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A brief overview of the MacBook Pro

A brief overview of the MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro is a series of Macintosh computers that was introduced in 2006. The MacBook Pro is portable and a superior model of the MacBook series. When the MacBook Pro was released in January 2006, it came in two screen size variants—15 and 13 inches. In April 2006, however, the company released another variant having a screen size of 17 inches. This model was available until June 2012 but it was then discontinued.

The 1st generation MacBook Pro was released as a replacement to the externally similar PowerBook G4. Instead of PowerPC G4 chips employed by the PowerBook, the MacBook Pro used Intel® Core™ processors. After the initial MacBook Pro was released in January and April, many updates were made to the future models. Moreover, the Intel® Core™ processors were replaced with Core™ 2 Duo processors and the updated MacBook Pro was finally introduced to the market in late 2006.

In 2008, the product underwent a second iteration which was commonly known as the “unibody” models. The unibody models of the MacBook Pro has a sole piece aluminum casing. They were introduced to the market in October 2008 in two screen size variants—15 and 13 inches. In January 2009, Apple Inc. released the 17-inch screen size variant of the unibody model MacBook Pro. Additionally, the models were updated and upgraded to Intel® Core™ i7 and i5 processors as well as were equipped with Intel®’s Thunderbolt™ technology.

At the 2012 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company released the 3rd generation of 15-inch MacBook Pro and announced the discontinuation of the 17-inch model. The previous 15- and 13-inch models continued production with updated processors. The 3rd generation MacBook Pro was thinner in comparison to its precursor model and included a high-resolution Retina Display.

In October 2016, the 4th generation of the MacBook Pro was introduced. The function keys were replaced by the power button-integrated touch ID sensor and a multi-touch, interactive “Touch Bar” as well. The 15-inch notebook with the fourth iteration was being sold at a whopping price of around $2,399 in comparison to $1,999, at which the earlier generation models were priced. In June 2017, Apple made an upgrade to the internals of the 4th generation MacBook Pro to include additional memory, a Kaby Lake processor, and AMD Radeon and Iris Plus graphics. The 13-inch variant also features lesser memory (128GB, as compared to the 256GB option) at a price of around $1,299. The other configurations are being sold at the same price as when they were launched in 2016.