Everything Apple Announced Today, From Macs to Apps

Holy smokes these [new MacBooks](https://slim-weight.info/2016/10/apple-new-macbook-pro-price-availability/) are thin! The aluminum bodies have shrunk significantly since the previous model—the 13-incher is 23 percent smaller and weighs three pounds—but the screen and keyboard stay the same size. Pricing starts at $1,799. They have the latest generation of chips inside, Force Touch trackpads, and huge SSDs. But also...

The function keys are gone. In the place of the keyboard's top row is a thin touchscreen display Apple calls the Touch Bar. It has the controls for brightness and media playback, but it's also *a touchscreen*, so users and developers can set it up however they want. All the big apps (Photoshop, Pages, Safari, Photos, Terminal) will have custom keys that swap in to make shortcuts and common controls easier to access. And yes, it works as an emoji keyboard too.

"Baloney," you say. "I want the benefits of a new MacBook Pro but also I want a computer with real function keys and I don't want to pay extra money for that Touch Bar which I also do not want!" Well guess what, Luddite, Apple has one of those as well. There’s [a 13-inch version](http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro) of the new MacBook Pro that’s spec’d a little lower but has traditional keyboard with function keys intact. It's $1,499 and it is available today. Oh and it's so, so tiny—that photo to the right shows the new 13-inch MacBook Pro back-to-back with the seemingly massive 13-inch MacBook Air.

One of the most significant developments in this new Touch Bar era is that Touch ID is now available on MacBooks Pros. Sure, there have been fingerprint readers on laptops before, but now your Mac gets fingerprint-based Apple Pay transactions on the web and in apps, and the benefits of fingerprint-based fast user switching.