Work asks that I bring home an Apple laptop so that I maintain some sort of fluency with the systems that the majority of our employees use. For the last while this has been a 2011 MacBook Pro with 20GB of RAM and an SSD. The keyboard finally sputtered its way to an unusable state (most of the modifier keys, shift/ctrl/alt/command/option/super/meta/hyper…) were unpredictably triggering or failing to trigger) and I asked for a replacement.

“Whatever has a functioning escape key, please.”

So they signed out a 2015 MacBookPro to me. It has 8GB of RAM (not upgradable) and an SSD (ditto).

It also has a screen of about four times the resolution. The keyboard, as specified, has a real escape key in the right place (albeit a half-height key) and feels… cheaper than the 2011. Less key travel, a little mushier, a fair amount louder, more plastic-y. The body of the new machine is a few millimeters thinner. Perhaps it weighs a little less.

By generic name, the CPU is the same: “Intel 2.4GHz Core i5”. It’s driving four times as many pixels but otherwise feels exactly the same as the older one.

There is no physical ethernet port anymore. There is no optical drive anymore. I occasionally used both of those features, just often enough that I will have to find external units.

It really doesn’t feel like much progress for four years.