At an event on Thursday, Apple unveiled the new 2016 MacBook Pro. The redesigned MacBook Pro comes with "incredible extreme" all-metal body. The main attraction of the new MacBook Pro is an OLED touch strip at the top that Apple is calling the Touch Bar. The Touch Bar
comes with a fingerprint scanner Touch ID that users can tap to log-in quickly to their computer as well as make online payments. The touch strip offers on-screen button that changes according to the application you're running. Schiller, Apple SVP, said it was time Apple gotten rid of the dedicated function keys. The new MacBook Pro is thinner and lighter than the existing model, and it is powerful too. It comes in two screen sizes: 13-inch, which weighs 3 pounds and measures 14.9mm -- down from 18mm from older MacBook Pro. The trackpad is larger too, Apple says, twice as larger than the older one. Also, it's Force Touch trackpad. ArsTechnica adds:
Both laptops are still recognizably MacBook Pros, but in keeping with Apple's design priorities they've got slimmer profiles and smaller footprints. This is made possible in part by the move to USB Type-C ports like the one in the MacBook, all four of which support Thunderbolt 3. All four ports can be used to charge the system, too. Compared to the measly one port in the MacBook, the MacBook Pros are much more appealing to people who plug lots of stuff into their computers at once. Apple has also made the cowardly decision to retain the headset jack. Both systems include new Intel Skylake processors -- dual-core chips in the 13-inch Pro and quad-core chips in the 15-inch model, just like before. The 13-inch Pros ship exclusively with Intel Iris 540 GPUs, while the 15-inch models ship with Polaris-based AMD Radeon graphics at the high-end.The 13-inch model MacBook Pro starts at $1,799, whereas the 15-inch model starts at $2,399.
Re:2016 marks the end of Apple brand loyalty
By kamapuaa
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2016-Oct-27 15:23
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
They can still get away with it, because Windows sucks and Linux is a pain in the ass.
I agree the new macbooks seem overpriced, but what's the alternative?
Re: Less Space than a Nomad.
By 93 Escort Wagon
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2016-Oct-27 15:25
• Score: 5, Funny
• Thread
What a complete joke for something that has Pro in the name.
Don't worry, that'll be changing next summer when they bring their product names into line - like they did with their OS offerings this past summer.
iPhone will become Apple Phone.
iPad will become Apple Pad.
MacBook Pro will become Apple Laptop.
Looking further out... they'll probably consolidate their naming scheme further to be consistent with what they did with their retail outlets.
Apple Phone will become Apple.
Apple Pad will become Apple.
Apple Laptop will become Apple.
And you, the Apple Customer, will also become Apple.
So Apple will take your Apple to the Apple to be repaired, er, reAppled. It's like the Smurfs, but with Apples!
Re:Time to sell my Apple stock...
By The Optimizer
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2016-Oct-27 15:45
• Score: 4, Interesting
• Thread
> But... but... you forgot to mention they're using previous-generation processors in their brand-new laptops! That takes courage!
Not really. The Kaby Lake equivalents of the Skylake CPUs they are using have not been released yet, so they are the current generation CPUs in those configurations.
Re:2016 marks the end of Apple brand loyalty
By IWantMoreSpamPlease
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2016-Oct-27 15:53
• Score: 5, Funny
• Thread
OS/2?
Re:Less Space than a Nomad.
By Anubis IV
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2016-Oct-27 18:58
• Score: 5, Interesting
• Thread
OEM's have already started selling laptops with Kaby Lake CPU's. Apple, however, cheaped out on the core part of their system, so what makes you think they won't cheap out on everything?
You've got your facts backwards: Apple is the one that went with the more expensive, more powerful part, and it's the other OEMs who are cheaping out by using the chips they are.
The Kaby Lake chips that are available today are the dual core models. The quad-core Kaby Lake chips that would be suitable for use in a MacBook Pro won't be available for another few months. Moreover, even if they had waited, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. The performance gap between the generations is minimal (which seems to be the general trend for CPUs these days), whereas the dual core to quad core performance gap is substantial for the types of work you expect pro users to be doing. Sticking with Skylake was definitely the right call because it allowed them to release a more powerful machine without the wait, and it was definitely not the cheaper route.
Then you have the puffery about USB-C and TB3. My Dell has had that for nearly a year. Marketing is one thing, but don't insult me with your lies, Apple.
You accuse them of puffery and lies without citing examples of either. They said it has Thunderbolt 3 via USB 3.1 Type-C. They never claimed it was first laptop to offer it (nor would they, since they launched one earlier this year that had it), though they're definitely the first to embrace it to such a degree by putting four of the ports on one machine, making them the only ports the computer has, and making them equally usable for all tasks (i.e. you can plug any cable--including the power cable--into any of them).
Then there's the pathetic AMD GPU. Just make a goddamned nVidia driver for macOS already.
It's the not-yet-released Radeon Pro 460 (i.e. the mobile version of the RX 460), and the Polaris architecture has been going head-to-head with nVidia's latest architecture (Pascal) in terms of both performance and power efficiency. But facts be damned. It's apparently "pathetic" because an Anonymous Coward has declared it so.
There are certainly valid reasons to go from Mac to Windows (I'm even planning to do so myself before the end of the year) or vice versa, but it sounds to me like you're just grasping for any reason you can find to rationalize the decision you made.