Apple Makes Best Even Better With New Retina MacBook Pros and OS X Mavericks

Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller just stepped off stage at today’s Apple event where they covered the latest version of OS X called Mavericks and introduced the brand new Retina MacBook Pros and Mac Pro.  And boy was it a doozy.

OS X Mavericks

OS X Mavericks offers improved power efficiency for all computers that run it.  For example, the latest 13” MacBook Air gets an extra hour on a charge. Additionally features such as compressed memory and improved graphics make Mavericks faster and smarter. Compressing memory can make 6GB of data fit in 4GB of RAM so you can literally do more with less.  The improved graphics technology is smarter and can allocate different amounts of RAM to your video card depending on usage.  Mavericks also implemented OpenCL giving the OS 1.8x faster graphics performance for intensive tasks like video and photo editing.

There are also several key software additions to Mavericks such as enhanced notifications so you can do things like reply to messages directly from the notification, the ability to tag things to keep track of files easier, the addition of the Maps app lets you send turn by turn directions from your Mac to your iPhone, and the new iBooks app lets customers get access to their entire iBooks library from their Mac.

One other great feature added is push notifications in Safari on Mavericks.  Safari push notifications allow websites to alert you when new content becomes available so you can easily keep up to date with news and other information.

In terms of price, Mavericks will be completely free for Mac users and is available today for download.

Retina MacBook Pros

Apple updated both the 13″ and 15″ Retina MacBook Pros with new processors, improved graphics, and a reduced price tag.

The new 13″ model has a dual core Intel Haswell CPU, Iris graphics (which are 90% faster), and offers up to 9 hours of battery life.  It also sports newer and faster PCIe-based flash memory, 802.11ac WiFi (a new, super fast WiFi standard),  and Thunderbolt 2 (which is 2x as fast as Thunderbolt 1).  In terms of price, the new price tag for the 13″ Retina MacBook Pro is $1,299.

The new 15″ model has quad core Intel Crystalwell CPU, Iris Pro graphics (you can also can get discrete graphics in the form of the Geforce GT 750M), and offers up to 8 hours of battery life.  Like the 13″ model, the 15″ has been upgraded to include PCIe-based flash memory, 802.11ac, and Thunderbolt 2.  The starting price tag for this bad boy?  $1,999.

Both of the new MacBook Pros will be available to order today.

Mac Pro

Apple also officially announced that the new Mac Pro will be available to order in December.