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Article by Domain Support
On Thursday, October 27th, Apple held a press event at their Cupertino campus to announce the release of two new MacBook Pros in 13 inch and 15 inch sizes. Jonathon Ive, Chief Design Officer at Apple narrates a 3 minute video Apple has produced that does a great job of visually demonstrating the new models which offer dramatically improved and even thinner LCD displays and a new Touchbar which replaces the Function Keys (F1, F2, etc.) at the top of the keyboard as well as offering 4 brand new USB C Thunderbolt 3 ports.

The new best of class Retina™ display offers a 67% brighter (500 nits brightness) utilizing an AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics, with 130% faster graphics performance (featuring new P3 color space with 25% more colors than the previous model’s sRGB as well as 67% higher contrast ratio. The new 15 inch model is 17% thinner. The 13 inch weighs 3 pounds while the 15 inch weighs 4 pounds. With totally redesigned speakers that provide as much as twice the dynamic range and up to 58 percent more volume and two and a half times louder bass for maximum boom than previous versions, you will appreciate the sound.

Perhaps the biggest change is the new Multi-Touch enabled strip of glass built into the keyboard called the Touch Bar allows for instant access to the tools you want, right when you want them. As Apple explains, “The Touch Bar replaces the function keys that have long occupied the top of your keyboard with something much more versatile and capable. It changes automatically based on what you’re doing to show you relevant tools you already know how to use — system controls like volume and brightness, interactive ways to adjust or browse through content, intelligent typing features like emoji and predictive text, and more. And for the first time, Touch ID is available on a Mac, enabling instant access to logins and fast, secure online purchases with Apple Pay.”

The keyboard has been redesigned to include a new second-generation butterfly mechanism. The Force Touch trackpad is significantly larger, giving your fingers more room to gesture and click. Jason Snell, Six Colors, had this to say about the redesigned trackpad, “The trackpads are large enough that Apple has had to build in more palm-rejection intelligence, because when you’re typing on these things, you’re going to inevitably slide your palms across them. In my experience writing this article on a 13-inch MacBook Pro, the palm rejection worked well—I never felt that I had to change my typing approach just to avoid weird mouse movements.”

Thunderbolt 3 combines ultra-high bandwidth with the ultra-versatility of the USB-C industry standard to create one revved-up universal port (13 inch available with two ports/15 inch available with four ports, so you can do all that from either side). You can simultaneously connect two 5K displays and two RAID systems to a 15-inch MacBook Pro with four Thunderbolt 3 ports to create a powerful workstation.

But it’s important to bear in mind that these new ports require adapters for connecting to existing USB and Thunderbolt peripherals.

For more details we also provide the Verge review below: