What should you expect? According to Marc Gurman at Bloomberg, the new MacBook Pro will get the biggest overhaul in four years, featuring an OLED touch screen strip with adaptive function keys, a Touch ID sensor, a thinner design and a potent new AMD graphics card. Although this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the touch screen strip, Bloomberg offers more details about how it could be used. The panel will alter which buttons are shown based on the application that’s open, so you might see cut and paste buttons while word processing or playback controls while using iTunes. MORE: Which MacBook Should You Buy? MacBook vs. Air vs. Pro Apple could also open the strip up to developers such as Adobe, providing shortcuts for things like photo and video editing commands. Gaming macros are another possibility, should publishers want to tap the strip as well. To power these types of resource-intensive apps, the new MacBook Pro will reportedly pack AMD’s Polaris graphics card, which is 20 percent thinner than its predecessor. Nvidia tends to rule the notebook graphics world, at least on the Windows side, but perhaps Apple is opting for AMD because it’s solution is more efficient. The Bloomberg report doesn’t mention what processor will be under the hood, but we can guess that it will be Intel’s 7th-generation Core processor (codenamed Kaby Lake). You can learn more about that chip through our sister site Tom’s Hardware. Other features should include at least one USB-C port, a wider touchpad and perhaps even multiple color options, similar to the sleek MacBook line. The MacBook Pro likely won’t be unveiled at Apple’s rumored Sept. 7 launch event for the iPhone 7, so our bet is on an early October launch, which will still give Apple plenty of time to tempt shoppers during the holidays.
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