[laggyluke]

A year ago I had very similar concerns, but now I'm a happy user of a 16" Macbook Pro. Yes, the silly touchbar is still there, but with a hardware Escape key I can tolerate it. Is there anything else lacking for you from a 16" model?

[bborud]

I'm mostly concerned with their durability and fixability. We used to have no problems with Macbooks until some years ago. Keyboard, screen, battery etc. Fortunately no burned SMCs so far (which is essentially a death-sentence since Apple will do their best to turn replacement of a $2 part into an opportunity to sell you a new Mac)

A couple of batteries died for no apparent reason on machines newer than 6 months, I think one screen failure was due to bad thermal design (hot airstream vs connector), we've had keyboards crapping out and the fans tend to be on constantly when running workloads that are more than "mostly idling".

Even though the batteries are glued down, we stared doing those repairs ourselves. But anything that requires an inventory of dubiously sourced parts tends to mean a bad, time-consuming and expensive repair job at some authorized shop - and most of the time they don't actually repair stuff; they chuck the board in the bin, put in a new one and make you pay for it.

How do you cope with the thermal throttling? Or do you run light loads?

[valuearb]

Why would you attempt to repair them when Apple will do it for free?

[bborud]

Apple doesn't actually repair anything. Apple outsources this to shops with wildly varying qualifications. Often incurring unnecessary cost. And no, they wouldn't repair them for free.

[valuearb]

Anything that breaks within the warranty period Apple fixes for free, and often even outside the warranty period. I, like many others, have had an Apple genius waive a repair charge out of warranty if the device should not have failed.

And whether your claim of their outsourcing is true or not, Apple is still on the hook for warranty on the repairs. I highly doubt it’s common.

Lastly Apple has by far the highest customer satisfaction in the industry in a good part because of how they handle repairs.

[bborud]

I think you might want to look into that. A good place to start is Louis Rossman's Youtube channel (he fixes Macbooks for a living and a recurring feature on his channel is how Apple and other companies do "repairs"). https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

How many Macbooks, iPads and iPhones have you sent off for repair?