Apple Releases New 15-Inch MacBook Pro With Force Touch and $1,999 27-Inch iMac With Retina Display

Tuesday May 19, 2015 5:49 am PDT by Mitchel Broussard

Apple today announced updates to its 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display lineup and a new $1,999 configuration of the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display, confirming a recent rumor that said new models of the computers would be released as early as Wednesday. The refreshed MacBook Pro and iMac models are available through the Apple Store, Apple Online Store and authorized resellers beginning today.

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The new 15-inch MacBook Pro gained all the expected updates similar to its 13-inch sibling: a Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage, longer battery life, and better graphics. The new MacBook Pro comes in 2.2GHz and 2.5GHz configurations for $1,999 and $2,499 respectively. Both configurations come with a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB memory, and Intel Iris Pro Graphics cards, with the higher-end 2.5GHz model gaining expected boosts in flash storage and memory.

Given that the necessary Broadwell chips are not yet available, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro and 27-inch iMac still have Intel's fourth-generation Haswell processors. Based on the average product cycle for the MacBook Pro and iMac, Apple may choose to skip Broadwell processors and use next-generation Skylake processors for the next versions of the notebook and all-in-one desktop computer respectively. Those models are unlikely to be released until late 2015 at the earliest.

“The response to the new MacBook and updated 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has been amazing, and today we are thrilled to bring the new Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage and longer battery life to the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers love the groundbreaking iMac with Retina 5K display, and now with a new lower starting price, even more people can experience the best desktop we’ve ever made.”

The iMac line that received an update today was a new $1,999 configuration of the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display. The new model is a 3.3GHz configuration with a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and 1TB hard drive. Both the 15-inch MacBook Pro and 27-inch iMac are available to purchase right now from Apple's online store, with most of the models sitting at an estimated shipping time of between 1 and 3 business days as of announcement time.

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Top Rated Comments

ericinboston

150 months ago

$2000 for a desktop computer and:

1)it still comes with 8GB ram (2 4GB chips!!!)
2)a non-SSD drive. Oh, but for an extra $500 you can get a 512GB flash drive (not sure if it's SSD or PCIe or other) when you can pick them up anywhere for $180 at RETAIL prices.
3)Oh, but wait...there's more!....they don't even tell you what i5 chip you are getting.
4)And there's no i7 option for people that, you know, spend $2000 and actually want some killer performance to somewhat future proof their investment.

Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Merackon

150 months ago

Yay...AMD graphics...yay

/s

Score: 34 Votes (Like | Disagree)

keysofanxiety

150 months ago

Hoorah, a cheaper Retina iMac ... with worse specs. Just like the cheaper Mac Mini, and the cheaper non-Retina iMac. That's definitely in line with Apple's pursuit for perfection.

"In creating these great products we focus on enriching people’s lives—a higher cause for the product. These are the macro things that drive the company."

"You know, we want to really enrich people’s lives at the end of the day, not just make money. Making money might be a byproduct, but it’s not our North Star."

"A great product doesn’t mean an expensive product. It means a fair price… We think about the product and making a great product that we want to use. When we can do that and achieve another price point, that’s great."

Yeah, these whole lower-cost, worse-spec alternatives are frankly getting ridiculous. Consumers who don't know better are going to buy these, on the assumption -- no, the lie -- that 'Apple makes the decisions for the consumer', that 'we don't ship junk', that 'every product is carefully crafted for the best user experience'.

Let's see how great that experience is with stuttering animations on an underpowered graphics card, or expensive machines that still have standard HDDs rather than Fusion/SSDs.

It's such a bitter irony that the more money companies make, and the more money they have to potentially expand their lineup and make the bottom benchmark absolutely incredible (pure SSD for instance), they seem to do moves like this which smack to me as only thinking of profits. The consumer will not get experiences or a computer performance synonymous with a £1000 machine. Fact.

The greedy get greedier.

Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)