Apple’s New MacBook Pro: Everything You Need To Know

Apple’s New MacBook Pro: Everything You Need To Know

After approximately 27 years, Apple is finally giving us a new MacBook Pro.

Image: Apple

As rumoured (and leaked by Apple!), Apple showed-off a brand new MacBook Pro design at a press event in Cupertino. This is the first design refresh the MacBook Pro has seen in more than four years.

Like previous models, the design is all aluminium, but the 15-inch and 13-inch models are smaller and thinner than the previous models.

The 15-inch will weigh just 1.83kg, around 200g lighter than the old MacBook Pro.


Image: Apple

The MacBook Pro has a brand new ginormous trackpad that features Force Touch and a new keyboard using the same butterfly key mechanism first introduced with the MacBook.

But the big news is that in place of the function keys is a new OLED strip. It’s a Retina display and multi-touch and it responds to gestures.


Image: Apple

Dubbed TouchBar, it replaces the standard system functions. But it can do more — it can adapt to whatever software you use. So if you’re a web browser, your TouchBar shows you your favourites. You can slide along and tap.

The TouchBar can also act as a predictive QuickType suggestion bar for typing, like on your phone keyboard.


Image: Apple

Importantly, it also includes a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. This means you can login to your Mac with your fingerprint. It will also work with Apple Pay. The sensor is smartly located on the power button, for easy access.


Image: Apple

TouchBar is part of the keyboard and by default, all of your function keys will show up. But when you’re entering text, for instance, formatting controls show up and you can also access QuickType suggestions. This also means you can use TouchBar to display all your favourite emoji. That’s big!

Inside apps like Safari, you can move between tabs and you can even see a preview of your tabs right on the TouchBar.


Image: Apple

In Photos, you can use the TouchBar to access quick edit features like rotate and levelling controls. And because it’s multi-touch, you get a lot of granular control.

You can customise your TouchBar for ultimate nerdiness too. This means you can give one-touch access to terminal commands and system controls. You can even take a screenshot by tapping on the TouchBar. Cool!


Image: Apple

The Touch ID sensor on TouchBar also works with fast user switching, which is useful for machines with multiple users. Just tap on the Touch ID sensor and switch away!

The display on the new MacBook Pro has the same resolution as the old models, but is 67 per cent brighter and has 25 per cent more colours. It also features a sixth generation Core processor (Skylake) with new AMD Polaris graphics for the 15-inch model. The processor is quad-core for the 15-inch and dual-core for the 13-inch. The 13-inch MacBook Pro will use Intel’s integrated graphics. The base RAM configuraiton is 8GB for the 13-inch and 16GB for the 15-inch.

Apple is eschewing MagSafe and opting for Thunderbolt 3 powered USB-C ports. That means all these ports can be used for power, Thunderbolt, USB, HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA.


Image: Apple

You can also daisy-chain gear across these ports, so you can add a ton of gear. The 15-inch MacBook Pro is capable of powering two 5K external displays at once, in addition to the built-in display.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro will start at $3599, the 13-inch MacBook Pro will start at $2699. A less-capable MacBook Pro 13-inch is available with standard function keys, starting at $2199. The new MacBook Pros go on sale today and will be shipping in the next few weeks.


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