The graphics update is more modest, though the 13-inch now offers 128MB of eDRAM, double the previous generation. Still, the gains are appreciable, especially following Apple's supplemental update, which fixed a thermal management bug in the firmware. Because Apple wants maximum portability as well as performance, they're aggressively power managed. Unless you're in a proper studio, carefully calibrating before doing a final color correction on images or video, just leave it on and enjoy whites that actually look paper-white.Īpple's custom T1 co-processor, which previously offered a secure enclave for features like Touch ID and Apple Pay, has been escalated to a T2, which adds secure boot authentication and hardware accelerated data encryption, among other things.Įighth-generation Intel 'Coffee Lake' processors bring the 13-inch to 4 cores and the 15-inch to 6-cores. The already excellent high-gamut, high-density display now has True Tone, which means it will automatically match the ambient color temperature, from the warm yellows of incandescent light to the cool blues of fluorescent. The ports remain USB-C / Thunderbolt 3, but the 13-inch now matches the 15-inch with all four offering full bandwidth. Light, sleek, and strong, but no longer modern looking in the age of iPhone X or some of its near-bezeless competition. Three years into this design generation only one thing is for certain: This remains the most controversial and divisive pro portable Apple has ever made. Touchscreen and scissor switch keyboardsįor some, MacBook Pro (2018) will be the best of the best.In addition, I've spoken to over a dozen pro users in a wide range of fields, to get a sense of how the new machines affect a wide range of workloads.

I've also spent almost a second week throwing out those tests and doing them over again following Apple finding and fixing a bug in the thermal management firmware (see the Coffee Lake section, below). I've now spent a week testing a new, 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018) with a 6-core i9 processor, 32GB of memory, and 2TB of solid-state storage, which sells for a brisk $4,699. Second, from the irresistible force of Intel falling back on multiple extra cores to make up for multiple years of failing to get to a 10-nanometer process, slamming head-on into the immovable object that is Apple's insistence on keeping its pro portables ultra portable. With the MacBook Pro (2018), not so much: From the moment the third iteration of Apple's latest design hit the market, controversy hit with it.įirst, concerns about the reliability of the butterfly and dome-switch keyboards, which proved problematic enough in the previous two versions for Apple to have instituted a repair program. In a normal year, that's a straightforward process.

Apple macbook pro video card