Apple just announced their new MacBook Pro 2016 this week amidst much fanfare. Indeed, it got thinner and lighter than the earlier version. Apple got rid of the HDMI and SD card slots and also came up with 4 USB 3.1 slots (Compared to the 2015 model which sported 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt slots). The 2016 model still sports the headphone jack in case you were wondering after what they did with the new iPhone. Here’s the deal breaker for some guys who are high on aesthetics. The new MacBook pro’s Apple logo doesn’t glow up. It is uncanny and might not be a big deal for lot of fans but for people who pay attention to detail, this might just be deal breaker. Lets get straight to the comparison.
The Sizes:
Apple released two models 13 inch and 15 inch which are 14.9 mm and 15.5 mm thin respectively. Also, compared to the previous year their weight got slashed by half a pound. The 13 inch model weighs 3 pounds compared to 3 and half pounds for the 2015 model and the 15 inch weighs 4 pounds compared to 4 and half pounds. Also, the trackpad is almost twice the size of last year and feels more snappy which is a welcome change.
Touch bar and the Touch ID:
Apple came up with something revolutionary in the form of a touch bar which basically replaces your Function keys on the front of your keyboard. This touch bar gives you touch predictions and changes automatically on what you are doing. You can change the volume, brightness etc using sliding bars with your touch. It also displays emoji and lot of other cool stuff. The developers now have the option to take leverage of the touch bar in the future and come up with new exciting features.
Apple also introduced Touch ID, which is the first time for a laptop and now you can instantly make secure payments and unlock and do all the other good stuff without any hassles.
Configuration:
The new MBP comes with Radeon Pro 450 graphics processor with 2GB graphics (You can upgrade it to 4GB if you wish to) which helps a lot for those who do 4K editing and stuff like that and it sports 256GB SSD storage. The 2015 model only had 2GB graphics card. Apple also tells us it has increased the performance 130 percent compared to the 2015 model. Also, the speakers are louder 57 percent, they claim. The 15 inch model has 16 gigs of RAM whereas the 13 inch model only has 8 gigs of RAM.
Coming to the processor, the 13 inch new model rocks a 2.9 Ghz dual core processor compared to 2.7 Ghz dual core last year. The 15 inch model rocks 2.6 Ghz quad core processor compared to the 2.2 Ghz quad core last year.
Price:
The 13 inch model with touch bar retails at $1799 and the 15 inch model with touch bar retails at $2399 which are both $500 and $400 more than the 3015 models. All in all, the biggest improvements are the graphics, implementation of Touch bar and Touch ID.