Apple Unveils New 13-Inch and 15-Inch MacBook Pros With Retina 'Touch Bar'

[lilrush]

They were thinking that they were going to release a laptop with an ASTOUNDING amount of I/O bandwidth. And they just, er, did!

FOUR 40 Gbps, IDENTICAL, MULTIFUNTION I/O PORTS!!!

Do you grasp the significance of that?

Wow, you talk just as childish as I expect for a name like that.
Do you grasp the fact that everything needs an adapter now? Or that Apple has increased the price by hundreds of dollars while actually removing things? Probably not, you were too busy preparing your offering for the Apple Gods.

 

[Mac 128]

Is Apple THAT out of touch with the pro/creative crowd?

I'm a creative director and lead a team of 15 creative professionals. I think I can speak for a good chunk of designers, video editors, photographers whether in-house, agency or freelance... if you are using a MBP, most of the time it will be connected to a bigger display, keyboard and mouse. See Apple's own marketing image below for reference.

View attachment 668675

For that reason alone... this work setup renders the Touch Bar completely useless. Sure maybe there will be times when we're "undocked" from our desk at a coffee shop, on public transit or in a meeting... and sure on those occasions we'll possibly tinker with it a little bit... but when real work needs to get done, the Touch Bar is unreachable and out of sight.

A non-Touch Bar 15-inch option would have been nice. Definitely a weird vibe to this event...

Just my two cents.

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen an updated Magic keyboard with this ... I suspect that's soon to come.

For every day stuff the touch bar looks useful, but I'd still rather have graphics tablet (Wacom, etc) for photo editing.

It's all a mute point however as the MacBook Pro is still stuck with a 16GB RAM limit - I need 32.
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Look at the XPS 13 and XPS 15.

The first thing that struck me was that the Touch pad is large enough now to use as a drawing tablet with the Pencil. I wouldn't be surprised to see this capability arrive in the near future along with updates to the graphic software to support it.

 

[forbegos34]

Cool story Apple. Desktops please...

Don't hold your breath, after this announcement it is clear that Apple is more interested in phones than in the Mac.

 

[Mac 128]

The fail was not getting the airpods out on time. Now I have to find the courage to untangle mu standard headphones when I use my mac and then use the lightning ones when I want to switch to my phone. Their wireless solution has doubled the cords for me in ths


Also I am sure it has been brought up but we just bought Iphone 7 with the old USB on one end. So we need a dongle or probably a new connector for syncing and charging? If this is the case Apple should bundle this in with every Mac. It isn't like we are using 3 year old phones when they pulled this change. It seems like they coould throw a dog a bone on this one to help ease the pain of the transition.

The airpods not being out means I have my lightning cable and headphone cable for using my mac and my phone all tangled up on my table now. Yes, these are all first world problems but sometimes it seems we are paying for the best user experience and it is painful at times.

I agree 100% about the AirPods. Totally botched the removal of the headphone jack by not having those ready from day one. Add to that no way possible to use the Lightning headphones with a Mac. If the iPhone 7 is someone's first smartphone, and they don't have a pair of old 3.5mm headphones already, they'll probably need to buy a pair to use with the adapter if they want to use them on any other audio equipment, and just leave the Lightning headphones in the drawer, or carry both around.

As for the charging cable, I think Apple made the right choice. To put this into perspective:

The iPhone 7 is going to sell over 200 million iPhone 7, not to mention the over half-a-billion Lightning devices already out there the same cable can be used with.

Apple will likely sell around 20 million Macs, all together, this year -- not just the new USB-C models. Compared to the installed base of maybe 100 million, maybe 10% of all Macs sold by the end of the year will have USB-C only ports. So that works out to be something like 2% of all iOS users may be using a USB-C Mac by the time the next iPhone comes out.

So instead of Apple supplying them with a cable on the less than 2% chance they will buy a new Mac, they continued to supply the vast majority of customers a cable that will be most useful in all of the environments they may encounter throughout their day.

I don't disagree that supplying a $4 adapter from USB-A to USB-C with the MacBook would have eased the transition, but I also don't agree with Apple supplying adapters in the first place. I think including a 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone 7 was a mistake, especially now that the AirPods have been delayed since it encourages people to keep using old 3.5mm equipment.

With the MBP, it might encourage people to keep using cheap adapters (which could lead to other problems) rather than buying the correct cables and equipment for the new MBP.

