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Apple updates MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro with faster chips, Thunderbolt 2

Apple updates MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro with faster chips, Thunderbolt 2

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13-inch Retina MacBook Pro gets Apple's new Force Touch trackpad

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Alongside detailing the new MacBook today, Apple updated both its MacBook Air line and 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display with faster Intel chips. Both sets of machines now have fifth-generation i5 and i7 Intel chips out of the gate. And both machines now also have speedier Thunderbolt 2 ports, something that would be markedly more exciting if Apple hadn't basically just thrown Thunderbolt under a bus in favor of USB Type-C.

No new trackpads all around

There are some differences in the new goodies you get. The 13-inch (but not 11-inch) MacBook Air now has flash memory that Apple says is twice as fast, as well as Intel HD Graphics 6000. And buyers of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (but not the 15-inch) get the fancy new Force Touch trackpad, which adds haptic feedback and will monitor how much you're pressing down on the keypad to let you customize what kind of presses do what in OS X, partially replacing some of the multi-finger trackpad gestures. Additionally, Apple says some of the changes it's made now bring the rated battery life to 10 hours, up from the previous model's nine.

Read next: MacBook Pro review (2015).

Here's the breakdown:

13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
  • $1,299 — 2.7 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, 128GB flash storage
  • $1,499 — 2.7 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB flash storage
  • $1,799 — 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, 512GB flash storage
MacBook Air

11-inch

  • $899 — 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB flash storage
  • $1,099 — 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB flash storage

13-inch

  • $999 - 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB flash storage
  • $1,199 — 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB flash storage

The updated models join the newly announced MacBook which arrives in April, but are available today.

See all of the Apple "Spring Forward" news right here

Verge Video: Hands-on with the newest 12-inch MacBook