and element of that.

The Trackpad is enormous. I mean it is just massive. I've had a number of false positive touches, but I'm sure that is way less than the number of times it knew it was a false touch. Force Touch or whatever they are calling the "hard press" on it really threw me for a loop. Since it doesn't actually move down when pressing on it I've been over-pressing for just about everything. You know how hard it is to drag and drop something when it thinks you are force touching it? I couldn't figure out for the life of me why I couldn't drag and drop anything. I actually looked at System Preferences to see if there was a new setting I missed!

TouchBar... I still think it's more gimmick than not. I've used it some, but I'm going to have to purposely make it part of my workflow for things. Like most of the time I "print" something it is to PDF, not a printer. I still do CMD-P to bring up the print menu. With the TouchBar I can now press PDF on it for those options instead of having to move my pointer all the way up to the dropdown and click the button. Most of the time I've accidentally called up Siri or escaped something. I can see potential though, that I like. I'm not missing the actual function keys like I thought I would either. When you hold down the "fn" key it brings up the function keys right where I would expect them. That is really nice.

The battery has been overall good for me...until I moved my work Virtual Machine on here. Once I started a VM on here the 455 kicked in and the battery started to drain. I was able to make it most of the day using Safari and other apps getting installed and downloaded and such. I'm sure having OneDrive and Dropbox syncing didn't help the battery life either, but it held out mostly good until the VM started. I finally had to plug it in at the end of my workday.

Unlocking and waking up with my Watch is really cool. Sure it's kinda like a party trick, but why not do it if I can? TouchID is really nice too. I didn't realize how hooked on it I am. I know it makes my privacy a nightmare, but gives me enough value I'm willing to use it. It does feel odd that it's a physical button though after using the iPhone 7's solid state home button.

Dongles and docking this thing is a real focus for me right now. I ultimately want this to be my one machine. This will be my work computer and my play computer. When I'm working it will be on my desk with external keyboard and track pad. It'll connect to two displays and work like my Hackintosh desktop does now. Then when I'm done I'll undock it and take it where I may want it. So I'm trying to find the right middle ground of dogies and USB-C docking stations that will give me the abilities I'm looking for. I won't care about battery life and such when it's plugged in at the desk so it will be great for my work related stuff in that regard. OWC has a dock going on pre-order now that looks awesome, but it can't be the only real option for me though it is the only good option I've found so far. When it's at the desk it would benefit from all the ports and expansion options. When it's off the desk I'll likely not need to plug it into anything other than power at some point.

I'm sure there is more, but overall I'm pleased with this so far. I also got it for a steal of a deal so I just couldn't pass it up.