After years of waiting, Apple finally made it official: A new MacBook Pro is finally on the way. And after years of feeling stagnant, Apple has stepped in with some pretty major upgrades to freshen up the Pro and draw back the laptop faithful.
Coming in both 13 and 15 inch sizes, and weighing just three and four pounds, respectively, this is the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro we’ve ever seen. And that’s just the beginning, as everything has been reengineered. The display is much brighter and has sharper contrast. The trackpad is twice as big and uses more Force Touch. The speakers have twice the volume. And the keyboard uses the butterfly switches Apple uses elsewhere, but with an upgrade. Needless to say, this new laptop’s also got the fastest chip — an Intel i5 or i7 — and faster flash storage, and apple claims gains of speed up to 130% on 3D graphics. They even rolled out an image of their first and latest laptops back to back, just to show how much progress has been made:
And yes, the rumors are true: Your old USB ports are gone. But the bright side is that each port can be used as a charger, and you have four of them. The ports are also Thunderbolt and display ports, so configuring them to your standards is much easier. The flashiest aspect, though, is that Apple’s gotten rid of the function keys across the top of your keyboard in favor of a touchscreen called the Touch Bar that shifts to different purposes — from inserting emoji to editing video — when you need it to.
The Touch Bar is a fairly interesting idea. It’s basically a long, thin iPhone right in your computer. Apple showed off quick link buttons, photo editing tools, and auto-correct for word processing. Photoshop will even let you scroll back through your edits! And yes, it comes with Touch ID, so you can unlock your Mac with your finger, and also pay for stuff by giving your computer the finger, er, fingerprint. You can even key other users of the MacBook Pro to their fingerprints.
In other words, the new MacBook Pro more or less brings Apple’s laptops closer to Apple’s phones, which isn’t the worst idea. Also available is a Pro without the Touch Bar and with only two ports. This will replace the MacBook Air in Apple’s line and ships today. The Touch Bar versions of the new laptop, however, will ship preorders in two to three weeks.
The main question here is whether the new MacBook Pro is worth the asking price. The 15-inch flagship starts at $2399, the 13-inch $1799, and the 13-inch, Touch-Bar free version goes for $1499. That’s pretty pricey, but Apple has certainly made the cost worth it.
