I mean, look:
It’s very, very pretty and very, very powerful, and the screen is lovely. But what we all care about is the keyboard, and that’s entirely understandable because the circa 2015-2019 “butterfly” keyboards are just horrible. When they don’t break they still feel cheap and tappy and wretched, and as the primary sensory experience that people have with their laptops fixing that is kind of a big deal.
Still, as far as I can tell it’s not user-upgradeable, and I won’t be getting one. I understand the reasoning behind having everything soldered onto the board; it reduces costs and makes the machine faster, more reliable and more secure. It’s just that it’s a lot of money for something that I could buy, use, and then run out of space on.
I’m hoping (and betting on) Apple promulgating this new keyboard across the line. I’m a consultant, which means that most of the time I’m looking for portability over power, so a big, beautiful, heavy laptop isn’t my speed. Put that keyboard in a MacBook Air and I’ll be beating a path to the Apple Store with my hands full of Benjamins and my heart full of joy…
(February update – after a lot of soul-searching I went and bought one. And it’s amazing, and I’m profoundly glad that I didn’t wait for them to make a 13″ version. You forget how handy it is to have a huge screen until you sit down and reflect how bad your eyesight is and how much more you can get done with the extra screen real estate…)