The Force Touch is strong with this one
Apple has received a lot of criticism over the years for describing its products as “magical”, or some variant of it, and it probably is fair to say that we should be impressed by very smart technological advances for what they are – ingenious constructions – rather than feeling the need to couch them in terms of mysticism or suggesting that the impossible has been achieved (when what has been achieved was, evidently, possible).
The only problem is that Apple, more than any other company, tends to leave you poking at one of its latest devices, shaking your head and muttering, “Witchcraft” under your breath. Which is exactly what happens with the Force Touch trackpad in the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
Now, some might say that a new trackpad isn’t much of an upgrade for a laptop. The new 13-inch Retina Pro also has an updated processor to boast of, along with improved graphics. That’s it for changes – but that’s all it needs. It was already one of Apple’s best machines, offering more than enough speed for most people along with a Retina screen for a good price.
The new processor is still an Intel dual-core CPU, but is from its newest generation of chips, which consume less power. It runs at 2.7GHz in the entry-level machine we have here, which is a small bump from the 2.6GHz it was in previous equivalent model. The graphics chip is an integrated Intel Iris GPU, again just like the previous model, though here we were expecting more improvement – Intel is still aiming to make big strides in this area.
We’ll come to what kind of performance improvements those bring later, but the Force Touch trackpad is the thing you’ll play with most at first, because it’s a fascinating thing. Old trackpads have a hinge at the back, and when you click the trackpad, you push down on the hinge. The pad physically moves. On the new trackpad, it doesn’t move – yet it feels as if it clicks beneath your fingers. There’s a small electromagnetic motor inside, and when it detects the pressure of your finger, the motor creates a click. It’s such a small thing – after all, it just replicates how things used to work – but when you know that feeling of clicking is “fake”, it leaves you smiling. Witchcraft.
While that’s all cool, it’s not exactly a useful a change in itself. But the Force Touch trackpad adds extra functionality over the old style of trackpad. You’ve still got multi-touch gestures, but it’s also now pressure sensitive, capable of registering presses of different strengths. If you click on something, then keep pressing harder (you can adjust how hard in System Preferences, pleasingly), you get a second click from the trackpad, and something different will happen – replacing the long click of old in some places, such as the Dock. In QuickTime Player, the harder you press, the faster the fast-forward option goes. In Preview, when signing your name, it can detect your drawing pressure. It’s another way of interacting, and it’s a nice addition, but we do think Apple could have implemented it better. The main issue is that, though you can make use of it in all sorts of places around OS X, it’s not always obvious what it will do. For example, “Force click” (in Apple’s parlance) on a file’s icon and it opens it in Quick Look, but Force click on the file’s name and it makes the name editable. These two things don’t share any common factor (such as a keyboard shortcut), yet you can invoke them both by moving the cursor just a few pixels on one file. There’s no mental map you can make to predict what the new interaction will do in what situation until you try it and learn it. Hardly the end of the world, but we like obviousness and consistency in interfaces as a rule.
Actually, some of Force Touch’s most impressive use is in pure feedback, such as in iMovie. When a clip snaps to a point on the timeline, for example, you get a jolt from the trackpad to indicate that it has snapped. It’s a lovely little touch, and we hope many developers will make use of it and the pressure sensitivity.
So what about those few other changes? The processor is indeed a small difference, offering an improvement of less than 10% in our Cinebench benchmarks, and even less in our real-world video encoding tests – only about 3%. Still, its performance is pretty handy for all but the highest-end tasks (thanks in part to a solid 8GB of RAM), and it offers fantastic improvement in a different area: battery life. In our intensive video streaming test, the new machine lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes, hugely surpassing the older version’s 5 hours and 8 minutes. The 13-inch MacBook Air still takes home the trophy for battery life, but this is great for the Retina MacBook Pro, since it already offered good longevity under normal use anyway.
Sadly, the new Intel graphics haven’t delivered much of a performance improvement – or, really, any noticeable change at all over the old model in our Batman: Arkham City tests. But this means the machine is still capable, if not high-end, when it comes to graphics. At 1280x800, you can play Batman at its High settings comfortably, so most newer games should run fine with the visual fidelity lowered slightly. One advantage of the new graphics, though, is that 4K displays will work at 60Hz with this machine over DisplayPort. Apple isn’t officially supporting this at the moment, but it works.
And you’ve still got the fast SSD storage (even if 128GB is rather small for a “pro” machine) – in fact, our review unit offered much better performance in this area than last year’s model, though this is likely down to variations between component suppliers. There’s also plenty of ports, including two USB 3.0 and two Thunderbolt 2 connections, and, crucially, that Retina display. It’s bright, it’s clear, it offers vibrant colors and contrast, and it will spoil you for any screen that isn’t at least as sharp.
Not be a big leap forward for the MacBook Pro but, if you’re looking at a Mac laptop now, this offers the best balance of power, features, portability and price – and it comes with that little extra touch of witchcraft. MATT BOLTON