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The latest version of Mac Book Pro announces the inclusion of Touch ID and Touch Bar power button. It is important to have a look around at all the features to decide the necessity of the up gradation.

Touch Bar

It is a narrow piece that replaces all the function keys with a multi-touch application specific gestures. It supports a 67 percent  brighter  retina display and more contrast ratio It also increases the color gamut by 25 percent. The resolution , 2,560-by-1600, is, however, same as the last MacBook Pro.

Structure of Touch Bar

It basically is split into three sections. The leftmost area is the system button used for universal controls like "done " and "cancel" ,a substitute of standard escape button. The button at the right end  offers the brightness and volume control.

 The middle wide area is the app region. The bar can adapt to the currently using software. If browsing in Safari the bar shows the buttons for favorite websites. In photos one can use it to straighten the crooked photos.

Touch ID Power Button

The Touch ID power button is a next generation sensor and supported by T1 chip and enclosed with sapphire crystal.  It can enroll up to five fingerprints and is  used to switch between different accounts . However, only three can access direct switch. The rest two have to follow the usual username and password scheme.  It also offers to securely pay for goods online.

Other Distinctions

Though Apple claims the touch bar and touch ID to be enough for upgradations there are other features that can cut an argument. The low-end Pro uses a 15 W Core with Intel Iris 540 GPU,the high-end model uses a 28 W Core with Intel 550 GPU. The high-end therefore can run faster and throttle less frequently.

However, the low end can consume less power. Moreover, it has a larger battery ,54.5 WHr as compared to 49.2 WHr of high end .So the user can choose between performance and longevity of battery according to their requirement.

Design and Build

The new 13 inch Mac Book Pro is 14.9 mm thick and 17 percent thinner. As a result, it  has 23 percent less volume. Similarly, the 15-inch version is 14 percent thinner and hence 20 percent less volume.

The Mac Book Pro with no touch bar and touch ID has two USB-C ports, a 256GB SSD storage and dual-core Intel i5 processor with a clock speed of 2.0 GHZ. The high-level version adds up the touch bar, two additional USB-C ports, touch power ID and dual-core Intel i5 processor with a clock speed of 2.0 GHZ.  The low end has two integrated mics while it provides three for the high end one.

Similarities

The screens are 2250x1600 and 227 PPI for both the devices. They both drive one 5K screen over a single cable. If two cables are present, they can drive only 4K screens .They use up to four lanes of PCI Express . The slight variation is that the high end is connected to 3.0 bandwidth  while the low one to 2.0 bandwidth.

Should You Go For It?

The high end charges an extra 600 dollars for the touch bar, touch power ID, four extra thunder bolt ports and few other features. So the user needs to decide whether the added features are worth the increased price.