Apple Releases new MacBook Pros with Force Touch Trackpad

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

by globuous • 11 years ago

91 125 11 years ago

apple.com

emilecantin• 11 years ago

They've been around for a few months, I type this on one...

antoinelyset• 11 years ago

Nope :

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/05/19Apple-Introduces-1...

basicallydan2• 11 years ago

They have. This is for the 15 inch.

Alex3917• 11 years ago

From Appleinsider:

"Notably, the chips are not Intel's latest-generation 'Broadwell' processors, which remain unavailable in quad-core configurations. As a result, Apple is still utilizing the previous-generation 'Haswell' architecture, albeit at faster speeds."

dombili• 11 years ago

Faster speeds? It's the same:

New rMBP: http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

Old rMBP: https://web.archive.org/web/20150424183842/http://www.apple....

Artemis2• 11 years ago

Yeah, the i7-4980HQ (the most high-end option they offer) has been for more than a year the fastest Intel processor you can find in a laptop.

http://ark.intel.com/products/83503/Intel-Core-i7-4980HQ-Pro...

moron4hire4• 11 years ago

Still no 10-point touchscreen?

shalmanese• 11 years ago

That would require a massive UI overhaul to make every app touch friendly. Not something that Apple is going to take on lightly.

moron4hire4• 11 years ago

Well what are they waiting for? It's not like touchscreens on laptops are exactly a new feature.

rockymeza• 11 years ago

I was hoping they would come out with a USB-C port.

mcmillion• 11 years ago

This was a minor bump, I'm holding out for something bigger once Skylake is ready. Hopefully that will include USB-C.

sitkack• 11 years ago

32GB of ram?!

melling• 11 years ago

New standards take time to gain traction. Apple putting at least one USB-C on each "new" device would go a long way towards helping USB-C gain adoption.

neverminder2• 11 years ago

I have a new Google's Pixel LS with 2 USB Type-C ports (at this point the only one in the world to have 2 as far as I know) and it's amazing. I can plug the USB Type-C charger from either side of the laptop. When was the last time you were able to do that?

thecolorblue• 11 years ago

I'm surprised the macbook didn't go the USB Type-C on each side route. How much bulk could that really add? It makes it way more flexible. The Pixel update looks really good to me compared it these updates.

yaeger• 11 years ago

Only if they didn't sacrifice the mag safe in favor of it like they did on the 13 inch.

The mag safe was one of the best inventions for MacBooks ever and it is sad to see how nonchalantly they retired it on the 13 inch. And I doubt the rumor it was because it is too light now. The mag safe is for when you trip over the cable with your leg. Doing that, you will always do so very abruptly. And so the weight of the MacBook cannot be that big a factor. Other wise, comparable things like the tablecloth trick would never work. The glasses and plates also do not weigh a lot. But tug on the tablecloth abruptly enough and away it goes with the glasses and everything still on the table. Same thing happens with a mag safe connector.

marvel_boy• 11 years ago

Newbie here. Someone that had tryed the Force Touch Trackpad could you share impressions?

tehwebguy• 11 years ago

Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

I preferred to disable the two-level click in System Prefs, then it just felt like a normal macbook air trackpad.

It feels so real I turned off the unit in the store just to double check that there was no feedback with the power off (there wasn't)

vardump4• 11 years ago

It's nice. Adjustable click sound in trackpad preferences, so no more CLICK! at night when you use laptop near someone else. Force feedback makes it feel like you're really pressing a button.

But nothing I couldn't live without.

mcphage2• 11 years ago

so no more CLICK! at night when you use laptop near someone else
But nothing I couldn't live without.

Hmm, less grumbling from the wife when I play Minecraft in bed? "It's not for me, hon--it's for us."

oflannabhra• 11 years ago

I have the 13" MBP with Force Touch. Hands down the best trackpad I've ever used. Apple continues to dominate in this space.

