When you’ve been writing about Apple for years, you rarely get excited—especially during this Tim Cook era because it’s mostly incremental upgrades most of the time.
However, they’ve shown fire recently when they released the 16-inch MacBook Pro last year, followed by a decent upgrade to the MacBook Air, the new iPad Pro, and then the iPhone SE2. Everyone’s expecting a 14-inch MBP this year but alas, we only have a refresh.
Anyway, the new 13-inch Macbook Pro got a boost under its case that, depending on what model you will buy, will make it a great value.
First is the keyboard. Apple got rid of the faulty butterfly keyboard mechanism and replaced it with the new Magic Keyboard that has a scissor design, just like the old MBPs.
Next is the processor upgrade. This upper line is powered by the 10th-gen Intel quad-core processor that starts at 2.0Ghz, partnered with Intel Iris Plus graphics that, despite being a plain GPU, is said to handle heavy photo editing and 4K video rendering. But for the entry level, it still has the 8th-gen Intel quad-core CPU that starts at 1.4Ghz.
Memory is also boosted with upper models now start at 16GB DDR4 that can be configured to 32GB, while the lower models are stuck with 8GB DDR3.
The main upgrade is in the storage as it has double the memory from the previous generation. The 13-inch MBP now starts at 256GB SSD, and the top-of-the-line model has 1TB SSD. It’s also configurable to up to 4TB. Wild.
The Retina screen with True Tone technology remains, together with Touch ID, Touch Bar, great battery life and Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Apple also slashed P3,000 across the range of the 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro. So that, together with the boost in storage, can make it a compelling deal if you need a workhorse for your creative work.
Prices for the new MBP range from P74,990 for the entry-level model with a 1.4GHz quad-core processor and 256GB storage, to P86,990 with the same 1.4GHz processor and 512GB storage, to P104,990 with a 2.0GHz quad-core processor with 512GB storage, to the top-of-the-line P116,990 with the 2.0GHz processor and 1TB storage.
