Many developers love to use Apple’s MacBook Pro series to work on their projects because of the consistency in performance and fast processing speed.
Now, all these are about to change for the better that is if you can stomach how much they cost. And do not get too excited yet because these new upgrades that you will be reading about only apply to the Touch Bar line-ups.
Hence, here are the six new upgrades for the MacBook Pro 2018 to help with your purchasing decision.
Faster Performance
The 15-inch MacBook Pro Touch Bar is getting a processing speed bump with the introduction of a 6-core 8th generation Intel Core i9 processor, which runs at 2.9GHz and with a Turbo Boost of up to 4.8GHz. According to Apple, the new upgrade makes the 15-inch model 70 per cent faster than it was before.
On the other hand, the 13-inch MacBook Pro Touch Bar gets a quad-core 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor that doubles the performance of the previous model. It runs at 2.7GHz with a Turbo Boost of up to 4.5GHz.
More RAM
There’s now an option for maxing your 15-inch MacBook Pro’s RAM from the starting 16GB up to 32GB of DDR4 memory. More RAM, more multitasking without a hinge. Unfortunately, nothing changed for the 13-inch. It still hovers between 8GB and 16GB.
Graphics Boost
Graphics performance on the 13-inch and 15-inch models received new upgrades as well. The former now comes with an Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics 655 with 128MB of eDRAM and the latter a Radeon Pro discrete graphics with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. Quoting Apple’s marketing words,
“That means more time for what matters most — creating amazing work.”
Storage
Gone were the days when HDD rules all computer devices. With SSDs now, having HDD on laptops just wouldn’t cut it. One problem here is the price.
Consumers can get the 13-inch MacBook Pro with up to 2TB of storage and that costs an additional S$1,740. What’s even crazier is that the 15-inch model can go up to 4TB of storage that costs S$4,480. We know how important storing data is but to fork out an amount that’s equal to three MacBooks? We leave it to you to decide.
True Tone Display
The True Tone Display was found only in the iPad Pro and iPhone X, but now it has come to both models of the MacBook Pro. What it does is that it detects and adjusts the colour temperature of your screen display according to the lighting of the environment, caring for your eyes.
T2 Chip
First integrated into the iMac Pro, the T2 Chip has now found its way into the MacBook Pro 13-inch and 15-inch models. According to MacWorld, the T2 chip is “responsible for controlling stereo speakers, internal microphones and dual cooling fans.” The T2 chip also has a security function that locks your system if an abnormality is detected.
In their article regarding the T2 Chip in the iMac Pro, MacWorld shared:
“When you start up the iMac Pro, the familiar Apple logo appears almost immediately. This is a sign that the T2 is taking control. For security reasons, the T2 is the iMac Pro hardware’s “root of trust,” and it validates the entire boot process when the power comes on. The T2 starts up, checks things out, loads its bootloader, verifies that it’s legitimate and cryptographically signed by Apple, and then moves on to the next part of the boot process.”
Price
One word to describe the MacBook Pro 2018 is costly. Maxing out the specifications for the 13-inch MacBook Pro will cost you S$5,318, and for the 15-inch model, it will require a whopping S$9,448.
Of course, if you don’t need to max out the specifications because you are a regular user, both models still work excellently well.
The base price for the 13-inch is S$2,878, and the 15-inch is S$3,988. Still costly but palatable.
So what do you think of the new MacBook Pro line-ups? Share with us your thoughts!