The "Taptic Engine" part of the Force Touch system is imperceptible from hardware "clicks". The ability to have a second level click seems interesting. Turning of the computer and pressing on the trackpad is like a magic trick.

While not many apps (and not many portions of the OS, even) are using the "pressure granularity" system of Force Touch, I will reserve judgement on its benefits and usefulness, but it is incredibly well-engineered.

Overall, I can see Apple including this across their entire product line, if technically feasible. It is as good as Touch ID.

cma2• 11 years ago

Valve almost beat them to it with the steam controller's haptic touchpads. Was there some public research or something in this area that got everyone working on it at once?

berberous• 11 years ago

I have only tried it in stores, but I find that even the highest "click" setting feels too shallow to me, and not as satisfying as the old trackpad. I also was not a fan of the very short travel distance on the new Macbook keyboard.

That said, I have heard generally uniformly good reviews, so I imagine it's one of those things that after a few weeks you get used to and perhaps even start to prefer.

vardump4• 11 years ago

but I find that even the highest "click" setting feels too shallow to me

Oh, that's what I thought at first as well. And then grew to like it.

Another notable rMBP 2015 13" feature is pretty nice battery life. I often get 12-15 hours on a single charge, for ssh/remote desktop + browsing use.

krishicks• 11 years ago

The biggest selling point for it in my view isn't Force Click but the uniformity of the trackpad. You can press anywhere on the trackpad and it takes exactly the same amount of force to make a click. On the previous mechanical glass trackpads the amount of force required to make a click goes up the closer to the keyboard you press the trackpad. I'm now happy to use my thumb to click the trackpad because I can click it just under the spacebar easily.

It's very obvious when going back to the trackpad on my 2013 rMBP, which feels (and sounds) like junk in comparison.

On the 2013 rMBP I use the "Tap to click" setting so I don't have to press the awful button. On the 2012 MacBook I don't; it's just not necessary.

icpmacdo• 11 years ago

New graphics card also? It says AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory on the page

Edit: I think it was an Nvidia 750 before

bryanlarsen3• 11 years ago

That's basically the same graphics card. AMD recently did an "OEM refresh", which didn't do much more than put new numbers on the old cards. They fiddled with frequencies, but they're basically the same old cards. Manufacturers demand this, and unlike Intel & nVidia, AMD doesn't have the clout to say no to stupid requests like this.

Significantly, they didn't refresh their retail range of cards, so there is still some hope that AMD has a significant refresh coming soon; AMD still doesn't have an answer for nVidia Maxwell, which was first released over a year ago.

Robadob• 11 years ago

Pretty sure NVIDIA has done the same on occasion, for example the 800m GTX series, doesn't have an 800 GTX desktop counterpart. Many of the 800m cards used the same chips as 700m series, just with small changes. Apparently they were originally planning on releasing Maxwell as 800 series, but due to Laptop manufacturer pressure ended up deferring it after releasing Kepler 800m cards.

izacus• 11 years ago

Yep, on the other hand the previous 750M was essentually the same chip as 650M (+ a few Mhz) as well, so the discrete GPUs in rMBPs are kinda dissapointing for a few generations now :/

whisdol• 11 years ago

Did the Macbook Pros just get a whole lot more expensive in Europe (or specifically Germany?)? I don't remember the 15" MBP with a discrete graphics card being 2800€. Or have they adjusted their prices to the weak Euro a while back?

sancha_• 11 years ago

The last gen MBP was also the same price in Germany a few months back, so it wasn't changed just now.

myth_buster• 11 years ago

I would think the latter [0] if you are seeing around 20% appreciation in price.

0: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=2Y

louhike• 11 years ago

It might have occured when the Retina screen was no more optionnal.

droidist2• 11 years ago

Yeah, they adjusted for the weak Euro. The Apple developer program also went up in price last year in Europe.

jamestomasino• 11 years ago

Did Apple really just enable a "smash the button" interaction? I can't wait to see what kind of damage people start inflicting.

comex• 11 years ago

Presumably this means there won't be a major refresh to the 15" model announced at WWDC and available immediately or shortly, something Apple likes to do. I guess this is no surprise due to the lack of high-end Broadwell... Personally, I'm still hoping for a slightly higher resolution screen eventually.

amirmansour2• 11 years ago

Does this mean MBPs with 5th gen Intel Boradwell chips won't be available till next year?

