Without an announcement, without hype or teasing, Apple announced today the MacBook Pro 2018, in two versions: 13 inch and 15 inch. The updated MacBook Pro comes with a new CPU, more memory, True Tone displays and changes brought to the keyboard. We detailed them below.
The 13 inch version of the device is supposed to be two times faster than the previous gen model, while the 15 inch MacBook Pro 2018 is 70% faster. If you pick the smaller unit, you can get it with a quad core Core i5 or Core i7, up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 2 TB of SSD storage. Graphics are supplied by Intel Iris Plus 655 with 128 MB of eDRAM.
The 15 inch MacBook Pro is more powerful, with up to 8th gen Core i7 or Core i9 CPUs, plus up to 32 GB of RAM. Up to 4 TB of SSD storage are here, with Radeon Pro graphics with 4 GB of memory in the mix. As we mentioned above, there’s True Tone tech here, both for the screen and Touch Bar. This was inaugurated by the iPad and iPhone and it finally reached the laptops.
Apple promises 500 nits of brightness and P3 wide color gamut for the new screens. Security is also paramount here, courtesy of the Apple T2 chip, which saw the light of day on the iMac Pro. Secure boot and on the fly encryption is here too. “Hey Siri” is thus available. A major change has to do with the third gen keyboard with “quieter typing” according to Apple.
This means that the keyboard has been softened and the butterfly key mechanism has been tweaked. Apple did run into some problems with keyboards on MacBook Pro models, with a bunch of unhappy owners. Connectivity includes Thunderbolt 3 via USB Type-C, offering support for up to two 5K displays or up to four external GPUs. The design is a sleek aluminum unibody one, as expected and the color choice is Saddle Brown, Midnight Blue and Black.
As far as the prices go, you pay $1799 for the 13 incher and $2399 for the 15 incher.
