The last major update to the MacBook Pro was in 2012. Sure, it’s had incremental upgrades like a higher-res Retina display and the Force Touch haptic trackpad since then, but we’ve been waiting a long time for something new. (We’ve been waiting even longer for a new MacBook Air.) It seems all but certain, though, that Apple will hold an event on October 28th Australian time to introduce the world to a new, high-tech MacBook Pro — possibly with a set of function keys that are also full-colour touchscreens.
The news, first teased by Bloomberg and then confirmed — unofficially, as Apple is wont to do — by Recode, says that Apple is planning to introduce new Macs a day after a Microsoft hardware event where that tech giant is expected to introduce an all-in-one Surface desktop PC. Hey, maybe Apple will hit a one-two punch with a new iMac, too.
The rumour that Apple has been working on a colour touchscreen keyboard for the MacBook Pro line has been kicking around for about a year now — but hasn’t died down like most Apple rumours tend to do after a while. While the MacBook Pro’s unibody design is still the gold standard in laptops, it might get a bit of an overhaul too — maybe something thinner and lighter, although if you’ve seen a Pro any time recently you’d know just how slim they already are for the amount of power that’s inside.
Any geek that remembers Art Lebedev’s Optimus keyboards knows just how cool customisable touchscreen keys would be, but no major manufacturer has taken the (likely expensive and technically complex) step of implementing displays into its keys. The closest we’ve come is red-green-blue LED backlighting on laptops like the Razer Blade Stealth; it might just be time for Apple to change things up and drag the keyboard into the future just like it did with the trackpad.