Apple MacBook Pro with an OLED Touch bar and Touch ID announced

Apple has finally unveiled the new MacBook Pro. As reported earlier, the MacBook Pro ditches functions keys, instead has a secondary multi-touch OLED screen strip above the keyboard called 'touch bar'.

The Touch Bar responds to gestures and applies app-specific functions. With the Touch Bar, users can scroll through a range of functions specific to an app such as scrolling through gallery of images, reply with quick type on email, access system controls, access Siri quickly, or even bring back the function keys, as well.

The new MacBook Pro also features Touch ID integrated at the rightmost part of the Touch Bar, for locking/unlocking the device, making payments online via Apple Pay, and switch account between users on Mac OS.

The MacBook Pro will be available in 13-inch and 15-inch models and they are lighter and thinner than their predecessors. The display is said to be 67 percent brighter, has 67 percent better contrast ratio and displays 25 percent more color.

As for the hardware the 15-inch model is powered by quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 2133MHz memory and packs up to 16GB RAM and AMD Radeon Pro graphics with up to 4GB memory. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is powered by either Core i5 or Core i7 dual-core processor and have 8GB RAM and Intel Iris Pro graphics.

Both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro storage starts at 256GB and goes up to 2TB on the top of the line variant. and includes 4 x USB-C Thunderbolt ports and any one of them can used to charge the laptop. Unfortunately the SD card slot, Thunderbolt, USB, DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA ports are missing, the the 3.5mm headphone jack is retained. This also means that the Magsafe power cord will no longer work with MacBook Pro.

They also come with a larger Force Touch trackpad for better gestures, a new keyboard with second generation butterfly switch mechanism, and up to 10 hours of battery life.

There's also an entry level 13-inch MacBook Pro that comes with traditional function keys instead of Touch Bar, no Touch ID and two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports. This model is 13-inch smaller than the MacBook Air, but has the same weight. Apple is bringing this laptop as a replacement to the MacBook Air, which means the Air line up is getting an axe. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with no Touch Bar comes with 2GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor with Iris 540 graphics, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and 10 hours battery life.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1799 (INR 1,55,900), while the 15-inch model starts at $2399 (INR 2,05,900). The entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar starts at $1499 (INR Rs. 1,29,900).  The Touch Bar models will start shipping in the U.S in 2-3 weeks, while the 13-inch model without the Touch Bar is shipping already. All the three laptops will be launched in India soon.

Kaiser Bey

Kaiser is a tech enthusiast who likes to write, read and talk about tech. He dreams of going to Mars and never come back. We hope that you find his posts on AndroGuider helpful and informative