New 16" MacBook Pro Review: A Developer’s Dream Come True

Yes, Apple finally fixed the keyboard, but there’s much more to love

Credit: Apple

On Wednesday morning, Apple announced the long-anticipated new 16” MacBook Pro. Apple sent me the new MacBook last week so that I can share my experience with the developer community and I’ve used it as my main device over the past week.

The first thing I noticed was the new keyboard. Say goodbye to the butterfly keyboard! I haven’t been a big fan of the butterfly keyboard and I know I’m not alone in that. The new keyboard has higher raised keys and great spring back that feels way more natural. Personally, I like a keyboard that has a deeper click and some sound. If you prefer a silent keyboard, then you might be disappointed. Apple named the new keyboard the Magic Keyboard, the same name as their external keyboard, which I use every day at work. The new MacBook Pro’s Magic Keyboard has a similar feel and sound to that keyboard, which is a huge upgrade from the previous MacBook.

As soon as I turned on the new device next to my MacBook Pro 15'’ from 2018, it was clear that Apple had improved the retina display. The depth of color in the desktop display is undeniable. Getting past the display and into the specs, the new MacBook Pro is more powerful than any MacBook I’ve owned thus far. The machine I was sent has 8 TB of storage, 64 GB of RAM, and an 8-core CPU. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fill 8 TB, but it’s super satisfying to know I won’t have to expand my iCloud storage space anytime soon. The 64 GB of RAM, meanwhile, is a dream for development. I had a MacBook Pro with just 16 GB of RAM, and it couldn’t handle running certain simulators in Xcode while simultaneously running other apps, and even after upgrading to 32 GB there were still performance lags. The new MacBook Pro can handle running Xcode and the simulators without overheating or getting any “running out of application memory” warnings.

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