The HOT new MacBook PRO.

Dieter Bohn of The Verge tells us about the new MacBook Pro.

t seems like Apple can’t launch a laptop these days without walking face-first into at least one controversy. With the new MacBook Pros, it walked into two. One: was this keyboard really designed to be quieter (as Apple claims publicly) or to address the problem of dust and grit breaking them? Two: a software bug caused these laptops to throttle their speed down in intense thermal conditions, eliciting a software update and an apology from Apple.

The heat (pun intended) around those controversies is at a higher temperature than usual because there has been more angst in the Mac universe than normal in the past few years. The switch over to these new designs two years ago came with what feels like an equal number of benefits and compromises. On one hand, they’re thinner, lighter, and more powerful. On the other, you have a polarizing (or worse) keyboard design, dongles, and a sort of vague distrust that Apple really cares about the Mac at all in the age of the iPhone.

That’s all too much for one simple spec-bumped laptop to handle alone, so it’s no surprise that this MacBook Pro hasn’t arrived as the savior for professionals looking for the ur-machine. Nevertheless, it’s a solid computer that’s fast and powerful. So this review of the top-tier 15-inch MacBook Pro isn’t about blame or benchmarks.

It’s about trust.

The first controversy over MacBook Pros deals with their “butterfly switch” keyboards. They broke, to put it bluntly (though at what rate, it’s impossible to know for sure). Casey Johnston at The Outline has led the charge to hold Apple to account for the fact that it takes just a little grit to make a single key stop working and that fixing said problem involves a massively expensive repair.

Apple’s response was to announce a repair program that covers every butterfly switch keyboard MacBook for four years. That was the right thing to do. Its other response was apparently to redesign this MacBook Pro’s keyboard to mitigate the problem and then refuse to admit that’s why it was redesigned. Apple only claims that this “third-generation” butterfly keyboard is quieter, not that it’s more reliable.

Here’s what Apple did: it put a thin layer of silicone in between the keys and the butterfly switches. As iFixit found (and Apple’s presumably related patent claims), that layer serves to protect the switches from crumbs and maybe even pushes those crumbs out of the assembly. I’m hopeful that these keyboards will be less prone to failure, and I don’t think it’s a reason to avoid buying this laptop.

It does make the experience of typing a little nicer. Keyboard travel is about the same, but there’s a better sense of resistance when you type. It’s also almost imperceptibly quieter; it’s less clacky, basically. I really do enjoy typing on this keyboard, though I’m sympathetic to people who prefer more key travel.

Read the full article and watch Dieter Bohn‘s videos HERE.