It seems that Apple’s biggest MacBook has received the new touchpad and the innovative Touch Bar. Of course, we know that these days people are preferring smaller laptops with 10mm thick chassis, but sometimes customers want a big, bold, laptop with a large screen to match.
These large laptops are usually bought for photo and video editing and design work. But, sometimes people just want to spend hours each day staring at endless text in a large and bright screen.
As we know, Apple no longer makes 17-inch laptops, so the new star here is the updated version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
This new model is the bigger version that people could receive without jumping to an iMac all-in-one desktop computer. Even if the 13-inch model and 15-inch model are part of the same family, we must say that the bigger model offers important differences compared with the 13-inch model.
THE GOOD The larger version of Apple’s MacBook Pro has a big, bold display, a thinner, lighter body, an AMD graphics chip by default and a massive trackpad. The inventive Touch Bar second-screen display saves clicks here and there, and now works with apps like Photoshop and Spotify.
THE BAD Even the base 15-inch model is painfully expensive. The Touch Bar is a fun add-on, but not a necessity, and the move to USB-C ports means potentially carrying a bag full of dongles.
The first biggest difference starts with the configuration options. To be added that there are two base configurations that customers could opt for if they want to buy the 13-inch model.
- The first configuration is the less expensive stripped-down version, which comes with only two USB-C ports and misses both the new Touch ID and Touch Bar features and better specs.
- On the other side, the new 15-inch laptop also comes with two bass configurations. However, we must add that both models come with Touch Bar and Touch ID and both start with approximately the same features.
This means that they both include an Intel Core i7 processor, four USB-C/Thunderbolt ports and a decent Radeon Pro graphics card. So, let’s move to the prices. As we mentioned, the starting price of the new Apple MacBook Pro 15 is 2.499 dollars.
But, customers who decide to bump up the processor, storage and GPU, will have to pay approximately 2.899 dollars. This is a huge price, compared with the 13-inch models, which start from 1.499 dollars and move to 1.899 dollars.
But, we must say that customers could also find another 15-inch option that is a little less expensive. At this moment, Apple is still selling the 2015 15-inch model, which lacks some of the newer features, but it still includes USB, HDMI and other ports.
The most attractive thing from the Apple MacBook Pro 15 is the Touch Bar. This feature has been introduced at the end of 2016. We first saw it on the 13-inch MacBook Pro and now it appeared on the bigger version.
Both the 2.170 x 60 OLED Touch Bar display and the keyboard have been taken from the 13-inch model and added to the 15-inch version.
The main physical difference is that the bigger laptop version has extra room on either side of the keyboard for speaker grilles. This also means a much more in-depth exploration of the Touch Bar.
Another great thing is the trackpad, which features multifinger gestures. It also has a Force Touch pad, which replaces a traditional hinge with a flat glass panel with two levels of haptic feedback.