_stephan• 11 years ago

They probably jump straight to Skylake. Maybe in Q4.

laichzeit03• 11 years ago

I think they're waiting for Skylake. Wireless charging, 4K/5K external displays at 60hz, better battery, etc.

Skylake is the "major refresh" everyone that knows anything is waiting for.

sosuke• 11 years ago

Any good single source you'd recommend to encapsulate all that makes Skylake the obvious next hardware upgrade to the MBP line? I've been waiting for the right time to upgrade and I'd love something to read about the future. This is the first I've seen it mentioned.

vardump4• 11 years ago

Only Cannonlake will get AVX-512 performance boost. That doubles SIMD processing power. Skylake Xeons will have AVX-512, though.

So having a brand new Broadwell laptop, my next one shall have a Cannonlake (or better) CPU.

kalleboo5• 11 years ago

85W wireless charging? I don't even want to imagine the losses on that...

SandB0x• 11 years ago

For anyone else who was confused by this, it's a bump on the 15" Macbook Pro. The 13" model was updated at the same time as the Macbook launch.

ojbyrne• 11 years ago

They also cut the price on the iMac Retina by $200.

kylec• 11 years ago

And there's a new lower-end retina iMac starting at $1999. That's an impressively low price point for something with that display.

vardump4• 11 years ago

You can buy IPS 4k display for $599 or less. Not 5k, but not that far off either.

Edit: Downvotes, seriously? Have you seen these side by side? When it comes to resolution, at least I can't tell a difference anymore at a reasonable viewing distance. Display tech simply good enough now.

ejbs• 11 years ago

Interesting that they're shifting towards AMD GPUs. Was actually hoping for a major update of the MBPR with the availability of NVIDIA's new maxwell architecture and broadwell based quad cores.

Anyone knows why AMD? Is it a margin/profitibility or performance thing?

xmodem• 11 years ago

Apple has never tied themselves to one GPU vendor- they have gone back and forth more times in the past ten years or so that I have been watching Apple than I care to count.

give it 18 months and the new top-of-the-line will have nVidia in it again, assuming they don't move completely to integrated.

jackmaney2• 11 years ago

The shift towards AMD GPUs actually makes me very, very wary of getting any new Mac hardware for a while. Every time I've tried an AMD/Radeon GPU in a PC, it's done nothing but crash over and over and over again (even after several returns).

I don't ever want an AMD/Radeon GPU in any system I own ever again. Intel and NVidia GPUs just work.

outworlder2• 11 years ago

AMD user. Not my experience.

How long ago was it?

STRML2• 11 years ago

I own a 2014 MBPr with the Nvidia chip and I'm thinking the AMD chip would be a big improvement. I see major visual artifacts whenever the GPU switches, it locks up frequently, and external monitors rarely work. Maybe a bad chip, actually, but it works fine in Windows.

OSButler• 11 years ago

I've had the same experience on desktop & mobile. The desktop issues with Radeon are from quite some time ago, but the driver problems on both Windows & Linux back then were extremely frustrating: random framerate slowdowns, no working linux drivers, bad support in some games, ...

And the only time a Laptop has died on me was when its AMD GPU decided to go crazy, resulting in artifacts and full system shutdown within a few seconds/minutes, if you were lucky enough to get it booting at all.

I know that this is anecdotal and most likely just coincidence, but I haven't had such problems with nvidia, so that I'm willing to pay the small premium price whenever I need a new GPU.

