Apple’s Macbook Pro has pretty much maintained the same design and look for the past couple of years, with mostly only its internals getting an annual standard refresh. The only known major changes or additions to the Macbook Pro lineup include the Retina Display and the more recent Force Touch trackpad which debuted with the new 12-inch Macbook. This time, live from Apple’s “Hello Again” keynote event, the company has finally redesigned its flagship lineup of laptops.
First off, the new Macbook Pro features a new metal design on all sides, according to Phil Schiller. While the current MBP’s are already aluminium built, the new ones certainly sport a sleeker look. The new Macbook Pro happens to be the thinnest and lightest that Apple has ever made, in typical Apple fashion. The 13-inch Macbook Pro now sports a thickness of 14.9mm from the previous 18mm, plus it weighs in at 3 pounds. It also features a much larger sized Force Touch trackpad this time. On top of that, the new Macbook Pro packs a new display which is 67 percent brighter than the current generation Macbook Pro, and gives out 25% more colors. Apple has claimed the display to consume less power than before despite it being brighter.
The new Macbook Pro features a new Touch Bar, a OLED touch strip on top of the keyboard which has been rumored for several months leading to today’s event. The Touch Bar has the Esc key on the left as a software button. As the name states, the Touch Bar will respond to taps, along with gestures. Apple claims the Touch Bar to have its Retina Display technology. The Touch Bar was demonstrated to be used when swiping through emojis, tapping on auto corrected words like seen on iOS, display bookmarks while browsing the web, and adjust sliders while editing an image, just to name a few. On the right side of the Touch Bar is second generation Touch ID, covered with Sapphire Glass.
Moving on to the internals, the 13-inch Macbook Pro is powered by either a 6th-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processor with 8GB of RAM and base storage of 256GB PCIe SSD. Graphics are powered by Intel Iris Graphics. The 15-inch Macbook Pro on the other hand will only be running on a 6th-gen Intel Core i7 processor with 16GB of RAM. Storage starts at 256GB as well, configurable up to a whopping 2TB. The 15-inch model features Radeon Pro graphics card with 2GB of memory on top of the integrated Intel HD Graphics.
Both models of the Macbook Pro sport four USB Type-C ports, and can be charged via any one of them. This means that Apple has bid goodbye to the MagSafe port for its new line of Macbook Pro’s, following the footsteps of the 12-inch Macbook. The four USB C ports also saw Apple doing away with the HDMI, Thunderbolt, Mini Display and USB and VGA ports. The SD card slot has also been removed, but the 3.5mm headphone jack managed to stay on. Both models are said to have battery life of up to 10 hours, which an improvement from their predecessors.
The new Macbook Pro’s are currently available for sale now. The 13-inch MBP is priced starting at RM 7,599 up to RM 8,399. Apple is also offering a non-Touch Bar model with 3 USB Type-C ports at RM 6,299. The 15-inch model will set you back a more pinching RM 10,199 up to RM 11,999. What do you think of the all new Macbook Pro? How about its nifty new Touch Bar? Let us know your thoughts at the comments section below!