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Early 16-inch MacBook Pro complaints include speaker ‘popping’ and display ghosting

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro finally righted Apple’s keyboard debacle, and it’s a beast of a machine in terms of performance. But early buyers have still managed to uncover some bugs with the latest MacBook Pro — and one hardware characteristic that might put off some people. 

As noted by AppleInsider (and backed by this long MacRumors forum thread), owners of the 16-inch MacBook Pro are complaining about an intermittent “popping” sound coming from the speakers. It’s noticeable after audio playback is stopped. From AppleInsider:

If you get the problem, what happens is that when you’re playing any audio or video, when you stop it, skip to another part, or close the window, you get this sound. It’s similar to the clipping you can get when audio peaks too high, or when speakers are abruptly switched off and on.

Here’s a video demonstration of the issue:

Definitely the kind of thing that would grate on you over time from a $2,400 laptop. Apple’s support team has responded to some people by telling them that the company is aware of the issue and at work on a fix. 

Other customers are less than pleased about an apparent slow response time from the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s wide-color display, which can result in a “ghosting” effect when scrolling text. That, too, has earned a multipage thread at MacRumors, though there are also people who are unbothered by the display’s scrolling performance or don’t seem to notice it in regular use of the laptop. And if you mostly use your machine with it hooked into an external monitor, this perceived fault might not matter to you. 

But those upgrading from a 2014 or 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro — the crowd that steered clear of the butterfly keyboard, in other words — claim their previous displays didn’t exhibit this problem (at least not to the same degree). Some are going as far as to return the device over this situation. Apple is rumored to be working on Mini-LED MacBook Pros and iPad Pros for release in 2020, so the 16-inch MacBook Pro panels might be the last of their kind in Apple laptops — at least in the pro lineup. 

As someone who has used 13-inch MacBook Pros over the last few years, I’ve noticed some text and icon trailing at times, but haven’t really ever thought of it as as problem. In a world of 90Hz phones, 120Hz iPads, and even smoother gaming monitors, is this just a situation where the MacBook’s 60Hz refresh rate is sticking out? 

The speaker quirk does seem a bit more prominent, however. Just remember that Apple’s holiday return policy is now in effect, so you’ve got until early January to keep using your MacBook Pro and see if Apple resolves the popping sound with a macOS software release or firmware update. 

The Verge has reached out to Apple about both of these concerns. I’ll update this article should the company offer comment.

Source: The Verge

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MKBHD: Apple Macbook Pro 16-inch review

So, the Apple 16inch Macbook Pro made its first public silent appearance the previous month using famous tech influencers to distribute the news over the web.

One of them is Marques Brownlee or MKBHD.

In that approach, Apple did something really interesting by actually releasing a product according to the feedback that they have received by their clients.

  1. Follow the 16-inch trend.
  2. Improve the keyboard of the current Macbook pros
  3. Better battery life
  4. Better sound quality

Now, lets see what has been improved in more detail.

1. Follow the 16-inch trend

From a quick look in the market we can observe that more and more manufacturers release 16-inch versions of their products trying to cover every single element and attract buyers to purchase their products.

Rather than that, a 16-inch display technically offers other advantages which actually make sense.

bigger display allows for a more expansive and often better viewing experience, but on the other hand a bigger screen ditches portability.

This isn’t the case as Apple managed to introduce to the market a 16-inch version into a 15-inch frame.

2. Improve the keyboard

In the 15 inch version, Apple introduced their keyboard that potentially would work great on the new back in the day laptop. It seemed as a legit concept but in action it did’t worked.

They heard the feedback and now they brought back the old legend and actually improved it.

3. Better battery life

As mentioned earlier, the company managed to fit a 16 inch screen into a 15 inch body but there is a catch. In order to fit a bigger battery and achieve even longer performance some ditches had to be made.

And by ditches I mean that they added some mm’s to the height of the laptop but we don’t mind since the battery life is improved undertaking event the more resource drowning tasks such as editing a 4K video.

4. Better sound quality

According to the reviewer, the laptop now has the best loud hearing experience ever made on a laptop.

If you are familiar with Apple products you probably notice that the quality of the sound that the machines produce are dope. Well this is even more, even if the volume hits 100%.

Would I recommend it? Yeah sure, if you have the money go for it!!

But if Apple was going to push the previous 15-inch version it would be hard for me to recommend it since competition is pretty aggressive out there.

Watch the full review of the Youtuber and let me know in the comments with your thoughts.