13-inch MacBook Pro gains Force Touch trackpad, Broadwell CPUs, improved battery life & faster flash
Apple's MacBook Pro lineup was given a refresh on Monday, bringing the new Force Touch trackpad with haptic feedback, as well as Intel's latest-generation Broadwell processors to the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The all-new Force Touch trackpad, introduced earlier Monday with the similarly all-new MacBook, sports four force sensors that can detect how much pressure users apply to the surface. The sensitivity of each sensor -- which are located in the trackpad's four corners -- can be adjusted in software, and users can click anywhere.
A new gesture, called the "Force Click," will trigger different actions in Mac OS X depending on where users click. Among those Apple showed are force clicking an address to show its location a map, force clicking a word to bring up its Wikipedia entry, and fast-forwarding through a movie in Quicktime based on the force of the click.
It also features the Taptic Engine that was first unveiled with the Apple Watch. That unit provides haptic feedback for touches, and can also be adjusted by the user.
The new MacBook Pros also feature new Flash memory that is twice as fast, as well as improved battery life, boasting 10 hours of uptime on a single charge. Apple will begin shipping them today.
Availability
Apple's early-2015 13-inch MacBook Pros will begin arriving at Apple authorized resellers within the next 48 hours. Some base models are already listed in our Mac Price Guide, with dozens more configurations expected to be available at discount, with tax-savings benefits within the next few days.
The all-new Force Touch trackpad, introduced earlier Monday with the similarly all-new MacBook, sports four force sensors that can detect how much pressure users apply to the surface. The sensitivity of each sensor -- which are located in the trackpad's four corners -- can be adjusted in software, and users can click anywhere.
A new gesture, called the "Force Click," will trigger different actions in Mac OS X depending on where users click. Among those Apple showed are force clicking an address to show its location a map, force clicking a word to bring up its Wikipedia entry, and fast-forwarding through a movie in Quicktime based on the force of the click.
It also features the Taptic Engine that was first unveiled with the Apple Watch. That unit provides haptic feedback for touches, and can also be adjusted by the user.
The new MacBook Pros also feature new Flash memory that is twice as fast, as well as improved battery life, boasting 10 hours of uptime on a single charge. Apple will begin shipping them today.
Availability
Apple's early-2015 13-inch MacBook Pros will begin arriving at Apple authorized resellers within the next 48 hours. Some base models are already listed in our Mac Price Guide, with dozens more configurations expected to be available at discount, with tax-savings benefits within the next few days.
Comments
Yeah, I'm confused. On the Apple website, it only shows the 13" MBP as "new". Does the 15" not get the same upgrades?
I believe they only update the trackpad, not keyboard on mbpr.
Did the 15" get updated at all? It still has the old trackpad. I'm not familiar enough with the various chips, but I don't remember the 15" being mentioned at all in the presentation.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina
Off-topic, but the Mac mini is also listed on the Apple store with the "New" tag. Is that a left-over or did they get some kind of a bump? I don't remember any mention of desktop Macs at all in the event today.
The 15" was not updated. If you look at the days since it was last released, it's due for an upgrade soon. Maybe they have something bigger for it planned or they're waiting on intel for some new chipset.
Hope the delay in the new trackpad for the 15" is because it is getting a bigger revamp with more the the new air's features- the new keyboard, usb ports and and most importantly battery tech.
They have only refreshed the trackpad, CPU and Iris card on the update. No significant IMHO, there is a 2014 refurbished mbpr for $979, it is the best choice.
Yeah, I'm confused. On the Apple website, it only shows the 13" MBP as "new". Does the 15" not get the same upgrades?
No. That seems to because the new CPUs are available for now only in dual-core versions, not quad-core. The 13" uses duals so it gets an update. I expect the 15" will be revved when Intel releases quad-core models of the variety needed.
Are you privy to Apple's future product plans?
Well its no surprise. Broadwell chips are a long delay. They finally came out but Skylake's progress is independent to Broadwell's. So I am hoping they are on track. And the point that Pro 15" is not bumped while it's little brothers are, it means that's a deliberate move by Apple to show off something for Christmas.
I suspect it's one of those things that we'll try a couple of times, then quietly forget about, like Siri.
Where is the USB-C connector upgrade for MBPR that was part a 12" Macbook announcement ? And also new each key led keyboard.
Broadwell-H, the CPU meant for the MBP was due in June but Skylake-H, the successor to it is on track for August/September. Intel hasn't spoken much about Broadwell-H at all and it looks like they're just going to skip over it.
If they do, it would be great because you essentially get two processor upgrades together. It would be like that time Apple skipped a model and jumped to the i-series chips and it was about 2x performance jump. With Skylake, the integrated GPU can go up by almost double to put it close to NVidia/AMD's latest chips.
They'd also have DDR4 (up to 32GB RAM) and PCIe4 and TB3 so 5K display support.
There's Skylake chips for the models that just got updated too so there could very well be another late 2015 update for the Macbook, Air and 13" Pro in about 6-7 months times.
Regarding the 15" rMBP update, this article on Wikipedia sums the Broadwell CPU releases up quite well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwell_(microarchitecture)#List_of_Broadwell_processors
So, the next rMBP 15" upgrade seems far, far in the future.
I wonder if they fixed the issue with the anti-glare coating coming off that has been plaguing users since 2012.
http://www.staingate.org/