 

[forbegos34]

256 GB SSD - seriously ?

yeah, this is pathetic, I am moving to MS now.

 

[jgdeschamps]

Some persons around here know that I support Apple as a company that makes excellent computer products. I think they are great, as well as their services and I was really looking forward for this announcement. I have always defended that MacBooks -let them be 12" retina, Air or Pro- have a lot of applications for professional fields beside 3D and video editing... for these new laptops, the design is nice, TouchBar is not that big-a-deal... but I do not agree with the price we are getting here in Mexico for these laptops' internals (and by reading most comments around here, neither the USA, Canada and/or brits are happy about it.) They are about the same as a downpayment for a decent car. MacBook Pro 15" display starts at $56,000 pesos, and right after the announcement was finished, the 12" retina MacBook got a third price increase of $3,000 pesos. It now stands at $30,000 pesos (about US$1,576.00.) For the record, that 12" laptop was introduced here with a price of $23,000 pesos, and over the course of the year, it increased $7,000 pesos (about US$390.00) its cost. Same for iMacs (though the increase was not as dramatic as the MacBook's.) Only price left untouched is for the Mac Mini.

I was looking forward to changing my early 2015 11" MacBook Air for a more robust machine due to a small increase in salary, and to keep my hardware current. I was ready to pay about $43,000 pesos for a modern 15" Apple Pro laptop with modern CPUs, GPUs, insanely fast RAM and SSD, etc. But instead we just got great looks for the box, a shiny lights menu bar, and they chose to use last year's hardware tech inside. They crossed to the wrong side of the line of value/performance with these machines. And to top it all, the 11" Air line is not sold anymore, meaning no more updates within this segment that I find excellent value for the money. My personal decision is that they do not deserve my hard earned money for a half-assed attempt of a laptop. I know the tale of the strong dollar... still, their desktop or laptop prices are not worth it for now. And for the record, I didn't like Microsoft's Surface line either. My conclusion is that these companies don't want you buying computers anymore and are trying to force tablets and huge-ass phones on people. Not cool, and as the majority, I'm disappointed with this outcome.

 

[pmau]

Sadly I am now priced out of Apple.
I refuse to pay that sort of money for a MacBook. Shame as I've Been waiting a long time for a decent new mac!

Don't be too disappointed. You are not the only one. My choice would be more than 4k€, which is way beyond my personal limit. I would have bought one for 3.200€, but only with 1TB SSD and max CPU/GPU.

 

[Jack Burton]

As I mentioned a good number of quality Bluetooth headphones also come with a cable you can plugin.

Neat! At least you can "fall back" to higher quality audio.

And you can't tell me a $300+ pair of wired headphones sounds vastly superior to a $300+ pair of Bluetooth headphones.

If you can't tell the difference between wired and bluetooth, that's on you. I can't say or do anything to make your hearing better. If you think it sounds fine, it probably does. To you. Have a nice weekend!

 

[2298754]

Am I the only one that's disappointed that the 13inch is neutered again? no quad-core i7 and no dedicated GPU.

 

[AZMBNZ]

Am I the only one that's disappointed that the 13inch is neutered again? no quad-core i7 and no dedicated GPU.

Yeah, No Joke. It is a pricing-tier strategy employed by many companies to drive consumers into higher margin products. Porsche intentionally neuters their Cayman engine to avoid comparable performance to the 911. They don't want to lose the margin of 911 sales. It is the same thing at work here. I wouldn't necessarily blame Apple for this. It is a technique widely used in pricing tiered-products.

 

[too many Macs]

It's very obvious that Apple stumbled with both the port configuration and pricing. Not that anyone cares, but here are my observations.

1) They should have eased the transition to all USB-C by including at least one USB-3, one HDMI, and MagSafe2.
2) There should be no difference in port configuration between models just for marketing purposes.
3) The $1499 US model should have included these ports as well as a 512GB SSD and the Touch Bar. A 256GB SSD is fine for the entry level model w/o the Touch Bar, but all other specs should be the same for a few hundred less.
4) For those of us who primarily use their MBP in clamshell mode, they should have released a new external keyboard with the Touch Bar and Touch ID.

That said, here's what I liked.
1) The Touch Bar and Touch ID look nice. No more passwords.
2) I've been waiting for another color option (Space Gray) forever.
3) The keyboard on my 2015 MBP is the worst keyboard I have ever used on an Apple notebook. The noisy wobbly keys drive me nuts. The new keyboard is based on the MacBook keyboard, which was an improvement IMHO. (Secure key caps is more important to me than key travel.)

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Rant.

 

[fyun89]

Touchpad is too large (nowhere to rest palms while typing). Magic Toolbar is silly. I/O ports far too limited. No MagSafe. An excessively compromised and overpriced release. Cannot fathom what Apple was thinking.

Touch pad probably has palm rejection...

 

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

lol at all the people saying they don't need more than 16GB RAM. This isn't a Macbook Hobbyist. It's supposed to be "Pro", as in for PROfessionals. 16GB RAM is a joke. Chrome and 1 Windows VM, and whoops now we're swapping RAM out to disk. And if you want *2* VMs, or maybe to edit some video, well too bad cause the kids in the Macrumors forum said they're doing just fine with 4GB.

I *am* a professional in web design, development, graphics design, using 16 GBs RAM and it has been more than sufficient. I've ordered this new machine again at 16 GBs RAM and expect that will be adequate for the 4-5 years I intend to use the machine. MacOS is extremely efficient with RAM and this is one bottleneck I've never been bothered by on my machine, even running an assortment of coding programs, Photoshop, Parallels, music, etc. at the same time.

I would have ordered 32 GBs if it had been an available option for the sake of future compatibility. And there are professions which would certainly appreciate 32 GBs like video editing. For those reasons I'm bummed that Apple didn't address this option (even if it meant reduced battery life—a tradeoff I know people in the later category would typically be happy to make).

But no, it's not anywhere near so dramatic a concern as you're suggesting. And I very much doubt I'm on the low end of resource usage among professionals.

 

[Johnny907]

But if you saw the presentation you'd know it's a way faster machine with a much better display.

Only it's not. Benchmarks so far peg it only slightly faster than it's predecessor, and the display only slightly better. For comparison, go to Best Buy or even an Apple Store and put a 2016 MacBook side by side with a 2015 MBP. There is a difference, but it's not massive and certainly not a $300-400 one.

 

[Sedulous]

Rant.

Video is right about everything except making macOS a touchscreen experience. User interface devices are MUCH faster and more precise than a finger and doesn't require a DUPLO block sized interface. Using that same fail logic, why not replace the keyboard with a touchscreen on a notebook? Or stupidly making a 13" 4K notebook display.

Touch pad probably has palm rejection...

Not likely. Wrist/palm will hit mega-sized touchpad, click somewhere randomly, and annoy users. Apple has really disappointed on this one.

 

[stacee]

Did none of you whiners watch the event??? You can customize the toolbar... so the buttons can stay static for OS use. The magic happens in the apps. Pretty amazing stuff

What magic? Touchscreens have been on laptops for yonks. Not stinky little emoji bars but entire screens with pen input. Pressure sensitive pen input. Now, that must be still regarded as magic around Cupertino...

 

[s15119]

A lot of negativity. Oh well, that seems to be all the rage these days. I think this is a pretty sweet set of gear. I will be maxing out a 15 inch to replace my Air. It will be a blazing fast laptop and I know I'll be able to use the touch bar in my workflows. I'm pretty damn excited about it. Thanks Apple.

 

[manhattanboy]

I disagree, Apple has always been about value for money. They were never cheap but that's not the same thing. Their higher cost was always justified, as you got what you paid for. I'm no longer convinced that's the case, the price increase over last years model is huge and it's questionable, at least to me (and apparently others), if the extra you get for that increase is worth it.

So then a MacBook Air that cost greater than $2000 was about value for money? The first couple generations of MacBook Airs cost that much for decent configurations. Apple got lazy in iteration of its laptops so just dropped prices instead. That is what fooled you into believing Apple is about "value for money". Apple has traditionally been about design, and by Jobs definition design includes usability. That is what you are paying extra for. If you feel Apple design sucks then buy something else and stop b!tching. If you want a "value for money" Apple product, then buy Apple's old laptops. Just like they do for the iPhones, older models represent better "value for money".
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A lot of negativity. Oh well, that seems to be all the rage these days. I think this is a pretty sweet set of gear. I will be maxing out a 15 inch to replace my Air. It will be a blazing fast laptop and I know I'll be able to use the touch bar in my workflows. I'm pretty damn excited about it. Thanks Apple.

Totally agree. I am stoked about buying one as well. I have been waiting 8 years for something novel enough to upgrade.

