Apple’s “Spring Forward” event is underway at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts and CEO Tim Cook said that Apple has challenged itself to “reinvent the notebook” before he took the wraps off a brand new MacBook model which weighs just two pounds and is available in silver, space gray and “a stunning gold.”
Featuring a twelve-inch screen with a Retina pixel resolution of 2304-by-1440 pixels, the display produces clearer images and consumes up to thirty percent less energy. The trackpad, now called, Force Touch trackpad, ditches away the mechanical design in favor of four sensors and Haptic Engine from the Apple Watch.
For the impatient types who don’t have the time to read through the post, here’s Apple’s promotional video detailing the new MacBook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-e7NFINJas
The trackpad has adjustable click feel and, more importantly, it can distinguish between a force click and a tap or standard click. They’ve developed new gestures that take advantage of force-clicking in OS X, enabling a range of pressures that the sensors can sense.
For instance, when watching a video, the deeper you press the faster the video plays.
What’s inside the notebook is the latest Unibody architecture and, most importantly, a 67 percent smaller logic board one third the size of the previous logic board, thanks to its fanless design.
Yes, no fans on the new MacBook, meaning it operates silently.
It’s powered by Intel’s new 14-nanometer Intel Core M chip clocked at 1.1 GHz, but you can configure it with a faster chip in mind. Apple has created the notebook’s battery in sheets so it can occupy more space, allowing for a 35 more capacity in energy use, good enough for a 24-hour performance on this notebook.
“It’s the world’s most energy efficient notebook,” Apple said.
Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, took the stage to talk more about the notebook, which “looks absolutely gorgeous from every angle”.
Weighing just two pounds, it’s the “thinnest notebook we’ve ever made.”
At its thickest point it’s just 13.1mm thin versus 18.3mm for the 11-inch MacBook Air, a 24 percent thinner appearance.
“That is a huge difference,” said Schiller.
As rumored before, the machine has a new USB Type-C connector that’s fully reversible and now replaces MagSafe, Thunderbolt and USB.
Incorporating a new Butterfly keyboard technology, the keyboard on the new MacBook is four times more stable than the standard mechanism, even if you strike the keys on their side.
Each key now has its own LED backlighting allowing for a more precise illumination. Connectivity wise, the new MacBook has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
The computer is shipping on April 10 priced at $1,299 for the baseline model, with a $1,599 model available with twice the storage and faster internals.
Summing up, the notebook comes with a 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.4 GHz, 8GB of memory, 256GB of flash storage and Intel HD Graphics 5300 starting at $1,299 in the United States.
Another model includes a 1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.6GHz, 8GB of memory, 512GB of flash storage and Intel HD Graphics 5300 starting at $1,599.
Configure-to-order options and accessories are available at apple.com/macbook.
By the way, the Mac has been outpacing industry growth for ten years straight now.
Source: Apple