Now if you’ve been following up on our Apple coverage this year, you’ll notice a recurring theme we’ve mentioned a few times now. For the first time in what seems like forever , Apple is actually listening to it’s customers and learning from the competition, not being guided by it’s own hubris and their “Apple knows best” mantra. It’s a move that has helped the iPhone 11 Pro catch up to and arguably beat Google and Huawei’s cameras, has made the upcoming Mac Pro a mouthwatering prospect for even Windows Die-Hards and even made the iPad a little bit more like an actual computer. This movement to do what customers actually want has been giving Apple some wins lately, and now it brings in their latest feedback-oriented product: The 16 Inch MacBook Pro.

Now I’m not really a MacBook guy, but I’ve always understood the appeal of the Pro. These are lightweight enough, elegant, yet impressively powerful machines that have gained the loyalty of multiple tech creative types and developers as well. The MacBook Pro also led to the inspiration of many Windows competitors that do the same or more, from the Dell XPS 15 to the Microsoft Surface Books to even the blatantly obvious Huawei MateBook X Pro. And in recent years, these windows based alternatives were really beginning to beat the MacBook at it’s own game, offering better graphic performance, cooling capabilities , gaming  and versatility in ways that apple seemingly just couldn’t keep up with. There’s also been the recent rise/resurgence of the 17 inch creative-focused laptop, and video editors have begun to have their attention attracted by those as well. So Apple had to obviously reply somehow, all while dealing with the biggest problem to plague MacBooks for the past two years now : terrible keyboards. The 16 inch MacBook Pro seems to do just that, offer a larger screen for creative professionals, an escape key for developers (and anyone with common sense) , a fixed, superior scissor-switch keyboard for everyone else and memory scaling options that will make Windows fans at least think “wish I had that”. You can see the specs (and patented Apple-style prices below).

In case you haven’t already noticed, of course this isn’t going to be a cheap machine even when looking at it’s base configuration, but anyone playing at the MacBook Pro’s level already knows this isn’t the type of machine where you’ll say you saved some money. As we mentioned before, the memory scaling capabilities of this PC are what have me impressed, with the machine able to be configured for up to 8 TB of hard drive space. As TZP’s resident Windows guy who often uses PCs comparable to the MacBook Pro, I’ll live up to my own previous claim and say I want that on my own PCs. External hard disks are great and all, but I would be lying to myself if I said I wouldn’t want all that extra memory especially as we start venturing into video footage (see if you can get the Easter egg here). The rest of the specs aren’t exactly out of this world as other PCs have the same CPUs and even better GPUs (NVIDIA stays winning people) but this of course is likely why Apple overcompensated on that hard disk space. Either way, the biggest thing for most Mac fans here is definitely that keyboard change. Apple’s Keyboards have been a pain point, complaint channel and dedicated angry subreddit for 2-3 years now and their “refined” scissor-switch implementation is a practical choice the company should have taken at least a year ago. The video above seems to show that The Verge approves and since we actually can’t test how the keyboard feels, we’ll go with that and trust their opinion. And that keyboard is really there to make sure those Apple fans who’ve loved the 15 inch MacBook Pro stay and upgrade to this one. In fact, with the 15 inch MacBook now being discontinued, the 16 inch is Apple’s default offering which it really wants die hard fans to buy. While the memory perks can make Windows fans turn their heads, Apple know this PC is specifically made for it’s dedicated fan-base. And even without being well versed with the Mac world, I can see this machine’s appeal (though when you Mac fans are done worshiping this, there’s a few Surface devices waiting with your names on them).

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