Alphasite_2• 11 years ago

I haven't had any real issues with AMD, so take it nots universal. Especially on my mac, the windows ones have been fine as well, but a little less stable since those drivers are more cutting edge.

bryanlarsen3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how relevant Windows / Linux experience is. Apple is responsible for the graphics driver on OSX. AMD may write much of the code, but it doesn't go out the door until Apple is happy with it.

SG-• 11 years ago

Go back 10+ years and they're always changing GPU vendors back and forth.

hobarrera• 11 years ago

It's also a shame for Linux users, since AMD doesn't work as well on Linux.

Mac is generally considered "the safe choice", when picking high end notebook for Linux.

basicallydan2• 11 years ago

Force touch user here! Contrary to what many people here seem to believe, the 13 inch retina MBPR has had force touch since its release in early 2015, when it was first announced. They have only just put them into the 15 inch, and I imagine they left the "big announcement" until all MBPR users could get it so they didn't waste all the novelty before it was ripe for media excitement.

There's a good list of things you can do with force touch here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204352

Some personal opinions about force touch:

My favourite thing about it is that the trackpad is automatically more clickable. The clickable surface area is larger than on my previous Mac (13" Air late 2013), and since I turned off right click (opting for two-finger click instead) I am far more causal about clicking things. This was really, really noticeable when going back to my Air briefly while I was giving it some TLC, and finding I couldn't use the top-left corner to click.

About the "force" aspect of it though... the sensation of pressing it down and watching some on-screen element change in size (which is the case for the dictionary lookup feature) is pretty fun. That's one of my favourite things to show people. It's like watching people use an analogue stick for the first time. At first it's confusing and hard to get the balance of, but soon you become quite proficient with it.

Unfortunately support outside of stock OSX applications is quite limited at the moment. The features that are supported in Safari have not yet made their way to Chrome, and features in Quicktime (changing fast forward speed, mainly) are not in VLC. Stuff like that. Having buttons on the screen which act differently depending on how hard you click them could be quite powerful.

With time, however, I think we'll see developers doing more interesting things with this. It could be quite useful in artistic applications for instance, doing exactly what Wacom tablets (and their ilk) have been doing to simulate the pressure of a brush or pen.

Another good use is as a replacement for right click or CTRL+click, i.e. to open a context menu. This is how it works on the dock, and it's quite nice to use too.

One thing I find wrong with it is that all of a sudden, holding onto a draggable element while scrolling with two fingers (e.g., try moving a playlist around in Spotify when you have lots of playlists) appears to not longer be possible. This might be a software issue with whomever is responsible for the software in question, though.

Finally, the myth that the trackpad doesn't move at all is not true. It moves a little, and if you press hard (as one Apple store employee did when I took it in to get looked at last week, insisting that it "wasn't force touch") it will move down noticeably - so don't overdo it.

This, IMO, is the killer feature of the new MBPR.

amirmansour2• 11 years ago

I was really hoping to see 5th gen Intel Broadwell chips with the update. When are they expected? Intel said mid-year, but when will Apple incorporate them in?

rjammala2• 11 years ago

Can somebody tell me how they deal with all the heat generated by these powerful cpus/gpus in a laptop? Do you just put it on a desk all the time?

scarmig• 11 years ago

It's not been my experience that things are getting worse in that respect; in fact, I'd say heat-wise things are significantly better than previous generations. Intel has put a lot of effort into making its chips more energy efficient, which has a side effect of generating much less heat. I'd guess that, combined with better chassis design, accounts for the improvement.

kalleboo5• 11 years ago

Whenever my laptop is on my "lap" or in my bed at home it's actually on one of these. This also raises it to a more ergonomic level for me. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60240587/

rjammala2• 11 years ago

cool. thanks.

emsy4• 11 years ago

Is anyone else here mad that Apple has time for these gimicks but can't get their software fixed? Lion to Yosemite was a big regression and I don't mean the UI.

lpsz2• 11 years ago

I see these "OS X is getting worse" posts from time to time but it doesn't match my experience. Care to elaborate?

emsy4• 11 years ago

Unreliable Standby mode. Upon waking up, peripherals won't work until reboot, the Dock is unresponsive, applications crash and more.

