Apple has finally unveiled one of the most awaited products of the year – the new MacBook Pro. The Cupertino-based company has launched by far one of their thinnest and lightest laptops till date. The new MacBooks will be available in three variants including a 13-inch one with standard function keys(no touch bar), another 13-inch one with the fancy touch bar and the latter one being a significantly powerful 15-inch one with touch bar.
While most the MacBooks has always ended up on the lighter side, the new MacBook Pro lineups are now lighter than ever. The new 13-inch model weighs in around 3lbs and measures 14.9mm in thickness, and the 15-inch model comes nearly close with a weight of 4lbs and measures 15.5mm in thickness. The new 13-inch model is 17 percent thinner than its predecessor and the 15-inch model is 20 percent less in terms of volume when compared to older MacBook Pro.
Apple nearly took an hour long to brag about their new multi-touch OLED panel dubbed as Touch Bar. Sitting top of the keyboard the touch bar now replaces the standard keyboard/function layout and offers more contextual and wide range of options which will definitely increase your productivity. The touch bar is a clever and easier way to control the running apps like Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. To make things clear, the touch bar basically offers you varieties of image editing tools like filters and straightening tools. The panel also presents you with the scrub bar while editing or watching videos. Furthermore, to increase the efficiency of your typing the touch bar impressively offers keyword suggestions, which resembles your smartphone keyboard, additionally, it also presents you with recommended folders to sort out your emails.
Right to the touch bar, Apple has embedded its 2nd gen touch ID sensor to the home button. What’s impressive is that the fingerprint scanner is separately paired with Apple’s T1 chip which cohesively works to unlock your MacBook and secure all of your online payments done right from the laptop. That’s not the only thing the touch bar has to offer to its users, the touch bar supports various apps including Keynote, Page, and Terminal, while support for other application like Adobe Photoshop and DJ Pro will be added later this year. Oh! and yes, there’s a dedicated key for Siri in the touch bar.
Apple has now integrated the new keyboard based on the 2nd gen Butterfly mechanism offering users a bit more travel distance and a better response, while the touchpad now supports the force-touch which is twice as large in the new 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Besides the productive touch bar, the new MacBook Pros now comes with more vivid Retina display, offering 67 percent brighter colors, 67 percent higher contrast, and 25 more colors than its predecessors. For those audio freaks, the MacBook Pro now offers booming output and 2x better audio dynamic range than its previous models indulging you into an immersive sound experience.
Diving deeper into the hardware side, the new MacBook Pro comes with three different configurations. Talking about the 15-inch one it comes with a 6th generation quad-core i7 processors with 2133MHz memory and 16GB RAM. The powerful CPU is coupled up with AMD Polaris GPU with 4GB VRAM offering you 2.3x faster performance than its predecessor. The new MacBook Pro also boasts super fast SSD with a capacity up to 2TB making it 50 percent faster with a transfer speed of 3.1 GB/s. For the peace of your mind, Apple has implanted the new heat sync system making the new MacBook Pros a little bit cooler and quieter.
Basically, as stated by Apple based on the real-time test the new 15-inch MacBook Pro outscores the last year model by 60% in gaming, 130% in 3D graphics and 50% in video editing.
Heading towards the 13-inch model it offers dual-core Intel i5 / i7 processors, 8GB RAM, and Intel Iris GPU which as claimed is 2x times faster than previous gen model. While the 13-inch model with standard keyboard bears a clock speed of 2.0GHz(overclocks up to 3.1GHz), whereas the second one with touch bar will come with a clock speed of 2.9GHz(overclocks up to 3.3GHz).
Talking about the nitty gritty, the new MacBook Pro from Apple comes with four Thunderbolt powered Type-C ports, which will prove to be helpful since all ports can be used as a charger or can be connected to any USB, Display port, HDMI, and VGA devices. Overall, the new MacBook can be connected to two 5K res display at the same time. Interestingly, there’s also a headphone phone jack which Apple didn’t mention. Apple has also claimed that both MacBook Pro will run up to 10 hours on a single charge, which is pretty impressive.
Surprisingly, it looks like Apple has completely ignored(or pretty much ditched) the Air lineup since the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is pretty slim compared to the MacBook Air and cost exactly the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJdeVtnUxuk
As far as pricing is concerned, Apple products ain’t no cheap. The 13-inch model with a standard keyboard(no touch bar) and two Thunderbolt ports will be priced at $1,499, whereas the 13-inch one with touch bar and four Thunderbolt port(and a fast 2.9GHz processor) will be carrying a price tag of $1,799. The 15-inch MacBook Pro which is more powerful will be carrying a hefty price tag of $2,399.
The former one will be shipping today, whereas the two models with touch bar will be shipping within next 2-3 weeks.
