Apple announced their latest MacBook Pro today at their Town Hall in Cupertino. It’s their thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever, featuring an all aluminum design with metal on all sides, in silver and space gray. The new MacBook Pro carries on in 13-inch and 15-inch versions, featuring Force Tough Trackpads that are twice as larger than before, along with the 2nd-gen butterfly mechanism keyboard. The 15-inch MacBook Pro has Intel Core i7 Quad-core processors and Radeon Pro graphics, with up to 4GB vram. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is available with Intel Core i5 or i7 processors with Intel Iris Graphics. The only connectivity options are Thunderbolt 3 ports, which can be used to power the laptop or connect a variety of peripherals that will simultaneously charge the MacBook Pro.
Despite these advancements, the biggest news about the new Apple MacBook Pro is that they have killed off the function keys, which is replaced by the Touch Bar, a Retina Display strip that responds to multi-touch, gestures, and taps. It’s contextual and adapts to the software in use to adjust system functions, software specific functions, or when typing, give you quick-type suggestions. The right side of the Touch Bar features a dedicated pad for TouchID that can be used to login to the MacBook Pro or for Apple Pay. Apple is also producing a 13-inch version functions keys, for the traditionalists out there.
The 13-inch with function keys starts at $1499, while the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros will start at $1799 and $2399, available for order starting today.