Apple unveiled new MacBook Pros and they bring much of the enhancements we expected they would: Powerful new eighth-gen Intel processors, new DDR4 RAM with double the maximum capacity, and—hallelujah—a quieter keyboard.
Apple unveiled new MacBook Pros and they bring much of the enhancements we expected they would: Powerful new eighth-gen Intel processors, new DDR4 RAM with double the maximum capacity, and—hallelujah—a quieter keyboard.
It also has a bigger battery, but before you get too excited, there aren’t any actual real-world gains from it. The new MacBook Pros are rated for the same “up to 10 hours wireless web and iTunes movie playback,” but good luck getting anywhere near that with actual work. Anyone who is using their Mac primarily for “wireless web” surfing probably shouldn’t be wasting their money on a $2,000 MacBook Pro.
The MacBook Pro updates are about speed. Apple claims a boost of up to 70 percent for the 15-inch MacBook Pro and a whopping 100 percent increase for the 13-inch models, which will surely make their target audience happy.
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A speed boost is nice and all, but the MacBook Pro will spend at least another year without adding much to the general laptop conversation. While brands like Microsoft, Lenovo, and Huawei have been innovating with designs and concepts that push the PC into the future, Apple’s laptops are still stuck in the past, despite their individual performance gains.
If that’s going to change, Apple needs to take control of the MacBook Pro’s most important component: the processor.
One chip to rule them all
Apple’s A-series chips are arguably the most important part of the iPhone. It’s not just the speed boost that gives the latest iPhone an advantage over its Android competitors, but it allows Apple to innovate in other areas as well. If Apple was using off-the-shelf processors, we likely wouldn’t have Face ID, the iPhone X’s uniform slim-bezel design, or all-day battery life. And they wouldn’t have anywhere near the graphics capabilities that power games and AR apps.