Apple updates MacBook Pro, announces Mac Pro pricing

Today’s Apple announcement isn’t all iPads and Minis and whatnot, with news on the computer side of things, but it wasn’t all positive depending on where you reside.

There were two other Apple announcements that might have crept by if you were only interested in seeing the big touch-friendly news today, with news of an updated MacBook Pro coming to shelves everywhere, and finally a release date and price for Apple’s reinvention of the Mac Pro desktop tower.

We’ll start with the MacBook Pro first, because that laptop is more likely to be picked up by anyone, not just the creative types that will desire the high-end goods offered by the desktop Mac being offered by Apple.

Apple’s well-regarded MacBook Pro with Retina range is being pushed into the next-gen this week, with news that the chips inside these have been updated to the latest Intel processors, with Haswell inside.

These changes will likely provide the new MacBook Pro with even better battery life, stronger graphics, and a touch more performance, with the changes affecting both the 13 and 15 inch MBP models, and even arriving in stores, well, now.

“We’ve made the world’s best pro notebook even better by adding more performance and even longer battery life,” said Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.

The base model 13 will come with a dual-core Intel Core i5 clocked at 2.4GHz, 128GB storage, 4GB RAM, and an RRP of $1599, while the 15 inch starts at $2499 and arrives with a quad-core 2GHz i7 chip, 8GB RAM, and 256GB storage. All of these are upgradeable at the store, supporting as much as 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, and all fitting in a body that measures 1.8cm thick.

But the newly updated notebooks weren’t the only computer Apple was announcing, with a release date and price finally bestowed on the unique Mac Pro that Apple first revealed back in June.

The machine, which practically reinvents Apple’s left alone desktop tower for creative and video professionals, will sport up to 12 cores thanks to Intel Xeon chips, workstation graphics, six Thunderbolt ports, and high-speed PCIe flash storage.

It’s also a look back at when Apple used to come up with some truly funky designs for its computers, and will be housed in a design that is unlike any other computer out there, sitting around a thermal core with air fans on either side to help make the machine cool, fast, and quiet.

But it will also come with something Australian customers might not be terribly enthused with, and that’s a far higher price than expected.

In America, the price of the Mac Pro will start at $2999, and while that doesn’t factor in US state tax, still works out to be very different from the Australian starting price of $3999.

The Aussie dollar has been pretty good lately, and at the current value, we’d expect the price to be closer to $3500 Australian, and not the four grand mark.

We’ve asked Apple for a comment on this difference, and hopefully, we’ll hear something soon, otherwise the new Mac Pro will be available in stores and online in December.