Apple today took the wraps off of a new MacBook Pro laptop, and it's got one major change that many users have been asking for.
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with a Magic Keyboard that uses a redesigned scissor mechanism rather than the butterfly switches that it's been using in its laptops in recent years. Those butterfly switches have gotten flak for being unreliable, so there will likely be lots of folks pleased to see Apple using scissor switches on this new model.
Apple says the new Magic Keyboard has 1mm of key travel and a "stable key feel", as well as a rubber dome that stores more potential energy for a response key press. The keyboard also has a physical Escape key and inverted "T" arrow keys, and there's a Touch Bar along with Touch ID fingerprint sensor at the top of the keyboard.
Another major new feature of this MacBook Pro is its screen. It's got a 16-inch 3072x1920 display with pixel density of 221ppi, and Apple says that this is the largest Retina laptop screen it's ever made.
The speakers on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro have been redesigned, with Apple packing in a six-speaker sound system. The company has created force-canceling woofers that use dual opposed speaker drivers to reduce vibrations that distort sound.
Inside, Apple's new laptop 6- and 8-core Intel Core i7 and i9 processors with Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0GHz, giving the laptop up to 2.1 times faster performance over the quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro. When it comes to graphics, Apple is offering either an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M graphics card with 4GB of GDDR6 memory or a Radeon Pro 5500M with either 4GB or 8GB of memory.
Buyers can choose between 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB of RAM with the new MacBook Pro, and storage options range include 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB SSDs. Rounding things out is a 100Wh battery that Apple says is the largest ever in a Mac laptop as well as four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is now available for purchase from Apple's website and will hit Apple Stores later this week. Pricing starts at $2,399 for a model with a 2.6GHz 6-core Intel Core i7 model with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.