For anyone complaining that Apple has not released any new products in the first eight months of 2014, we point you toward a series of underplayed but important updates to the Mac line of laptops and desktops.
Already this year, we've seen processor bumps and price cuts for the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air, a new lower-cost entry level 21.5-inch iMac all-in-one desktop, and now similar component upgrades and price cuts to the MacBook Pro line.
The entry-level 13-inch and 15-inch Retina models each doubled the included RAM, from 4GB to 8GB for the 13-inch, and 8GB to 16GB for the 15-inch. Both of those models also received a slightly faster CPU, with the 15-inch model reviewed here going from a 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 to a 2.2GHz Core i7, but still from the same generation of Intel Core i-series processors (newer CPUs are expected from Intel late this year).
Further, the higher-end 15-inch Retina Pro, the base model we reviewed in each of the past two years, dropped its price by $100, down to $2,499; and the lone non-Retina MacBook Pro, the positively ancient 13-inch model with an optical drive and relatively paltry 1,280x800-pixel display, also dropped its price by $100, down to $1,099.
The model we're testing here is the entry-level (to stretch the term) 15-inch Pro, which starts at $1,999 (£1,599, AU$2,499 RRP) and includes the aforementioned 2.2GHz Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. Unlike the higher-end models we've reviewed in previous years, this Pro doesn't have a discrete Nvidia graphics card, relying instead on Intel's integrated Iris Pro graphics.
