After quite a lot of rumours, Apple has today finally launched the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The new laptop improves upon a number of factors from the MacBook Pros Apple has been selling for the past two years, including, a new keyboard design that Apple hopes people will like.
The new MacBook Pro comes with a 16-inch Retina display, in two variants. The laptop comes with either a 6-core Intel Core i7 processor, or an 8-core Intel Core i9 processor. That’s paired with up to 64GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 RAM (the base variant has 16GB RAM), and up to 8TB SSD storage (the base variant comes with a 512GB SSD). For graphics, the laptop features up to AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM.
The laptop features four Thunderbolt 3 ports, a TouchBar along with TouchID, and Apple has finally given in and given users a physical Escape key on this laptop. The Cupertino giant says it’s using a new scissor mechanism in the keyboard that allows for 1mm travel on the keyboard for a more natural, responsive typing experience on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. You may recall that every single MacBook Pro since the Thunderbolt-only redesign Apple did a few years back has suffered from keyboard issues, and just a general lack of feedback while typing, which most users found annoying.
Apple has also improved the thermal design of the laptop, allowing for what the company claims is 28% more airflow — I’m fairly sure that’s required for the Intel Core i9 processor this thing is running.
The new MacBook Pro starts at $2,399 for the base variant with the Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD.
