Apple launches 15″ MacBook Pro with Force touch, refreshes 27-inch iMac while bringing down price

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Apple on Tuesday launched a new 15-inch MacBook Pro model with Force Touch trackpad, Intel’s faster fourth-generation Haswell chip and other features

In addition, the Cupertino firm has refreshed its 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina screen while making the system more affordable than before.

The new baseline iMac configuration has a slower 3.3GHz chip (previously 3.5GHz) and the traditional 1TB hard drive instead of the Fusion drive. More importantly, it now starts out at just $1,999, a much appreciated discount from the previous asking price of $2,499. In addition, the top-end iMac configuration is now available at a lower price of $2,299.

In addition to force-sensing trackpad with Force Touch technology and a Taptic Engine that delivers haptic feedback, the updated 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now has up to 2.5 times faster flash storage than the previous generation, with throughput up to 2GBps, longer battery life and faster discrete graphics.

An additional hour of battery life delivers up to nine hours of wireless web browsing and up to nine hours of iTunes movie playback, Apple said.

Using the new AMD Radeon R9 M370X discreet graphics chip, the notebook achieves up to 80 percent faster performance for editing video in Final Cut Pro X, rendering 3D images in pro graphics apps or playing games.

Apple says Force Touch brings new levels of interactivity to the Mac:

With built-in force sensors and a Taptic Engine that delivers haptic feedback, the Force Touch trackpad allows you to click anywhere with a uniform feel and customize the amount of pressure needed to register each click. The new trackpad supports a range of new gestures, including the new Force click, and APIs are available for third-party developers to incorporate Force Touch capabilities into their apps.

The new 15-inch MacBook Pro is available in two flavors.

The $1,999 configuration offers a 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.4GHz, 16GB of memory, 256GB of flash storage and Intel Iris Pro graphics.

The more powerful $2,499 model includes a 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7GHz, 16GB of memory, 512GB of flash storage and AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics.

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Build-to-order options include faster quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 2.8GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.0GHz and flash storage up to 1TB.

The new $1,999 iMac configuration features a 27-inch Retina 5K display with 14.7 million pixels at a resolution of 5,120-by-2,880, a faster 3.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 3.7GHz and AMD Radeon R9 M290 graphics.

The new iMac also includes 8GB of memory and 1TB of storage, as well as four USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports that deliver up to 20Gbps each, twice the bandwidth of the previous generation.

“Customers love the groundbreaking iMac with Retina 5K display, and now with a new lower starting price, even more people can experience the best desktop we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

The flagship $2,299 model has a 3.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9GHz, AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics and a 1TB Fusion Drive.

Build-to-order options include faster quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 4.0GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.4GHz and flash storage up to 1TB.

Both the new notebook and the updated iMac systems are available today through the Apple Store, Apple Online Store and authorized resellers.

Source: Apple