Apple Announces New MacBook Pro With Improved Keyboard, 8-Core CPU

Apple is refreshing its MacBook Pro line once again with new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro devices. The company today announced some major internal upgrades for both the devices, though there aren’t any exciting design changes.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro is getting an 8-core processor. That’s a first for any MacBook, and it comes with Intel’s 9th gen 8-core i9 processor, clocked at 2.3GHz, with the ability to Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz for $2799. You can also configure the model to come with an 8-core i9 clocked at 2.4GHz and Turbo Boost at 5GHz. But for the base model which starts at $2399, Apple is selling the 15-inch model with a 9th gen 6-core i7 processor clocked at 2.6GHz, with the ability to Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

For the 13-inch Touch Bar model, Apple is sticking with the 8th gen processors. The base model now ships with a faster clock speed at 2.4GHz (compared to the previous 2.3GHz) for the quad-core i5 processor, and it can Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz (compared to 3.8GHz). Apple is also introducing a new quad-core i7 processor that can boost up to 4.7GHz.

Apple claims the new processors help the MacBook Pro deliver twice the performance than a previous-gen quad-core MacBook Pro and 40% more performance than a previous-gen 6-core MacBook Pro.

On the inside, Apple is also changing up the design for the butterfly keyboard. This is the fourth time Apple is tweaking the design of the infamous MacBook Pro keyboard that has been causing all sorts of trouble. Apple told The Verge that the company is now using new materials for the butterfly mechanism that should help reduce the number of double press and press misses.

But what is very interesting is the fact that Apple has no mention of the new material for the butterfly mechanism on its blog post. There is literally not a single mention of the tweaked internals of the keyboard on the press release. The company is, however, expanding its servicing program for affected butterfly keyboards to help resolve the issues with the previous (and current) generation devices.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 34 comments

  • bob_shutts

    21 May, 2019 - 2:24 pm

    <p>Don't worry about what the "new" keyboard material is. iFixit will be on the case. (No pun intended.)</p>

  • dontbe evil

    21 May, 2019 - 2:31 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(55, 62, 68); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">LOOOOL of course you have to spend at least $2400 to buy the new device with a fixed keyboard, like when it fixed the iphone 4 antenna problem in the 4s, or 6 bend problem in the 6s, or the ipad 3 (?) charging problem in the ipad 4 (?)…</span></p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      21 May, 2019 - 2:55 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429724">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Read the last sentence again.</p><p><br></p><p>&nbsp;The company is, however, expanding its servicing program for affected butterfly keyboards to help resolve the issues with the previous (and current) generation devices.</p>

      • warren

        21 May, 2019 - 4:19 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429730">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>But are they going to replace the keyboard with another one that will break again? Or will everyone get a free upgrade to the new keyboard?</p><p><br></p><p>And how long are they going to run the recall program for? 8+ years? There are still a bunch of people out there rocking 2011/2012 Macbooks.</p><p><br></p><p>Of course, those 2011 MBPs had the AMD GPUs that failed, and the repair program never actually permanently fixed the problem…. and some people had to get the GPU fixed multiple times. How about we ask -them- what they think of how excited they are at the prospect of another multi-year, multi-failure problem with their expensive laptop.</p>

        • lvthunder

          Premium Member
          21 May, 2019 - 4:45 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#429758">In reply to warren:</a></em></blockquote><p>Who knows, but it doesn't mean you need to spend $2400 to get it fixed like dontbe_evil claims.</p>

          • MikeGalos

            21 May, 2019 - 7:43 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#429768">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Replacing a defective part that failed with another known defective part that will fail is not "fixing" the problem. As dontbe_evil says, to actually get the problem fixed you have to buy the new design – that is if the 4th version actually fixes the problem that wasn't actually fixed in the first "fixed" design or the second "fix for the fix" design…</p>

            • PeteB

              22 May, 2019 - 12:26 am

              <blockquote><em><a href="#429802">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Shoosh</p>

            • dontbe evil

              22 May, 2019 - 9:15 am

              <blockquote><em><a href="#429802">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>shhh don't tell this to the apple fans</p>

        • SvenJ

          21 May, 2019 - 5:02 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#429758"><em>In reply to warren:</em></a><em> </em>Older Macbooks didn't have the 'new' butterfly keyboards. The don't need the service extension. MacBook keyboards were sort of a gold standard for a long time, until Windows PC makers started figuring it out. My theory is that Apple started being concerned about loosing their keyboard edge, re-engineered it and dorked it up. Been trying to fix it for the last couple of years. Should just go back to the old keyboards.</blockquote><p><br></p>

          • jimchamplin

            Premium Member
            21 May, 2019 - 5:40 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#429772">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>Close, but like everything they do, it’s in the singleminded obsession they have with thin things. </p>

          • MikeGalos

            21 May, 2019 - 7:47 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#429772">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>The problem is they can't go back to the old keyboards since they're too thick and they don't dare make a new model that isn't a millimeter thinner than the previous model.</p><p><br></p><p>And they can't admit that any of these 3 separate generations of "fixed" keyboards are actually fixes to an actual problem or they'd have to retrofit all those years of butterfly keyboards with the fixed ones in response to a class action lawsuit.</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    21 May, 2019 - 2:45 pm

    <p>I am suspicious that you really will ever see the benefit of 5Gz. I bet it thermal throttles too quickly to make the high clock rates useful. </p><p><br></p><p>Interested to see how it performs in the hands of benchmark testers </p>

