Apple’s MacBook Pro event: all the news from the October 2016 keynote

Much has been said about the cost, trade-offs, and compromises involved with purchasing Apple’s new MacBook Pro. Apple unveiled the device, which comes in three new iterations, yesterday at a press event, and people pouring over its spec sheets and purchase options have complained that its limiting 16GB memory option is severe given the price tag. Apple has now come out and explained that any more RAM in a notebook of its size would have a detrimental effect on battery life.

The answer comes from up high. When a MacRumors reader emailed a general Apple line about a 32GB RAM option, he got a surprise response from marketing chief Phil Schiller himself. Here’s the exchange:

The top two tiers of Apple’s newest MacBook Pros have one hell of an eye-catching feature: a touchscreen that runs across the top of the entire keyboard. Known as “Touch Bar,” it changes dynamically depending on whatever application is being used at the time. (Example: type out a text in iMessage and Touch Bar will give you an interactive row of emoji to choose from!) Apple showed off a handful of Touch Bar demos on stage today, but the most curious came from Karim Morsy, CEO of Algoriddim. He used Touch Bar to control his company’s Djay Pro app. As far as Apple event demos go, it fell a little flat. (You can watch it above.)

Early impressions of the Touch Bar from our team on the ground in Cupertino are good. But exactly how useful Touch Bar will be for professionals is hard to discern, especially when they tend to already own accessories that enable the fine control. Professional DJs are a great example — there’s an extremely deep market for DJ equipment, peripherals, and accessories.

Apple’s keynote today focused on the Mac and the company's vision idea for the future of TV. New MacBook Pros are coming, including one that’s thinner than the Macbook Air, as is a new feature called the Touch Bar. The Touch Bar replaces the function keys and adjusts to the software a laptop is running. Overall, it was a small event with not a lot of news, but hey, new laptops! Exciting!

Apple just announced a lineup of three new MacBook Pro laptops, each of which is decked out with four (four!) USB Type-C ports. And as is the case with all things Apple these days, you know what that means — you’re going to need more dongles.

More specifically, you now need purchase either a USB 2.0 (old USB) to USB Type-C dongle or a Lightning-to-USB-C cable to connect your shiny new iPhone 7 — or any old iPhone, to be clear — to use any of these new MacBook Pros. (There’s also currently no dongle that will let you use the new Lightning EarPods on the new MacBook Pros. You’d need to daisy-chain a few together.)

Apple has unveiled the new MacBook Pro and the most interesting part of it by far is the Touch Bar — a strip of touch-sensitive, context-aware display that replaces the function keys above the keyboard. Buttons on the Touch Bar change depending on the software you're using, so that when you're in your mail app, for example, it'll show you a button for deleting emails, whereas in a photo app it'll let you crop or rotate an image.

The most useful keys will stick round in most contexts (that includes brightness and volume controls on the far right, and the escape key on the far left), but the rest will change based on what you're doing, with third-party developers able to add their own functionality. There's going to be a lot you can do with the Touch Bar, but here's what we've seen so far:

I just got a chance to play with Apple’s new TV app on the Apple TV, which is... just called TV. It’s more of a second home screen than an app, really — when you open it up you see a bunch of shows and movies that you can watch based on the video services you’ve subscribed to either directly or through your cable provider. If you don't have the apps installed, you won't see the stuff. That's the big thing to know — this is another frontend to apps, not a service on its own. And importantly, there’s no Netflix content anywhere in sight, although Apple says it’s working to sign up more partners soon.

Clicking on a show or movie opens the Apple TVs show screen that display all the apps a particular show is in, and then you can pick one, which will then open that app and play. This is where it gets confusing: the TV app isn’t actually where anything plays, so when you hit menu while a video is playing, you get dropped back into the Showtime or HBO Now app or whatever. Apple’s remapped the home button on the remote to take you back to the TV app, but it doesn’t remember where you left off — it starts you right back at the top of the interface.

The new MacBook Pro is here — literally available for preorder today — and I’ve just tried it. The best thing I can say about is simple: everything about it looks and feels so good I almost didn’t believe it.

We’ll start with the marquee feature, the Touch Bar. What you might not have gathered from the keynote is that it has a matte finish, which makes the buttons on it somehow feel a little more physical. It’s bright, but not so bright that it distracts — it seems to be about on par with the brightness of the backlit keyboard.

Apple just announced a new generation of MacBook Pro laptops, which means it's probably time to stop selling the prior range. Or at least the the one before it. Yes, the 13-inch MacBook Pro from June 2012, which made up for its lack of Retina display with an optical disc drive and an extra pound or so in weight, has finally been killed after inexplicably remaining on sale at $1,099 for years without a spec bump. New models are no longer on sale, although some refurbished units are still available.

