Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (13-inch, 2016) review

Apple is taking big swings with the new MacBook Pro. Some land square, some miss their mark. Altogether, this is a beautiful, powerful machine that almost everyone will want, but consider the trade-offs carefully.

This MacBook Pro is thinner and lighter than its predecessor, with a flattened keyboard and expanded touchpad. It has a newer selection of Intel processors, faster flash storage and a brighter Retina screen.
The new MacBook Pro has also dropped all its legacy ports for Thunderbolt 3-powered USB-C -- a controversial move that requires you to buy a truckload of dongles, but also a move that many high-end Windows laptops are following. Apple even threw in the pleasing and very useful TouchID fingerprint sensor, imported almost whole-hog from the iPhone and iPad.

But you know all that already. What you really want to learn about is the new MacBook Pro's headline feature: the Touch Bar, a tiny 1cm tall touchscreen that replaces the function key row on the top of new Pro's keyboard, and also jacks up the price for this high-end machine.

The basics on the new 13- and 15-inch Pros, which were unveiled at Apple's headquarters on October 27 and are available for sale as of early November. That includes our exclusive early hands-on with the new MacBook Pro, as well as our review of the entry-level 2016 MacBook Pro model (which keeps its traditional function key row, and doesn't include TouchID). Start with both of those stories if you want an exhaustive overview of the design changes, component upgrades and port-related compromises of this MacBook Pro -- which is essentially the 10th anniversary edition of the original 2006 MacBook Pro.