Apple has announced an update to its MacBook Pro, claiming that it's about to change everything again.

Taking to the stage at its "Hello Again" event in Cupertino, Tim Cook and chums announced a completely new MacBook Pro, simply called the MacBook Pro. 

This new model for 2016 brings in a whole range of changes, sweeping the 2015 MacBook Pro model aside. Here's everything you need to know about the new MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro (2016): Design

Apple has announced a brand new design for its MacBook Pro family of devices, coming in 13 and 15-inch models.

The new MacBook Pro (2016) evolves the unibody design of the previous MacBook Pro, sticking to the compact form factor, but reducing in size once again. It will be available in silver or grey.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro measures 14.9 x 304.1 x 212.4mm and weighs 1.37kg.

The new 15-inch MacBook Pro measures 15.5 x 349.3 x 240.7mm and weighs 1.83kg.

The reduction in volume as lead to a complete redesign for the internals, with a new cooling system to move air through the body and exhaust out the back. The display is as thin as the little 12-inch MacBook, while the Force Touch trackpad increases in size.

However, the biggest changes are the stripping out of all the ports and replacing them with Thunderbolt 3 ports. The second biggest change is the inclusion of a new OLED Touch Bar, sitting in the space where the Fn keys used to sit.

Unfortunately, to muddy the waters a little, the entry-level device is slightly lesser-specced, so although it sits in the same design, it only has two ports and no Touch Bar.

This is the basic breakdown of new MacBook Pro models:

  • 13-inch MacBook Pro, two Thunderbolt 3 ports
  • 13-inch MacBook Pro, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, Touch Bar
  • 15-inch MacBook Pro, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, touch Bar
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Pocket-lint

MacBook Pro (2016): Touch Bar

The Touch Bar is the real talking point of the new MacBook Pro, and likely to be the feature that sells this new design to a wide number of people.

The Touch Bar replaces the Fn keys and is a second Retina display. This OLED panel supports up to 10-points of touch and is full colour, designed to change its options depending on what you're doing on your Mac. It will offer things like volume sliders, shortcuts in your browser, text predictions when typing and tools when using more advanced programs.

For example, Apple demonstrated how Photoshop tools would appear on Touch Bar, how Microsoft Word tools could appear on the Touch Bar and how basic system controls could appear there too. There can also be a full emoji bar on Touch Bar, making it really easy to respond to messages with minimal fuss.

The Touch Bar will also incorporate the power button, which also integrates Touch ID, with a secure chip in the MacBook Pro, meaning you can touch to make payments.

MacBook Pro (2016): Specs and hardware

The new MacBook Pros offer a range of Intel Core i CPUs, with a huge range of options for RAM, storage and on the larger model, GPUs.

The basic 13-inch MacBook Pro (without Touch Bar) starts with a 2.0GHz Core i5, 256GB SSD storage and 8GB RAM. Graphics come from onboard Intel Iris 540. As we mentioned there are two Thunderbolt ports. It has a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution display, 277ppi.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) starts with a 2.9GHz Core i5, 256GB SSD storage and 8GB RAM. Graphics are supplied by the Intel Iris 550. This model gets four Thunderbolt 3 ports. It has a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution display, 277ppi.

Finally the 15-inch MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) starts with 2.6GHz Core i7, 256GB SSD storage and 16GB RAM. Graphics come from the AMD Radeon Pro 450 (2GB) with Intel HD Graphics 530. There are four Thunderbolt 3 ports. It has a 2880 x 1800 pixel resolution display, for 220ppi.

MacBook Pro (2016): Release date and price

The new MacBook Pro models are available to buy on from Apple today, with delivery depending on the model you choose. The basic 13-inch MacBook Pro is looking at delivery on 29 October, but the more advanced MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar are looking at 3-4 week delivery times.

There are a wide range of configuration options that make the price vary huge amounts, running up to over £4000 for the top spec MacBook Pro 15-inch.