So, pour one out if you really wanted a portable Mac with a DVD drive — you'll have to use Apple's USB SuperDrive accessory now. Possibly with a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

Alongside the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, Apple just introduced a third new MacBook Pro model that's something of an unofficial successor to the MacBook Air. It slots in as a cheaper option next to the 15-inch and 13-inch Touch Bar models. The company plans to continue selling its 13-inch Air, Phil Schiller said, but this specific MacBook Pro will likely be a preferable option for those who can afford its $1,499 price. (The 13-inch Air remains priced at $999.) It's 13 percent smaller in volume than the existing Air and weighs the same 3 pounds. It retains traditional, physical function keys — yes, like escape — so there's no Touch Bar on this version.

But the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro does get some of the same upgraded hardware found in its pricier counterparts like Thunderbolt 3 (two ports), faster Intel processors, and improved second-generation butterfly keyboard. Unfortunately, like the other models, it also loses the SD card slot. Storage comes as 256GB by default but can be upgraded to either 512GB or 1TB.

If you want the greatest external monitor for the new MacBook Pro, Apple says your best bet is the new 27-inch, 5K UltraFine Display from LG. The iPhone-maker unveiled the $1,299.95 display onstage at its Mac event today, saying it had worked closely with LG to make the product a perfect match for the Pro. This may not be the new 5K Apple Cinema Display some had hoped for, but it is, apparently, the best we're going to get.

The MacBook Pro can support two LG UltraFine 5K displays, with Apple exec Phil Schiller describing the screens as the "ultimate docking station" for the MacBook. The IPS display has a 5120 x 2880 resolution, and comes with built-in cameras, microphones, and speakers, as well as three USB-C ports for extra connectivity.

The new Macbook Pro swaps out the USB ports, HDMI port, and power port of previous models for four Thunderbolt 3 ports that can serve those purposes and others. But one classic port remains: the headphone jack.

Apple has been broadly criticized for removing the standard headphone jack from new iPhones. In its announcement of the Pixel, competitor Google jokingly emphasized the inclusion of the headphone jack on the Pixel as a key feature. And so, it’s surprising to see the headphone jack is the single classic port to appear on the new Macbook Pro.

Apple has included a surprising new chip in its new MacBook Pro. Onstage at the company’s Fall event, Apple’s Phil Schiller revealed a new T1 chip, manufactured by Apple, that will bring the Secure Enclave on the new generation of laptops. iPhones and iPads have included Secure Enclave hardware for years, but this is the first instance of those protections on an Apple laptop.

The T1 isn’t the main processor, and most functions will still rely on Intel’s Core i5 or i7chips, but including an Apple-made chip enables a number of important security features. Apple’s A7 chip — included in iPhones and iPads — is encoded with an inextractible private key at the factory, as part of the A7’s Secure Enclave. That private key is then used for a number of security functions, including decrypting iMessages. Previous MacBooks have typically stored private keys in software-accessible memory, a less secure alternative made necessary by reliance on third-party chips.

Apple has added the Touch Bar to the new MacBook Pro the company announced during an event today. The new Touch Bar, which leaked out two days ago, replaces the row of keys and will allow app-specific commands to be displayed on the keyboard.

For example, when you open Mail, the Touch Bar will display buttons to create a new message, replying, or moving an email to the trash. In Safari, you can preview tabs and switch through them using the Touch Bar, open a new tab, or go to one of your favorited sites without having to use the trackpad. You can swipe through your images in Photos with previews, scrub through videos, and make edits like rotating photos, cropping, and adding filters. Apple says users will be able to customize the Touch Bar, and add the features and buttons they need the most.

The main attraction of Apple’s "Hello Again" event today has just been made official with the new 2016 MacBook Pro. It’s been a very long time since Apple meaningfully redesigned its flagship laptop, which has felt somewhat neglected with only the addition of a Force Touch trackpad as a major change in the past two years. But today Apple is rectifying all that in a big way with a fundamentally redesigned MacBook Pro.

Follow along here as we enumerate everything that's changed with the brand new MBP.

Apple may not be building its own TV, but it at least has its own TV guide. Sort of. The company unveiled a new app — simply named TV — at its Mac event today, promising users it will unite of all their digital TV content in one place. The app brings together content from different services, as well as iTunes purchases and live content.

A TV app might sound basic, but it could be a clever way around some of Apple's problems in the industry. The company has been trying to do for TV what it did for music for years now, serving up its own package of content to consumers, but it's been stymied by negotiations with media execs, who have reportedly balked at Apple's aggressive negotiating style.

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed today that Microsoft is planning to bring Minecraft to the Apple TV. While it was a brief mention on stage at Apple's event, Cook did reveal you'll be able to build worlds straight from the Apple TV. It's likely that the app will be similar to the existing Pocket Edition for iOS, allowing you to play with other Minecraft players across multiple platforms.

Developing. Check out our Apple MacBook event live blog for the latest updates and our Apple hub page for all the news!