Alex Blake for Digital Trends:
The brand-new MacBook Pro 16 may have righted many wrongs — including ditching the failure-prone butterfly keyboard for the much more satisfying Magic Keyboard — but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. As some proud new owners of Apple’s latest laptop have found out, a few models have been experiencing intermittent popping sounds and ghosting on the display.
According to AppleInsider, the sound occurs when audio is stopped or skipped, or the audio app is closed. The sound is likened to “the clipping you can get when audio peaks too high, or when speakers are abruptly switched off and on.”
In our review of Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, we praised its speakers as “by far the best speakers you can find on a laptop” and didn’t experience the popping issue ourselves, so it’s possible it’s limited to certain situations and use cases.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re not hearing this issue on any of our 16-inch MacBook Pro units. Are you? If so, when and with which apps?
I’ve yet to experience these two problems (just got my computer yesterday).
However, a couple of comments about the 16″ are in order:
1) While the keyboard is an order of magnitude better (with respect to touch “feel” during typing) that the previous generation, it’s still way behind the feel of the keyboard on the 2012 Retina MBP it replaced.
2) The larger screen is glorious in many respects. However, it has higher resolution (DPI) than the MBP retina. This means that the characters are slightly smaller than they were on the 2012 Retina display. Bit harder to read for aging eyes.
3) Apple TV (apps) sucks (well, this is a Catalina issue, not a 16″ MBP issue). The fact that I can’t see which shows I’ve already watched makes this one a real loser. What I’d give to have iTunes back and working properly (yes, I downloaded the “retro-tunes” app and installed iTunes, it doesn’t quite work right, though).
4) For whatever reason, the trackpad doesn’t work as well as the 15″ Retina MBP unit. Drag and drop using a thumb and a finger is hit and miss on this device.
Beginning to which I’d just stuck with the 2012 model.
I’ve experienced the popping with YouTube as well as TV movie playback. Doesn’t (or hasn’t yet) affected Music, but we’ll see. I hope this is a software-fixable issue because I’ve seen quite a few reports of this on the web.
There is an easy fix for this… Go to the midi app and select 48khz instead of 44.1. Apparently the new laptop’s native audio is higher quality than those of the past. This is likely a result of people using migration assistance with preferences from the older machines that are native at the lower rate.
See here for details:
https://www.cultofmac.com/670356/how-to-fix-16-inch-macbook-pro-clicking-speakers/
It’s ludicrous. I’m never buying MBP again. Hope that by the time my 2012 and 2015 15″ machines turn useless, ipad pro will finally be enough.