Apple launches OSX Mavericks, Macbook Pro and Mac Pro

The iPad Air wasn’t the only thing released by Apple today they’ve also released OSX Mavericks and two new incarnations of the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro ranges. So why should you upgrade? Well, at least for Mavericks – its free.  The new operating system was made available today to Apple customers through the app store. 

By Eryk Bagshaw

Mavericks

The iPad Air wasn’t the only thing released by Apple today they’ve also released OSX Mavericks and two new incarnations of the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro ranges.

So why should you upgrade?

Well, at least for Mavericks – its free.  The new operating system was made available today to Apple customers through the app store. 

‘Today we announce a new era for the Mavericks because today we are announcing Mavericks is free,’ said senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, ‘free is good.’

The new operating system, named after the famous Californian surf break replicates the style of iOS7.

Skeumorphism (making app’s look and feel like real life) is out.

No more is the faux leather bound calendars app or the yellow pages of notes.

It’s not only a design change but a functionality change – Safari and Finder have had a big make over.

The new version of Safari includes Shared Links, which helps you find what’s new on the web by consolidating links shared by people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s also been improved with a new sidebar that makes better use of your reading list and accessibility to top sites.

Finder now includes tabs which help unclutter your desktop by consolidating multiple Finder windows into a single window.

Calendar’s been streamlined, now it estimates travel time between appointments, and provides a map with weather forecast.

The new OSX also includes enhanced multi-display support, which makes using multiple displays easier with no configuration required.

Pricing  – Free!

Available from the App Store Today

Macbook Pro

Simultaneous to the release of Mavericks, Apple has brought out its new Macbook Pro with a retina display and fourth generation Intel Core processors boasting 2.3 GHz of power with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz.

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

The longer battery life is a key selling point of the new notebook, delivering up to 9 hours of continuous use, a 2 hour improvement on the previous generation.

The MacBook Pro features PCIe-based flash storage with up to 60% faster read speeds than the previous generation.

802.11ac Wi-Fi is integrated with the notebook and delivers wireless performance that is up to three times faster when connected to an 802.11ac base station and Dual Thunderbolt 2 ports deliver up to 20Gbps of bandwidth to each external device.

Pricing

Basic Models

13’ – $1,599

15’ – $2,499

Available from Today

Mac Pro

For those in need of a serious workstation – this is the top of the line from Apple.

The Mac Pro features Intel Xeon processors with up to 12 cores, dual workstation-class GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage and ECC memory

“The new Mac Pro is our vision for the future of the pro desktop, everything about it has been reimagined and there has never been anything like it,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

The Mac Pro is architected around a unified thermal core that allows the system to efficiently share thermal capacity across all the processors.

 Mac Pro is designed to tackle demanding workflows. Featuring Intel Xeon processors running at Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz that deliver double the floating point performance of the previous generation Mac Pro. Two workstation-class AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 12GB of video memory provide up to seven teraflops of compute power and up to eight times the graphics performance of the previous generation Mac Pro

The new Mac Pro features PCIe-based flash storage that delivers sequential read speeds up to 1.2GBps and is up to 10 times faster than conventional desktop hard drives. ECC DDR3 running at 1866 MHz, with a four-channel memory controller, gives the new Mac Pro up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth, twice that of the previous generation Mac Pro. That means you can edit full-resolution 4K video streams and play them in real time.

Pricing

 Basic Model – $3,999 – Available from December