MacBook Pro: The biggest and baddest Mac laptops

When Apple posted the Messages Beta for the Mac over four years ago, I knew I would feel right at home. iChat was long overdue for an upgrade, and bringing iMessage to the Mac would further bridge the divide between iOS and Mac OS X. I was excited to start messaging my friends and family from the comfort of my computer, until I realized, “Where’s the camera button?”

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Today, aftermarket Mac upgrade specialists OWC announced that the long-awaited PCIe flash storage upgrades for late model Mac laptops are now available. MacBook Pro, as far back as the Late-2013 product cycle, and MacBook Air, as far back as the Mid-2013 product cycle, are eligible to upgrade. Upgrades include a 480GB or a 1TB PCIe-based flash storage solution.

Considering that many of these Macs shipped with anemic 128GB or 256GB SSDs, this can be considered a major upgrade. For instance, with MacBook Airs that featured 128GB of flash storage space, a 1TB upgrade equals 8x the storage space, a significant increase in eligible storage.
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Regular readers will know that I’m a sucker for wood. Show me something well-crafted from an attractive chunk of wood and I’m on board.

I’d previously admired Grovemade’s wooden iPad sleeve, and the company’s iPhone cases were featured in our ‘best of iPhone 6/Plus cases’ roundup, so I thought I’d check out its recently-announced MacBook Dock. The dock is available in a range of sizes to suit the 12-inch MacBook, 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro. I tested it with my 11-inch MacBook Air …

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Update: Version 2.92 of Transmission has now been released. This claims to actively remove the ‘KeyRanger’ malware files from the infected Mac.

OS X users have today been hit with the first known case of Mac ‘ransomware’ malware, found in the Transmission BitTorrent client released last week. Infected versions of the app include ‘KeyRanger’ malware that will maliciously encrypt the user’s hard drive after three days of being installed. The malware then asks for payment to allow the user to decrypt the disk and access their data — the ‘ransom’.

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Microsoft is currently running a new series of ads featuring ‘The Bug Chicks’, with each ad directly targeting a weakness in Apple’s Mac operating system. Kristie and Jess, curiously labelled as ‘real people paid for real opinions’, walk through several ways that Windows 10 helps them teach kids about bugs and the microscopic world.

The ad series focuses on several different competitive advantages Windows currently holds over OS X, such as touchscreen-equipped laptops for sketching and drawing, Cortana as a personal voice search assistant and face recognition for hands-free account login. Some of the things Microsoft highlights, like the absence of Siri on OS X are expected to be addressed by Apple later in the year, of course. Watch all four videos after the jump:

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With KGI suggesting that we could see new MacBook models as early as the first half of the year, I thought it would be a good time to expand on the suggestions we made in our 2016 roundup and speculate in a little more detail on what we might expect from those machines.

There is rather a lot of speculation involved, for a couple of reasons. First, while we tend to see a number of leaks and rumors for the iPhone – not least from our own Mark Gurman – there are notably fewer for Macs. We’ll likely see some nearer the time, but we could as yet still be six months out.

Second, it’s easier to predict what Apple is likely to do with regard to the MacBook range than when it might do it. I’ve argued before that we can at some point expect Apple to drop the MacBook Air label, leaving two ranges known as the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. But whether that will happen this year or next is, I think, harder to guess.

But let’s start with what we know about the technology available to Apple this time around …

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Siri percolated throughout all of Apple’s platforms in 2015. It started with iPhone in 2011, iPad in 2012, debuted on Apple Watch in early 2015 and Apple TV with the new model a few months ago. It’s quickly becoming a premier feature on these platforms, with live-as-you-speak transcription and radically new features like ‘Remind me about this’ contextual tasks when inside apps. Except for one platform of course. Mac OS X has been ignored and left abandoned with regards to true voice searching and Siri. It’s 2016, and I want Apple to bring Siri to the Mac.

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Apple has had a busy year for product launches. In addition to the Apple Watch going on sale as a whole new product category, there was the 12-inch MacBook and iPad Pro, each representing quite a radical new take on an existing product category.

But Apple also made some notable improvements to existing lines. The iMac got a 4K and 5K display; the Retina MacBook Pro got Force Touch; and the Apple TV got opened up to a whole new range of software.

We also saw a new iPad mini which was essentially a smaller iPad Air 2, and a refreshed MacBook Air with Broadwell CPU and faster graphics.

Additionally, Apple launched five new peripherals – the Apple Pencil, Smart Keyboard, Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad 2, Magic Mouse 2 – and we have a separate poll for those.

So it’s time to ask you to name your Apple Product of the Year and Apple Peripheral of the Year … 
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Trying to predict the future of technology is a risky endeavor at best, and never more so when attempting to do it with one of the most secretive companies in the field.

