Apple unveiled some new MacBook Pros today. Here’s Jason Snell, at Six Colors, talking about the updates:
The new MacBook Pros, the first major revision of Apple’s flagship Mac since the unveiling of the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012, possess all the things you’d expect from a new Apple product. They’re thinner and lighter, more powerful, integrate Apple-originated technology, and question basic assumptions about the product category they reside in.
With the Touch Bar, Apple’s questioning the existence of the function row at the top of our keyboards. Over the years Apple has de-emphasized the size of those keys and remapped them to system functions, and now it’s doing away with keys altogether. A programmable multi-touch display can provide virtual keys and sliding interface elements based on context. Having a custom button properly labeled sure beats “Press F10.”