It’s worth reading the full article at the link, but I wanted to call out a couple things. First, this article has some details on the keyboard:<p>> Thousands of words have been written about the differences between the Butterfly keyboard and Apple's return to a scissor-switch. The new MacBook Pro has retained that same mechanism, giving it key travel of about 0.9 mm. This is compared to between 0.6 and 0.7 millimeters on the 2016-style keyboard, between 1.2 and 1.5 millimeters on the 2012 through 2015 style, and 1.0 mm on the Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro.<p>> As it pertains to the noise of the keyboard, we had a baseline of 36 dBa of ambient noise measured with a Kanomax model 4431 audiometer, with the test gear at head height and distance. Hammering away on the 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard with no other CPU load brought that up to about 43 dBa and 41 dBa on the Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro.<p>And some fine print details on the ports Apple added back:<p>> That HDMI is 2.0 and not the newer 2.1 spec. That SDXC reader is a UHS-II reader technically, and not even at peak UHS-II speeds, and not a Class III. Neither of these additions make any sense to us beyond convenience, and it would cost Apple maybe a dollar more to include the newer specs on a laptop, which begins at $2500.<p>> The target market who wants this machine can use the faster speeds on both. Adding HDMI 2.0 instead of 2.1 and the class II reader capped at 250 megabytes per second instead of the much faster 600 megabytes per second Class III now would make sense for a consumer-grade machine like the MacBook Air. It makes much less sense on the Pro-oriented machine — but there may be an engineering reason for it.<p>> We'd have preferred if Apple stuck with four Thunderbolt ports if it was going to just add an older HDMI and SD reader spec to the model, but we're not sure if this was an option. The new MacBook Pro has three Thunderbolt controllers versus two and two timers on the Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro. We're not sure what the PCI-E channel limitations are on the M1 Pro or M1 Max, as both the HDMI 2.0 port and the SD card reader capped at 256MB per second take up fewer channels in aggregate than a single Thunderbolt port does.<p>> Adding an HDMI 2.1 port or a UHS-III reader to the equation pushes the number of PCI-E channels over what one Thunderbolt port demands.