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Apple announces Touch Bar-powered Macbook Pro; kills 11-inch MacBook Air

Shweta Sengar | Updated on: 10 February 2017, 1:45 IST

Apple's event on Thursday was all about Macintosh personal computers, a product which had not seen any major updates in a while. In a bid to arrest declining sales, at the event held at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters, new versions of its MacBook Pro laptops were unveiled. So now, the new Macs are smaller, thinner and come with a dash of touch screen as well.

"This week happens to be a huge week in the history of the Mac, and the history of Apple," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

Features of the new MacBook Pro

The new MacBook Pro laptops feature Apple's TouchID fingerprint reader, which is a prominent feature in its iPhones since 2013.

The biggest change that the MacBook Pro features is the new screen called Touch Bar which replaces the function keys and will offer different functions depending on the software being used. It has a retina display and supports multi-touch too.

"The new machines marked the first major upgrades of some Mac computers in several years. As the product line aged, Mac sales have fallen. In Apple's recently completed fiscal year, Mac sales totaled $22.8 billion, down 10.4% from a year earlier," reports The Wall Street Journal.

The device comes with an all-aluminum design in two-colour variants - silver and space grey. Apple also killed the 11-inch Mac, keeping only the 13-inch and 15-inch models.

The new device is the thinnest MacBook Pro ever built by Apple. The 15-inch MacBook Pro, for instance, is 14% thinner than previous models and weighs just four pounds.

As reported earlier, Apple has enlarged the size of the trackpad. The trackpad is capable of delivering different functions depending upon the pressure users employ while clicking. This feature is limited to the 15-inch model.

At the event, Apple executives elaborated about MacBook Pro's display, describing it as the "best Mac display ever." The screen is 67% brighter than the previous model and can deliver 25% more colors.

On the inside, the MacBook Pro features a quad-core Intel Core i7 chip with AMD Radeon Pro graphics chip. The 13-inch model comes with an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and Iris graphics.

The price of the MacBook Pro starts from Rs 129,900 for the 13-inch base model, the price of the 13-inch model with Touch Bar starts from Rs 155,900 and the price of the 15-inch variant starts from Rs 205,900.

"The Mac is more than a product to us, it's a testament to everything we do and everything that created Apple," Cook said.

The Macintosh, introduced in 1984, was the defining product of the company that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built. Apple iPhone, which now accounts for 63% of company's revenue, has eclipsed the Macintosh. It was in 2007 when Apple dropped the word 'Computer' from its then name Apple Computer Inc.

In the most recent quarter, Macintosh contributed only 12% to Apple's revenue.

First published: 28 October 2016, 1:42 IST