Apple unveils new 16-inch MacBook Pro

Apple has today unveiled the first redesign of the MacBook Pro line since the switch to the Touch Bar and USB-C ports three years ago.

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One of the biggest -- but perhaps not the most obvious -- difference with the new MacBook Pro is the switch to a bigger 16-inch display. The larger screen size is likely aimed at content creators who like the mobility of the MacBook Pro platform, but who also value every pixel of screen real estate they can get their eyes on.

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro also features an updated keyboard, as Apple tries to work the kinks out of the flawed butterfly mechanism it has been pushing for the past four years. Apple finally admits defeat and throws out the butterfly mechanism and returns to a scissor mechanism for what it is calling a Magic Keyboard. The keys on the 16-inch MacBook Pro are wider than those found on the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro, and feature more key travel. The key caps are now also removable, and it seems that Apple has put effort into making the keyboard more repairable.

In another throwback, the keyboard now features a physical ESC key that sits along with the Touch Bar (yes, the new MacBook Pro retains the Touch Bar).

The new laptop also features a louder speaker. Oh, and the headphone jack lives to survive another MacBook Pro refresh.

The battery has been beefed up to 100 watt-hour, and Apple claims that this gives it an 11-hour battery life, a whole hour more than the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro it replaces.

The base 256GB SSD has been bumped up to 512GB (and can be taken all the way to 8TB, a first for a notebook), and the AMD Radeon Pro 555X GPU has been upgraded to Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M silicon. However, the starting price of $2,399 is unchanged from the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple has also worked on cooling to allow the system to run at higher power for sustained periods of time. The improvements include a new fan design with a larger impeller with extended blades along with bigger vents, which results in a 28% increase in airflow, and a 35% larger heatsink to allow for greater heat dissipation. According to Apple, these changes allow the 16-inch MacBook Pro to "sustain up to 12 more watts during intensive workloads than the previous design."

The 16-inch MacBook Pro will replace the current 15.4-inch model.

Tech specs:

• Silver or space gray
• 16-inch, 3,072 x 1,920-pixel display (compare this to 2,880 x 1,800 on the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro)
• Ninth-generation 2.6GHz six-core Intel Core i7 or 2.3GHz Intel Core i9 (upgradable to an eight-core Core i9)
• 16GB DDR4 RAM (up to 64GB)
• AMD Radeon Pro 5300M or 5500M, 4GB GDDR6 memory (expandable up to 8GB)
• 512GB SSD (expandable up to 8TB)
• Four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports
• 100 watt-hour battery
• $2,399 starting price

Apple has also announced that the updated Mac Pro will land in December.

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