  • Stooks

    21 May, 2019 - 2:50 pm

    <p>So what will throttle it first, more powerful CPU in the same super thin form factor or Intel CPU flaw?</p>

    • Kevin Costa

      21 May, 2019 - 3:01 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429727">In reply to Stooks:</a></em></blockquote><p>Intel CPU + Specter fixes/slowdowns + Meltdown fixes/slowdowns + ZombieLoad fixes/slowdowns + HT disabled + Turbo 5Ghz Core i9 in a thin chassis = Nuclear disaster.</p>

      • Stooks

        21 May, 2019 - 3:03 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429731">In reply to Kevin_Costa:</a></em></blockquote><p>Looks good. You just need to add in the Apple firmware update that purposely throttled the i9 6-core last go around when you-tubers were posting the throttle video show it spiking all over the place. The firmware basically never let it get to its full potential, so no heat issues.</p><p><br></p><p>Who in their right mind would buy one of these?</p>

        • djross95

          Premium Member
          21 May, 2019 - 3:22 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#429732"><em>In reply to Stooks:</em></a><em> </em>Lol, I used your exact final sentence in my post in the members section!</blockquote><p><br></p>

    • dontbe evil

      22 May, 2019 - 9:16 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429727">In reply to Stooks:</a></em></blockquote><p>the best throttling and high temperature chassis evaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (good in winter)</p>

    • TEAMSWITCHER

      22 May, 2019 - 9:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429727">In reply to Stooks:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Does it matter? It's still the fastest Mac Laptop you can get. The Dell XPS 15 is throttles out of the box! You have to go into the power settings to unlock its full performance. Then, the moment you unplug the power cable, Dell throttles it again to save battery life. AppleInsider.com did a full comparison of these two laptops.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • Kevin Costa

    21 May, 2019 - 2:54 pm

    <p>I can feel the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">throttling… 5Ghz i9 in a thin metal chassis… (Arrogant) Apple never learns from its mistakes. Classic!</span></p>

  • djross95

    Premium Member
    21 May, 2019 - 3:21 pm

    <p>Hubris x 1000. A few tweaks to keep the prols happy, no explanation or apology at all in their blog post, same too-thin thermal-throttled design, same useless touch bar, everything soldered on the motherboard, and ridiculously high prices. Who, aside from content creation professionals, would buy one of these things? </p>

    • Kevin Costa

      21 May, 2019 - 3:30 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429736">In reply to djross95:</a></em></blockquote><p>Even content creation pros won't need this. With half the money they can build a monster PC that slashes any MacBook in half, even in rendering times, and even more considering that the MBP will have a difficult time keeping temps down.</p>

  • chaad_losan

    21 May, 2019 - 3:27 pm

    <p>Still super over priced. </p>

    • PeteB

      22 May, 2019 - 12:25 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429740">In reply to chaad_losan:</a></em></blockquote><p>For you. Everyone else is paying it or price would be dropping.</p>

      • Jippa Wip

        22 May, 2019 - 3:16 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429836">In reply to PeteB:</a></em></blockquote><p>I guess they need a few fools to test this 'new' keyboard… </p>

      • dontbe evil

        22 May, 2019 - 9:17 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429836">In reply to PeteB:</a></em></blockquote><p>yup, how much can apple fan boys pay to have a shiny bitten apple logo device</p>

  • dcdevito

    21 May, 2019 - 4:57 pm

    <p>I hear a lot of commenters mention how much cheaper a Windows machine is, and that’s certainly true. But for a certain segment, a la Developers, the real competition for Macs is Linux. I see a lot of devs move in to Linux from macOS and consider it “good enough”. Any recent Lenovo Thinkpad makes a great Linux machine. </p>

    • anderb

      Premium Member
      21 May, 2019 - 7:06 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429770">In reply to dcdevito:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yep. The addition of a real Linux kernel to W10 is an admission from MS that the original WSL implementation couldn't handle real-world development workloads.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      22 May, 2019 - 3:39 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429770">In reply to dcdevito:</a></em></blockquote><p>ThinkPads have long been a good option for Linux developers. We were using them in 2008.</p><p>It also depends on what you are developing. I do a lot of Windows development and web development on the side, so Windows makes more sense for me. But, apart from VS, most of the good IDEs these days are cross platform – VSCode, Eclipse etc.</p>

  • Saarek

    21 May, 2019 - 5:37 pm

    <p>I note that they are still selling the 2017 Non Touch Bar version at full price. As someone who has this model, and has already had their keyboard replaced twice, I feel that this is an absolute disgrace, they know full well that the design is flawed and yet they keep selling it!</p><p><br></p><p>The non Touch Bar models either need to be replaced with updated internals and the improved keyboard or removed from sale.</p>

  • brettscoast

    Premium Member
    21 May, 2019 - 7:51 pm

    <p>Thanks for the heads up Mehedi welcome back we have missed your posts</p>

  • codymesh

    22 May, 2019 - 12:50 am

    <p>are we referring to spec bumps of the same laptop as "new" now?</p>

    • dontbe evil

      22 May, 2019 - 9:17 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429845">In reply to codymesh:</a></em></blockquote><p>yup, that's apple style</p>

    • nbplopes

      22 May, 2019 - 6:59 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429845">In reply to codymesh:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Maybe they should have branded it Macbrook Pro 19. Maybe that would look newer to you.</p>

  • melinau

    Premium Member
    22 May, 2019 - 10:52 am

    <p>Same old, same old from Apple. Time for them to "Think different", perhaps?</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC