CUPERTINO, CALIF. — Apple unveiled a redesigned MacBook Pro, its top-of-the-line laptop that incorporates smartphone-like touch screen features right into the keyboard.
Apple has been furiously updating its smartphones every year, but it has been years since customers saw much more than basic refreshes of the company’s popular laptops. At its event here, Apple spent considerable time showing off its newest innovation for its new MacBook Pro. The company called it the “touch bar,” which replaces the long-standing function keys at the top of the keyboard with a tiny, long touch-screen.
The touch bar changes depending on the program that is running on the computer. It offers quick typing suggestions in a word processor, emojis in a texting program, or volume and play buttons in a music program. It also offers “touch id”, enabling a user to unlock the computer with a fingerprint. Apple said the laptop had a 67 percent brighter screen, a faster processor, and was lighter — 4 pounds for the 15-inch notebook, which Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said was “almost unheard of” for a high-performance professional notebook. The MacBook Pro also comes in a 13-inch screen size.
The new professional notebook might put a squeeze on the rest of Apple’s lineup. In 2015, Apple introduced a new version of the MacBook that was ultra-light, portable and had a high-end “Retina” display. The new MacBook was very similar to the entry-level, ultra-portable MacBook Air line in almost every way – except price.
The result was a somewhat confusing lineup of laptops. At its event, Apple is expected to streamline or at least clarify the differences between the Air and the new MacBook and introduce at least one new lightweight laptop that will help lure people into the Mac laptop world.
Finally, when it comes to desktop Macs, the prospects are a little murkier. In August, Bloomberg reported that Apple was working on new iMacs and a new high-end “Thunderbolt” display, but fairly reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities says that these are unlikely to come out until 2017.
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The Apple event comes just a day after Microsoft introduced two new expensive computers – the Surface Book laptop and the Surface Studio desktop. Microsoft took aim at its old rival, Apple, by noting that the Surface Book was three times faster than Apple’s best 13-inch MacBook Pro. Thursday, Apple had its chance to hit back with a few jabs of its own.
Apple kicked off its announcements with a somewhat unexpected subject: Apple TV.
The company did not announce a new version of its set-top box, but it announced some new apps that could make the device more appealing to consumers. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that Minecraft, the popular building game owned by Microsoft, will hit Apple TV by the end of the year. Twitter’s Ryan Troy, the company’s global lead for TV devices, also took to the stage to show off the new Apple TV Twitter app, which is being held up as a prime example of interactive viewing apps.
Apple is trying to simplify the Apple TV for users – a key move as more cord-cutting services flood users with more options than they may actually be willing to sift through. With a new Apple TV app simply called “TV,” the company is aggregating users’ many streaming options into one spot, making it easier to search and surface content. It looks somewhat like iTunes, but with television content. And, of course, it works with Siri for search.
The app will look the same across Apple TV, iPhone and iPad and will be part of a free update in December.
Featured Image: Beck Diefenbach/Reuters
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Hayley Tsukayama
