MacBook gets touchy-feely
Now has interactive Touch Bar,
Once upon a time, Apple was all about computers. But in 2007, the iPhone took a bow, and the company’s laptops and desktops suddenly slipped into that best-selling smartphone’s long shadow.
Thursday, Apple looked to return its sleek Macs to the spotlight, introducing what the company hopes will be a market-differentiating laptop feature called Touch Bar. There’s now also the ability to sign into your MacBook with a fingerprint.
The new bells and whistles come not a moment too soon. Improved laptop and desktop offerings from rivals such as Microsoft and IBM have cut into Mac sales, which for the fiscal year ending Sept. 24 were down 10% year over year to 18.5 million units, while Mac revenues were also down 10% to $22.8 billion.
In fact, Microsoft needled Apple Thursday by offering consumers $650 for a MacBook trade-in towards a Microsoft Surface laptop, which features a touch-sensitive screen.
By contrast, the portion of the new MacBook that responds to touch is a long strip of glass positioned where those lonely function keys collected dust.
Touch Pad’s Retina-display strip gives users instant access to an array of digital buttons related to whatever app they’re working in. Another innovation to the venerable MacBook is a new Touch ID feature cribbed straight from the iPhone.
It remains to be seen if these laptop upgrades will be enough to move the sales needle this holiday season. Significantly, this product event comes days after the company reported its first annual sales drop in 15 years, largely due to slowing iPhone sales.
“The Touch Bar is interesting, but I think the difference-maker will be how many ISVs (independent software vendors) invest in it,” Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy says.
Moorhead says going with a touch-sensitive screen would have been the bigger leap. As it stands, he is eager to see Apple offer “some more differentiated add-on like storage, graphics and even a dock in the future.”
The new MacBooks come in 15- and 13-inch sizes. The machines are roughly 15% thinner and lighter than their predecessors. The display is 67% brighter with 25% more colors. There is also a 13-inch new MacBook available with out the Touch Bar.
Pricing: $1,499 for the 13-inch without Touch Bar, $1,799 for the 13-inch with Touch Bar and $2,399 for the 15-inch with Touch Bar. They can be ordered Friday.
Other companies are working on making sure their products work with TouchPad, Apple execs said. For example, Microsoft will make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Skype for Business work with Touch Bar shortcuts.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also announced a new app for Apple TV simply called TV, formerly known as the Videos app. Click on the TV app — which also will appear on your iPad or iPhone — and everything you’ve been watching, whether it’s a purchased movie or your binge-TV fare, automatically surfaces. It will be available by the end of the year.
Siri comes into play with the TV app. Ask what football games are playing, and the app immediately pulls up every game that is playing live at that moment.
Apple shares dropped 3% on the earnings news, and was down 0.9% Thursday to $114.48.