Apple today streamlined its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air line-up, eliminating the 12-inch MacBook and essentially replacing it with a 13-inch MacBook Air.
With this refresh, every model of the MacBook Pro (13-inch and 15-inch) has adopted the controversial Touch Bar, which replaces the keyboard’s physical function keys and escape key with touchscreen equivalents. MacBook Air (13-inch only) computers still have function and escape keys, and this time around they have Apple’s True Tone technology, which attempts to match the display’s white point to the lighting environment where it’s being used.
The MacBook Air now starts at $1,099 for a machine with 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of SSD storage and a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor. The base 13-inch MacBook Pro is $1,299 with the same amounts of RAM and SSD space, but with a welcome upgrade to a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor. The 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,399 with 16 GB of RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and a 2.6Ghz six-core processor.
According to Mac Rumors, both the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro models have Apple’s recently updated keyboard design that Apple said should reduce the number of problems users have had with its “butterfly” keyboard. A new keyboard design for future MacBook computers is expected to debut later this year in a new MacBook Air and in 2020 in a new MacBook Pro, the site reported.
Apple also granted users a price break on higher-end configurations, dropping the price of 1 TB and larger SSD upgrades for the MacBook Pro as well as the iMac and Mac Mini. The company also started a Back to School promotion including student discounts and offering Mac notebook buyers a pair of wireless headphones.