Overall stability. I've never had so many system freezes and crashes than with Yosemite. It started with the upgrade progress that crashed on me and even a fresh reinstall didn't help.

On Lion, I let my machine run for serveral weeks without any problem. Now I have to reboot at least once a week because the kernel is working on something that seems like bitcoin mining from the looks of the cpu load.

Rebooting shows a black screen for 2 minutes and I often thought thank god I have a backup because my filesystem got screwed up (it didn't but apparently that's also a problem for some people).

Applications not quitting, Dock locking up, Finder unresponsive, drives not showing up in Diskutil.

WiFi not working or working extremely slow. This even happens when I'm connected via cable and I turn WiFi on. Suddenly I have a really slow network connection. The WiFi issues even occur on iOS devices (not mine, but some of my family members)

These are not minor annoyances. This stuff keeps me from working and gives me an extremely poor user experience. In fact it's the first time in years I'm looking forward to a Windows release.

And of course there are some smaller things like Removing features from applications, for example the whole scripting part of iWorks. From the hostname, it seems like I run a few thousand Macs in my network.

laichzeit03• 11 years ago

People get mad when there's a "stability" release because there's no new features. People get mad when there's a release full of new features and it's not stable.

Rumour is that this will be a stability release for iOS 9 (presumably OS X as well?) [1]. I guess now everyone will be mad that there's no new features.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/09/ios-9-stability-optimiza...

kalleboo5• 11 years ago

People only get mad about paying for a stability release (Snow Leopard cost $30, Mountain Lion $20)

dilap• 11 years ago

I get frustrated by the bugs too, but honestly, the last (fairly) bug-free Mac OS was pre-X (and obviously, that was way simpler).

Try going back and reading early Daring Fireball. It's all complaining about how everything is broken and Apple quality has fallen off a cliff.

I think pretty much most (all?) user-facing software nowadays is buggy and broken.

Hopefully it'll slowly improve as features settle into place, and maybe we figure out better languages and processes...

emsy4• 11 years ago

Yosemite and Mavericks really are a major regression. I' confident that I'm onto something if even known Mac enthusiasts like the ATP people report on the quality fall.

jug• 11 years ago

Missed May the 4th by a mere two weeks? I can't believe how sloppy Apple is getting!

jdavid• 11 years ago

I'm a little disappointed Apple, the new MBP doesn't have a top of the line graphics card, and it's still stuck to 16GB of ram. This is hardly a pro option.

I wonder if I need a #hackentosh if I want 32GB of RAM, and an nVidia 950M or better.

outworlder2• 11 years ago

Do you really need >16GB to be considered 'pro' these days?

You can have 64GB on a MacPro. Hope that's 'pro' enough.

nsxwolf2• 11 years ago

128GB if you use slower ram.

chiph• 11 years ago

I run several VMs at once on mine, and 16gb is constraining. Put me in the "the Pro is no longer so Pro" camp.

nsxwolf2• 11 years ago

It allows 5K monitors? Does that mean it's HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.3? Both?

tammer3• 11 years ago

  Support for up to 5120 by 2160 resolution at 60Hz on a single external display (model with AMD Radeon R9 M370X only)

is listed under "Thunderbolt digital video output" & HDMI max output is

  Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz.

So it must be DP 1.3?

tammer3• 11 years ago

Nope - it's two mini-DP cables

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/28/15-mbp-supports-dell-5k-...

bunkydoo• 11 years ago

Really don't like the force touch trackpad for some reason... it feels a lot like the old macbook pro trackpad after years of use - kinda damp and spongey. There is nothing like the 'pop' of a new Mac trackpad, but I guess those days are over... ha.

bdcravens• 11 years ago

I can't fathom how they can keep releasing iMac updates yet the Thunderbolt display is four years old.

