WWDC News: MacBooks and iMacs Refreshed, macOS High Sierra Introduced

Apple announced updates to its MacBook models at the Worldwide Developers Conference Monday.

The MacBook Pro and 12-inch MacBook will now come with Intel Kaby Lake processor. The notebooks will also have up to 50 percent faster SSDs and the 15-inch MacBook Pro will feature faster standard graphics. Meanwhile, the 13-inch MacBook Air will get a ‘megahertz’ boost.

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The 12-inch MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Pro will be priced at $1,299. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will start at $1,799 and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will go for $2,399.

The notebooks are available for shipping today. You can compare models at Apple’s site using this link.

iMac

Apple also introduced updates to iMacs. The desktop models will have the “best Mac displays ever,” the company said. The iMacs will come with 500 nits, will be 43 percent brighter (with one billion colors) and 10-bit dithering. The desktops will also feature Intel Kaby Lake processors. The iMacs will come with higher memory capacity, faster storage and graphics up to 80 percent faster than previous generations.

The 21.5-inch iMac will be priced at $1,099, the iMac Retina 4K 21.5-inch will go for $1,499 and the iMac Retina 5K 27 inch will start at $1,799.

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Apple also gave a preview of the upcoming Space Gray iMac model coming this fall, which Apple says “will be by far the most powerful Mac ever.” The iMac Pro will have up to 128GB ECC memory, up to 4TB of SSD, 10 GB Ethernet, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, up to 18-core Xeon processors, 44 million pixels and real-time 3D rendering. The 27-inch Retina 5K display iMac will also come with the new Radeon Pro Vega GPU, “the most advanced graphics ever in a Mac,” according to Apple. The iMac Pro will be available in December and will be priced at $4,999.

New macOS

Apple also introduced the new update to macOS Sierra: macOS High Sierra.

The update for iMacs and MacBooks will come with an auto-play blocking feature on Safari. The browser will detect sites that auto play videos and will block the clips from automatically playing. macOS High Sierra will also get a boost in privacy by using machine learning to identify trackers. Apple is also adding updates for Mail, including a full screen split mail view and spotlight. macOS High Sierra is also boosting editing in Photos, including a sidebar for filtering by keywords, favorites and people. The update will also synchronize editing you have done on photos in other apps, like Adobe Photoshop. High Sierra will also come with the Apple File System as a default for Mac computers, and Metal 2, the graphics-rendering framework that follows Metal. Apple also announced virtual reality support to macOS computers.

The update will roll out this fall and is available as a developer beta now.