 

[elvislives]

macOS isn't Windows. It doesn't slurp up every available byte of RAM as a big ol' application cache. Therefore, it can easily provide good performance with much less RAM than a Windows system.

Yes I know that. But You try to run a pro 3D app on 16GB RAM and you will soon run out. They should have had a 32GB option.

 

[SeattleMoose]

They left the headphone jack in as an afterthought against all the grief about removing it on the iPhone 7. But now with all the other I/O gone, it almost feels like a FU while they jack the prices up. Functionality and Value are on the decline...big time.

 

[fyun89]

Video is right about everything except making macOS a touchscreen experience. User interface devices are MUCH faster and more precise than a finger and doesn't require a DUPLO block sized interface. Using that same fail logic, why not replace the keyboard with a touchscreen on a notebook? Or stupidly making a 13" 4K notebook display.


Not likely. Wrist/palm will hit mega-sized touchpad, click somewhere randomly, and annoy users. Apple has really disappointed on this one.

Even most Windows have Synapse touchpads that have palm rejection. I dont think Apple would be clumsy enough to not include it. I just tried to use palm on my 2012 rMBP and it didn't detect my palm.

 

[AZMBNZ]

Has anyone else observed the less-than-apple-retail pricing from authorized sellers? Amazon had 10% off till they sold out. Now the orders for MBPw/TB are backed up 4-5 weeks. I believe this launch week pricing discount may be unprecedented. Is it possible that the Apple retail price is really a suggestion? If that is the case, then do you think that we will see discounts for BF and in to the Christmas season?

 

[asiga]

the Intel integrated graphics can make use of up to 64GB of system RAM. so...

One thing is the hardware, and another the OS support. I'm not really sure if MacOS can currently dedicate 64GB of system RAM to the iGPU (in past recent OS X versions it used to have a rather low OS-imposed limit, even if the iGPU hardware was able to lock more system RAM).

Anyway, you make a really good point, and you really explain why I consider the Retina MacBook a much better option than the new MBP: If you need to deal with visualization of huge datasets (like in my case), the new MacBook Pro makes compromises I cannot take: Dedicated GPU with too low VRAM size, and system RAM limited to 16GB. This means the new MBP can not replace my desktop without a serious performance decrease (which, BTW, isn't an Apple Mac anymore, just because Apple didn't -and still hasn't- have a desktop Mac with a current powerful GPU anymore).

I've a late-2010 MacBook Air. I cannot use it for huge visualization sets, but I can use it for the rest of things: It runs AutoCAD very smoothly (even if the guy at the Apple shop insisted me to buy a MBP at the moment, arguing the MBA wasn't enough for AutoCAD: I insisted I knew what I was talking about, and that the MBA was perfectly suitable for AutoCAD). It also runs smoothly Mathematica, GIMP, LLVM compilers, Office, and all the stuff I use in my everyday work. The only performance problem comes with OpenGL and OpenCL.

If I buy the new MBP, I'll get a laptop which weighs almost twice my MBA, while not being able to replace my desktop for visualization. The cost of the new MBP is roughly equivalent to what I payed for my desktop.

But then you look at the Retina MacBook. I didn't check, but I guess its performance won't be lower than my late-2010 MBA (and, if it's lower, I suppose the likely future update to kaby lake will get to comparable performance levels).

With the Retina MacBook, I'd get a laptop which is even lighter than my MBA, can do the same things I use my MBA for, is aesthetically very beautiful, and has no fans (which I consider a very important point: if you cannot replace a desktop, then make it absolutely quiet, no fans please).

The new MBP is a mid-road compromise: It's heavier than the MBA and the RMB, but the hardware isn't really professional-level (performance-wise). I travel with my laptop a lot. If the new MBP had more system RAM and/or a more powerful GPU, I'd happily chose the MBP even if it's heavier than the RMB. But with such limitations, it doesn't justify losing the lightness of the RMB, at least in my case.

 

[ILoveCalvinCool]

I've been excitedly waiting for the new MBP so I could upgrade two laptops at my house - but now, I just can't buy one of these and I'm not sure if I can keep using Macs. Here's the reason - for lifestyle reasons, I have no choice but to use a laptop primarily, and I also like to play games on it while waiting at airports and such. Here are the minimum specs for Civilization VI, recently released for OS X:

It makes no sense to buy an expensive, brand new laptop that already can't play (or barely play) a game that was released before the laptop.

Very disappointing.