Apple held a special media event Tuesday, Ocotober 22, 2013, and unveiled the new MacBook Pro with retina display in both 13- and 15-inch models. The new models come with several upgrades and will begin shipping immediately. Best of all, they now start at $200 cheaper than the previous generation and come with the brand-new OS X Mavericks operating system and iLife suite of software applications.
“We’ve made the world’s best pro notebook even better by adding more performance and even longer battery life,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. The new 13-inch model is now only 3.46 pounds and 0.71 inch thick (down from 3.57 pounds and 0.75 inch thick in the previous generation). More importantly, the MacBook Pro is now even faster and more efficient using the latest Intel Haswell chip, which is said to be 90 percent faster than the previous generation. The WiFi chip also received an upgrade and will now support the new, faster 802.11ac standard to improve wireless web browsing speeds.
The 13-inch model also features a significantly improved battery life with up to 9 hours of wireless web browsing (the previous model had up to 8 hours of wireless web browsing). Although the new 15-inch model comes in the same size and weight as the previous generation, it has been upgraded for increased speed and improved battery life similar to that of the 13-inch model.
Both new MacBook Pro models also come with an upgrade in memory and flash storage options. The 13-inch model now has up to 16GB of memory (up from only 8GB in the previous generation). Both the 13-inch and 15-inch models now come with up to 1TB of flash storage (the previous generation capped out at 768GB of flash storage).
The new 13-inch model is now starting at $1,299, down from $1,499. And the new 15-inch model is now starting at $1,999, down from $2,199. The last time Apple updated their Macbook Pro lineup was in February 2013 when both the 13-inch and 15-inch retina display models received faster processors and lower prices.
During the special media event, Apple also announced that OS X Mavericks will be available for free download, unlike any other previous software upgrade. In addition, the new iLife suite of software applications will also be free. The company also announced a new iPad Air and an all new Mac Pro. Which new Apple product are you most excited about?
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