Apple releases updated MacBook Pro with Touch Bar


Apple today announced a new MacBook Pro in a lighter, slimmer design. The big feature, however, is the new Touch Bar. the Touch Bar is a multi-touch Retina interface that spans the top of the keyboard. It's customizable and contextual, so it can display buttons, controls, and information depending on the current task. In addition, there is a built-in Touch ID sensor to support password and Apple Pay.

Other noteworthy features including a much larger trackpad, second generation butterfly keyboard and improved speakers,

The Touch Bar is pretty nifty and kind of hope Apple will release a stand-alone keyboard. In the demos, it seemed to work well as both a secondary display and customizable input device.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,499 (US), features a 2.0 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage, and ships today.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with the revolutionary Touch Bar and Touch ID starts at $1,799 (US), and features a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage, and ships in two to three weeks.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,399 (US), features the revolutionary Touch Bar and Touch ID, a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage, and ships in two to three weeks.