MacBook Pro 13–inch
The new MacBook Pro is revealed, so we check out what it's capable of.
THE CURRENT WORLDWIDE
pandemic hasn’t stopped Apple innovating — it’s just updated its popular 13–inch MacBook Pro line up with the new Magic Keyboard on all models and double the previous amount of storage and faster performance in select configurations. So for some configurations the MacBook Pro now offers 10th– generation Ice Lake processors for up to 80% faster graphics performance and makes 16GB of faster 3733MHz memory standard.
“Whether you’re a college student, a developer, or a creative pro, the 13–inch MacBook Pro delivers powerful performance, a stunning Retina display, and all–day battery
The Magic Keyboard is now available on all Apple notebooks. life in our most portable pro notebook. Today we’re adding the new Magic Keyboard, doubling the standard storage, and boosting performance, making the 13-inch MacBook Pro an even better value for our customers,” says Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad product marketing. “With these updates, our entire notebook lineup features the Magic Keyboard for the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook, offers twice the standard storage than before, and delivers even more performance.”
CHECK YOUR SPECS
We’ll talk more about the Magic Keyboard later, but to understand what the changes mean it’s important to note there are four different 13–inch MacBook Pro models in Apple’s current line up, and it’s only the two top–range models that get all the updates Apple announced. The two entry–level models have been updated too, but only with more storage. They retain the old 8th generation processors and the only difference between them is the amount of storage, which is now set at 256 and 512GB by default.
There are no changes to other MacBook models either, so all the 16–inch MacBook Pro models remain untouched by this update and still
retain the old 9th generation Intel processors.
COMPARE MODELS
The refresh to the MacBook Pro line up has potentially closed the gap between the 13–inch MacBook Pro (at the top end) and the 16–inch MacBook Pro in terms of performance, and increased its distance from the MacBook Air range, but the move to the new Magic Keyboard really is the most important step up for the 13– inch models.
By far one of people’s biggest gripes with Apple laptops of recent years has been the poor quality of the keyboards. The new Magic Keyboard design replaces the problematic butterfly mechanism used for Apple laptop keyboards since around 2016. The now–infamous butterfly design had a legacy of dust getting trapped under keys, making them stick and required multiple repairs.
“With these updates, our entire notebook lineup features the Magic Keyboard for the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook,” reveals Boger.