Background

I’m coming from a 2012 MacBook Pro with a nearly dead battery.  I was holding out for a 32GB laptop, but couldn’t wait any longer due to the dead battery in the 2012.  Honestly the 2012 has been the best laptop I’ve ever used.  I got 5 years out of it and will likely repair it to see if I can get more life out of it.

Quick Observations

• The speakers are amazing, much more clarity and volume than the 2012
• Typing on the keyboard isn’t that bad and it’s not that loud
• I wish I could control the touch bar brightness
• Based on my track pad smudges, I’m not using the full surface area yet
• Palm rejection is good
• Modern graphics card is nice to have
• I miss MagSafe, when moving between rooms I’d just grab the laptop with MagSafe and let it disconnect on its own
• Restoring from time machine was painless, albeit slow over wifi (no ethernet dongle!)

Issues

The keyboard had a busted key.  When I pulled it out of the box the C key wouldn’t work.  I pressed the key really hard a few times and it came to life.  Using the computer for a few days I noticed that the C key would repeat my presses ~50% of the time.  My first thought was maybe the key repeat settings were to blame, but playing with those settings didn’t have a significant effect on the problem.

Experimenting a little further I noticed that the key didn’t register the press on key down like the other keys unless I pressed really hard.  People suggested “massaging the key” or removing it and reinstalling it.  Massaging the key seems to have worked for me.  No more accidental Cs.

Tips

Install BetterTouchTool.  Until Apple adds more customization support for the TouchBar or more apps add support, BetterTouchTool is a necessity.  Here’s a TouchBar menu I put together for IntelliJ

It’s pretty nice.  There’s sub menus for refactoring with things like rename, extract, etc.  I’m still working on figuring out exactly what I’d like in the menu.