Apple held their October Special event today, October 27, 2016 at their Cupertino campus Town Hall. The event was widely rumored to unveil their latest line-up of MacBook Pro notebooks. Other announcements made today include an all-new app for Apple TV.
Introduction & Welcome
- Tim Cook takes the stage
- "Today, we are launching a new accessibility website"
- A few updates
- iPhone 7 launch and "people are loving it"
- iOS 10 is out and "it's official... outstanding! 5/5". 60% of iPhone users are on iOS 10
- iOS 10.1 is now available as a free update with portrait mode
- ApplePay now available in Japan
- Updated Apple Watch with watchOS 3 with positive reviews
Apple TV
- "We want your Apple TV experience to be as great as it is with all your other Apple devices"
- 8,000+ apps currently available for tvOS with more coming each day
- Minecraft coming later this year to Apple TV
- Ryan Troy (Twitter) takes the stage for a Twitter-on-Apple TV demo
- Apple introduces new Unified TV Experience via a new app called "TV"
- New TV app will completely change how we watch TV on our Apple TV and iOS devices
- TV app syncs your watching across all tvOS and iOS devices
- TV app will be available for free in December (starting in the US)
MacBook Pro
- "The Mac is more than a product to us. It's a testament to everything that we do and are"
- macOS Sierra brought to us iCloud Drive (with desktop and document syncing), universal clipboard, ApplePay via web browser, Siri and many more!
- This week is the 25th anniversary of the first Apple notebook
- "Today, we are redefining what a notebook could do"
- Phil Schiller takes the stage
- Available in a 13" and 15" size, in Silver and Space Gray colors
- 13" is 14.9mm thin (17% thinner than previous generation 13" MacBook Pro)
- 13" weighs 3 Lbs, .5 Lbs less than the previous generation
- 15" is 15.5mm thin (15% thinner than previous generation 15" MacBook Pro)
- 15" weighs 4 Lbs, .5 Lbs less than the previous generation
- Both include a new ForceTouch trackpad which is 2x larger
- New butterfly-switch keyboard
- All-new multi-touch Retina display strip at top of keyboard called "Touch Bar"
- Touch Bar adapts to the application that you currently have open
- Touch Bar supports up to 10 simultaneous inputs
- Touch ID sensor located to the right of Touch Bar, supported by a new T1 chip (secure enclave)
- Craig Federighi takes the stage to demo new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
- Customizing your Tuoch Bar is simple and intuitive
- Touch ID makes Fast User Switching very quick and painless
- New display: 67% brighter, 67% better contrast ratio... all while consuming less power
- Every 15" MacBook Pro includes Intel Core i7 chip
- Faster graphics with Radeon Pro with 4 GB VRAM (2.3x faster than previous generation)
- Superfast SSD features 3.1 GB/s transfer speeds
- All-new thermal architecture to support new hardware
- New speakers are smaller, but feature louder volumes and twice the dynamic range
- 13" MacBook Pro includes Intel Core i5 or i7 chip
- Both models include 4 x Thunderbolt 3 ports (4 0Gb/s bandwidth)
- Because Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB-C interface, any port could be the charging port, display port, etc
- Apple + LG announce new LG UltraFine 5K display using Thunderbolt 3
- Susan Prescott takes the stage to demo Final Cut Pro on the new MacBook Pro
- Bradee Evans takes the stake to demo PhotoShop on the new MacBook Pro
- Karim Morsy takes the stage to demo Djay Pro on the new MacBook Pro
- New MacBook Pro features a 10-hour battery
- New MacBook Pro is 6.8 million times faster than the 25-year-old original PowerBook 170
- Base 13" MacBook Pro withOUT Touch Bar starts at $1,499
- Base 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar starts at $1,799
- Base 15" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar starts at $2,399
- New MacBook Pro is available TODAY for order, ships in November
- MacBook Air line is officially dead
- Tim Cook returns to the stage to conclude the special event