Apple rolls out the 2019 MacBook Pro

Flex your fingers, Apple MacBook fans - because it's time for the 2019 iteration of the famed notebook line that never dies.

This year the MacBook Pro brings a couple of performance and design improvements – including a new Magic Keyboard.

According to Apple senior director of Mac and iPad product marketing, Tom Boger, MacBook Pro customers want plenty of different things.

"Our pro customers tell us they want their next MacBook Pro to have a larger display, blazing-fast performance, the biggest battery possible, the best notebook keyboard ever, awesome speakers and massive amounts of storage.

If that's a seemingly long list of wants, it seems like Apple has delivered – or at least that's what Apple itself thinks.

The 2019 MacBook Pro features a 16-inch Retina Display, 8-core processors, up to 64GB of memory, 8GB of VRAM, and a new thermal design.

On top of that, there's a six-speaker sound system, longer battery life, Touch Bar, Touch ID, the Force Touch trackpad and the Apple T2 Security Chip.

One notable difference in the 2019 MacBook Pro is the ability to configure the notebook with 8TB of storage on a solid-state drive (SSD). Standard configurations include either 512GB or 1TB of storage.

 The new Magic Keyboard features a physical Escape key and an inverted-"T" arrangement for the arrow keys, along with Touch Bar and Touch ID, for a keyboard that delivers the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook. It also delivers '1mm of key travel', which essentially means that you don't have to press too hard on the keys.

There are a bunch of performance improvement in the guts of the notebook – a larger fan designs for bigger vents, a larger heat sink for improved cooling, which will be pretty much essential to deliver the latest 6- and 8-core 9th-generation processors with Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0 GHz.

As for graphics, there's AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series graphics — the first 7nm mobile discrete GPUs for pro users.

Paired with GDDR6 video memory and with an 8GB VRAM option for the first time, pro users will be able to tackle GPU-intensive tasks faster than ever, according to Apple.

Oh, and the 100Wh battery reportedly delivers up to 11 hours of wireless web browsing, or Apple TV playback.

In Boger's words, "With its brilliant 16-inch Retina display, 8-core processors, next-gen pro graphics, even better thermal design, new Magic Keyboard, six-speaker sound system, 100Wh battery, up to 8TB of storage and 64GB of fast memory, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is the world's best pro notebook.

Well, of course Boger thinks it's the world's best notebook – but doubtless, the world will be the true judges of that.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro retails for NZ$4299 on Apple's website and the Apple Store App. It will be 'coming soon to stores around the world'.