Apple Unveils What Could Be Its Most Ambitious MacBook Pro Ever

Apple’s latest MacBooks have just been announced, and as anticipated, there are a few surprises in store – and not to mention confirmation of some rumors. The biggest rumor that’s proven true is that Apple decided to remove the dedicated Esc key. Ordinarily, that’d seem insane, but another change helps negate the loss: the addition of “Touch Bar”.

It’s with this Touch Bar that makes this such an ambitious release from Apple – it’s a peripheral that needs to be well-supported to be that useful. What it’s designed to do is act as a contextual side-display that helps you get certain types of work done easier than with a touchpad or mouse. Numerous examples of how this could be utilized are provided, including adjusting variables in video or photo editing, or gaining quick access to commonly used functions and services.

If you’re watching a video, for example, the Touch Bar could act as a media controller, allowing you to adjust the volume, skip ahead, adjust the brightness, and so on. In a photo editor, such as Adobe Lightroom, you could pick and choose a range of options, such as exposure or shadow control, and use the Touch Bar to adjust the setting’s intensity. Another example could be clicking on the color swatch in Photoshop and choosing the perfect color with the Touch Bar.

As mentioned, this kind of feature is ambitious, because if developers don’t want to take advantage of it, it’s only going to prove useful with certain kinds of workloads. However, the potential is definitely there for this to prove a runaway hit, so it seems very unlikely that its existence will be ignored.

A slew of other features have been enhanced with this release, as well. At each side of the keyboard is a speaker, although the drivers are not placed beneath them. Instead, those are located to each side of the (new much larger) touchpad, which might seem like an odd design, but supposedly results in a doubling of the dynamic range, up to 2.5x boomier bass, and to top it off, an increase in volume of 58%.

For connectivity, Apple has kitted out its latest MacBooks with Thunderbolt 3 ports; 2 are found on the 13-inch model, while four are available on the 15-inch model. One of these ports will need to double as a charging port.

Other important specs include: 2560×1600 (13-inch) and 3880×1800 (15-inch) resolutions, either an i5 or i7 Intel Core processor, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, a 720p FaceTime camera, two (13-inch) or three microphones (15-inch), up to a 1TB (13-inch) or 2TB (15-inch) SSD, up to 16GB of memory, and for graphics duties, either an Intel or AMD solution. Notably, the AMD solution is the company’s brand-new Radeon Pro series, which are designed for workstation purposes. By default, this chip will come with a meager 2GB of memory, which can be upgraded to 4GB.

It’s important to note that Apple is still selling a 13-inch version of the MacBook Pro which isn’t one of the new ones, so be careful at the checkout. The starter model with Touch Bar is priced at $1,799 for the 13-inch series, and $2,399 for the 15-inch.