jkelsey• 11 years ago

If they released a new external display, it would have to be retina quality. That makes me think that Apple isn't yet confident in MacBook/MacBook Pro GPUs to drive multiple external retina quality screens like you can do now with the Thunderbolt displays. Maybe the top-of-the-line machines with the Nvidia/Radeon GPUs, but it doesn't seem very Apple like for them to release a new display with a disclaimer: only works with Nvidia/Radeon GPU equipped Macs.

jws• 11 years ago

Retina quality 27" displays need to wait for the next Thunderbolt or similar speed bump. The display requires > 20Gbps to feed. That means waiting for Intel to pop out ThunderBolt 3 with the newly announced DisplayPort 1.3 38Gbps connection.

Too many pixels, too little time.

As far as GPU processing power, I wonder how much more GPU it takes for two displays. I use two, but I don't do heavy updates on both at once. I suppose you could imagine some video game wanting to use both, but for professional work it seems mostly about real estate, peripheral awareness, and context switching with a head turn. It probably wants more RAM for compositing, but that seems ample already.

phragg• 11 years ago

Why do they use images for everything? That text on that landing page.. an image?

kalleboo5• 11 years ago

Presumably they've measured latency with images and webfonts and found images load faster. There's nothing more frustrating than a webfont that takes 10 seconds to load.

tammer3• 11 years ago

I've understood they use images mainly for typographical control across translations.

herf• 11 years ago

I tried the new Force touch at retail. Single click is perfect, and double click...had a ton of latency. Anyone else think so?

coldpie• 11 years ago

What in the hell is wrong with buttons? They are easy to understand and work one hundred percent of the time. I have to use one at work, and I'll never buy one of these crappy button-less trackpads for personal use. Click-and-drag is a mind-melting experience.

ilikemustard• 11 years ago

That's my feeling with the current generation of Android devices which got rid of the 3 buttons below the screen.

DavideNL• 11 years ago

Tip:

System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Mouse & Trackpad -> Trackpad options -> Enable dragging without drag lock

i personally love it... dragging by tapping - so without needing to push or click

spanktar• 11 years ago

At least they didn't update the power port...again.

psychometry2• 11 years ago

It's incredibly obnoxious that they tie the hard drive size to the processor. There's no technical reason for it whatsoever. Now because I need 512GB or more, I'm forced to spend hundreds more to buy a laptop more powerful than what I need.

w1ntermute• 11 years ago

I just carry a couple flash drives around. You can get a 256 GB one for < $100.

jasonellis• 11 years ago

I don't think that's correct. You can get the base $1999 model and upgrade to 512GB for $300. Not cheap, but doesn't include the processor upgrade.

psychometry2• 11 years ago

The post is about the updated 13" models, which have non-configurable drives in all but the priciest option:

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF839L...

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF840L...

emptybits• 11 years ago

Apple claims 12.5% longer life (from 8 to 9 hours) with only a 4.7% larger battery (95 Wh to 99.5 Wh), and without moving to Broadwell processors like in the 13" rMBP which we know are a big part of its battery life improvement.

So is this 15" rMBP battery life improvement software-driven or new hardware throttling or just wishful thinking? The video card and SSD have changed, but doesn't a full hour of battery life improvement seem optimistic? I guess reviews will expose the truth soon enough...

cerberusss• 11 years ago

"Rather than 4.7% more capacity being responsible for a 12.5% increase in stated battery life, efficiency gains in the tested OS and software also likely contributed, since last year’s test was with Mavericks and an older version of Safari. Fortunately, those efficiency gains benefit old Macs, too."

Source: http://www.marco.org/2015/05/19/mistake-one (footnote2, at the bottom of the page)

radikalus• 11 years ago

I can't be part of THAT small a minority that needs to use CUDA and/or more than 16gigs of RAM.

From my perspective, these mbp are very little marginal benefit for computational work than a small air. (You'll just run everything on AWS/GCE/etc anyways)

Apple Releases new MacBook Pros with Force Touch Trackpad

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