A million hot takes have been posted about how the late-2016 "MacBook Pro" with USB-C is the undeniable proof that Apple doesn't care about developers anymore. They took away all the ports! No Esc key! It's just a more expensive MacBook Air!
But in some ways, the new "MacBook Pro" is the techiest and expandable laptop Apple has ever made. They trust their pro users to wade into murky USB-C waters in search of the holy grail of a universal, open standard for moving data and power between devices.
Yes, it's probably too expensive and more RAM, the better it is. But everyone posting criticism without actually using a MBP for a few weeks is missing out on all the clever things you can do because it is built on USB-C. Over the past week or two with a new "MacBook Pro" (15in, 2.9 GHz, Touch Bar), I've been constantly surprised with how USB-C makes new things possible. It's a kind of a hacker's dream.
The new charging block that comes with the MBP looks exactly the same as any traditional MBP charger. Okay, USB-C - just likes lots of other recent phones and laptops. You can plug your phone into your "MacBook Pro" charger and it works perfectly. You only need to bring one power cable to the café instead of two and then you can charge your computer or your phone interchangeably.
"MagSafe" is a life saver to someone tripping over its power cable and knocking its computer on the ground. It was brilliant. It is a bummer that Apple killed MagSafe, but this cloud has a silver lining of sorts.
In a year or two when we all have junk drawers packed full of extra generic USB-C cables that cost nearly nothing, we're going to look back on this and wonder why everyone was so worked up.
