Anyone who's ever owned an Apple product, or at least plans to own the brand, knows that they're paying top dollar for a premium item. It was recently revealed that MacBook Pro costs around $1,499 for the most basic model, thus some wonder whether the price might be too much. Is it worth it?
Forbes asked a number of industry experts what they thought of the MacBook Pro 2016's pricing. The new MacBook Pro is coming in three models. The aforementioned base model, a lightweight 13-inch variant that Apple intends to replace both the MacBook Air and the previous MacBook Pro with is $1,499. A faster 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.9GHz dual-core Intel i5 Skylake processor runs for $1,799. The highest-end MacBook Pro variant, with a quad-core Intel i7 processor, is going for $2,399. With that, expensive is an understatement.
PCWorld executive editor Gordon Mah Ung thinks that Apple is sacrificing performance with the MacBook Pro just to make it thin, and that might not be worth the price point. Rhoda Alexander of IHS Markit Technology has observed that it's only normal, considering Apple has been driving prices of their other products, such as the iPhone and the iPad, up as of late. Todd Haselton of TechnoBuffalo is baffled that Apple would even think of raising prices in the face of declining sales this year, as Bloomberg reports.
The much-hyped Touch Bar, a touchscreen bar above the MacBook Pro's keyboard that changes buttons depending on the active app, isn't apparently all that. Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates believes that it took Apple too long to produce technology that wouldn't even be maximized by touch-typers, as it's counterproductive to look at the keyboard too much. The Apple MacBook Pro is available for preorder now, and it will start arriving in a few weeks.