But never let it be said I don’t ‘fess up when my predictions don’t pan out. Two years ago, I reckoned that the MacBook Air and Pro ranges would have merged by now. When the MacBook Air was first launched, it made a lot of compromises to fit into that slim casing. But over the years, the Air got more powerful and the Pro started to make similar compromises in pursuit of a sleeker form-factor. Both went SSD, both went non-upgradable RAM, neither had an optical drive, neither had an Ethernet port.

It seemed to me then that the differences between the two ranges would continue to dwindle until there was really nothing to separate them. But as things turned out, Apple had one surprise in store for me … 
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I’ve long recommended the MacBook Air to friends who want something a little more capable than an iPad but don’t need their machine to do any heavy lifting. But recent experience has now led me to go rather further …

I’ve written at length about why I’m doggedly sticking to my four-year-old 17-inch MacBook Pro as my main machine. The tl;dr version is that I really like working on a large screen, and I also like having all my files on board when travelling – something I can do because I upgraded it to 2 x 1TB SSDs.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it fell victim to the GPU problem that has afflicted a number of 2011-2013 MacBook Pros. The first symptoms were everything slowing to a crawl when connected to my 27-inch Thunderbolt display, followed by random crashes and then the characteristic graphics distortion that confirmed the logic board as the culprit.

The good news was that Apple would fix it free of charge under its Repair Extension Program. The bad news was that it would take a week, during which time my second Mac – a Mid 2013 11-inch MacBook Air usually used exclusively as a mobile writing device – would have to take over all its duties. I wondered how well it would cope … 
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After a rough start and a mixed early experience, I did finally press the button on Apple Music – a decision I’m grateful for at present as my main Mac is away for repair. This diary piece is as much about that experience as Apple Music, but I will get to music, I promise …

I love a large screen on a laptop, so have stuck doggedly to my 17-inch MacBook Pro, despite the fact that it’s now four years old. It’s a maxed-out late-2011 machine that has been very heavily upgraded over the years, with 16GB RAM and 2TB of SSD storage, and consequently still offers decent performance.

Until recently … 
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When Microsoft launched its first full-on laptop, the Surface Book, it made a big point of claiming that the machine was twice as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Benchmark tests by PCWorld show that this claiming is misleading, though the dedicated graphics card available in certain models does pay off for some uses.

The site’s tests showed that in pure CPU benchmarks, the MacBook Pro was actually slightly faster than the Surface Book. This remained true for Geek Bench 3 tests, which simulate real-life usage … 
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Earlier in the year, a small-but-not-insignificant number of Apple customers complained about screen issues with their new Retina MacBooks and Retina MacBook Pros, specifically cases where the anti-reflective display coating leaves marks and stains on the screen, ranging from small corner blobs to large patches.

Several months later, Apple seems to have acknowledged the issue and launched a Quality Program to replace affected users’  hardware. The Staingate Facebook page now includes many reports of people successfully sending their MacBooks in for repair at Apple Stores. The existence of the program was first reported by MacRumors.

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Following the corresponding update to Pixelmator for iOS 9, the company has released the latest version of Pixelmator for the Mac ($29.99) with full support for El Capitan. This includes compatibility with changes to the OS as well as an overhaul in the Pixelmator user interface to feature San Fransisco, Apple’s new system font. The update, version 3.4, also includes official full-screen Split View support on El Capitan, so users can dock Pixelmator next to any other app on the system filling the display.

Perhaps most interestingly, the app now includes a Photos.app editing extension …

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Twelve South’s family of BookArc stands for MacBooks are perhaps its best-known products, having debuted alongside the company back in 2009. Today, BookArc received a substantial redesign in the form of BookArc for MacBook ($50), which now is sized to properly support every current-generation MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro from 11.6″ to 15″. Interchangeable silicone inserts promise that the new BookArc “will be the perfect home for your current (and future) MacBook for years to come.”

The new BookArc is made from bead-blasted silver aluminum that matches the looks of most MacBooks, with a polished chamfered edge mimicking the design cue Apple introduced in iPhones, iPads, and iPods. While the “arc” shape remains the same as before, cradling the bottom of your MacBook, the cable pass-throughs have been shrunk and flattened. BookArc for MacBook is available now, and the wooden version BookArc Mod will continue to be sold for a $10 premium, while the MacBook Air-specific BookArc sells for $10 less.

Updated: We’ve just added hands-on impressions below…

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Microsoft comparing its new Surface Book laptop/tablet combo with Apple’s MacBook Pro

At Microsoft’s event today it unveiled a huge array of ambitious and interesting tech which should be enough to make Apple stand up and take notice. The once-giant of the consumer electronics world has had to reinvent itself over the past couple of years, and judging from today’s event, it’s doing enough to get people interested again at the very least. At best, it could transform the way we see technology and computing.
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