Apple’s Macbook Pro update is there: more power, quieter keyboard
Apple has not surprisingly given the MacBook Pro line an update, but unfortunately, it can not really have a name. Of course, Apple has made ‘The most advanced MacBook Pro ever’, but effectively means a new 8th generation Intel processor with 4 cores for the 13-inch and 6 cores for the 15-inch version of Apple’s laptop. There is now a True Tone display and the machines can get up to 32 GB of memory and up to 4 TB of storage internally. What does that cost? You do not want to know.
Do you really want to know? The top-of-the-line 15-inch model with everything up to a mere 8,000 euros. Apple promises all the power that you would expect from a desktop. The best-selling Pro, a 13-inch version with 128 GB storage, 8 GB memory, a 2.3 GHz Core i5 processor and only two instead of four Thunderbolt ports, you can take with you for 1,500 euros. Then you do not get all the new gadgets, because they can only be obtained from the most expensive 13-inch model that starts at 2000 euros. The 15-inch version starts at 2800 euros.
But is the keyboard now even better?
Apart from the price, both new models have a T2 chip, which must ensure that the Macbooks are even safer. That includes safe booting and encrypted storage, but the chip also ensures that you can call “Hey Siri” at any time and the computer will respond. Also the keyboard according to Apple improved, an important point if you have followed the hoop around the faltering keys.
Now they will not soon admit that their keyboard sucks on the last few models of Macbook, but perhaps the “quieting” of the keyboard is a euphemism for fixing the problems that the keyboards clearly to have. Unfortunately, a tweet from The Verge’s Nilay Patel seems to confirm what I already feared: nothing has changed in the design itself, in any case not to improve the reliability. And that’s really very bad.
A pro for the pro market
These updates ensure that the MacBook Pros are not so much behind the competition in terms of processor, but it is not really exciting what Apple did with the update. Now it will be the target group for these computers nothing: the MacBook Pro is intended for professionals and that interests the little what a laptop costs if he does what he has to do. The potential stumbling block in that respect is the keyboard, although Apple apparently claims that really only a very small part of the users has problems with that. Reliability must come first with a pro-laptop because if you can not guarantee that, the pros will not have to.
As an accessory, Apple also has the leather MacBook Sleeve, which fits your laptop nicely (with microfibres on the inside) so you can walk around with it in style. That costs as much as 230 euros for the 15-inch version, but then you also have something. The Sleeve is available in blue, brown and black. And it has to be said: the 2015 MacBook Pro is no longer available. Goodbye, Apple’s last computer with a real keyboard.