It’s been 4 years any major upgrade to the Apple MacBook Pro. Today, at the Apple’s “Hello Again” event, Apple has officially announced the new MacBook Pro with a lot of new features and changes. In the last 4 years, there were only some minor upgrades to the MacBook Pro, like Force Touch trackpad and faster flash storage etc.
It’s been 25 years since the release of first MacBook Pro. On the 25th anniversary, Apple introduced an all new, refreshed version of MacBook Pro. Here are the major changes the new Apple MacBook Pro brought.
There is an all-new, bigger Force Touch trackpad. Not just bigger, it is actually twice the size of the previous Force Touch trackpad. This will make navigation easier, a lot easier.
Remember the butterfly mechanism keyboard from the MacBook? The new MacBook Pro has the 2nd generation of butterfly mechanism keyboard.
The new display is capable of displaying 25 percent more colors than the previous display. It has 67 % better contrast ratio and is 67 % brighter. Despite all these developments, the new display is more power efficient and consumes even less power than before.
The new 15 inch MacBook Pro has quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. The processor generation is not mentioned by Apple in the event. It supports 2,133mHz RAM. The graphics card is ATI Radeon Pro with 4 GB graphics memory. Graphics card model number is also not mentioned.
The 13-inch version has a choice of Core i5 and Core i7 processors. It has the same 2,133mHz RAM. 13 inch version has Intel Iris Pro graphics.
Remember the MacBook which has a single USB C port only. You have to charge from the same port and that same port is used to attack the flash drives. This is a bit annoying for most of the users as there may come the time when you need to charge the MacBook and use some other device with it at the same time.
The new Apple MacBook Pro has the 4 Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports. Any of them can be used for charging and any of them can be used for any other purpose. You will have to buy a converter to attach a regular USB or other devices to MacBook Pro.
The MacBook Pro supports up to 2 TB SSD which is 50% faster than the previous SSD.
There is a TouchBar on both 13 inches and 15 inches MacBook Pro. The Touch bar is application specific and displays the content according to the application opened on the screen. There is also a fingerprint sensor on the extreme right of the Touch bar. The fingerprint sensor can be used to unlock the mac or other apps and for other purposes like secure payments.
Apple also introduced a 13 inches model without the TouchBar. This model aims to replace the old MacBook Air. It is 2mm thinner than the MacBook Air and has 13 percent less volume. It has a slightly less powerful Core i5 processor and 2 Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports instead of 4 on the bigger model.
Pricing
- The entry-level MacBook Pro without TouchBar starts at $1,499.
- The 13-inch model with the TouchBar costs $1,799.
- The 15-inch version starts at $2,399.
All model can be pre-ordered starting today. The version without the TouchBar is available immediately. All other models will start shipping in 2 to 3 weeks.