The $1,499 2016 MacBook Pro is an expensive MacBook Air on the inside

You can't fault longtime die-hard Mac users for being a little frustrated with Apple. In the space of just a decade, they've watched their favorite platform go from being the center of the company's attention to a minor line item. The iPhone gets refreshed promptly and consistently every September, while some Macs sit there for one or two or three years without even being mentioned. Macs aren't even regularly refreshed with new processors from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD as they're released anymore; we could rely on that as recently as three years ago.

The new MacBook Pros—released, for the record, a year and a half after the 2015 models, which were in some cases changed very little from the 2014 and 2013 models—have been birthed into this era of frustration. As a result, the initial reaction has been harsher than it would have been if Apple refreshed the Mac with the same regularity that it managed back in 2012 or 2013.

But not everyone is a longtime Mac user, and divorced from that context what you've got in the new MacBook Pros is a lineup of very nice-looking (if not game-changing) laptops that combine a refreshed design with a healthy dose of updated technology. Today, we'll be examining the $1,499 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the version with the row of function keys in place of the ballyhooed Touch Bar. We'll be examining the other 13- and 15-inch model thoroughly when we can get them, of course, but the $1,499 version still tells us a lot about the design, the keyboard, the new Thunderbolt 3 ports, and about Apple's design priorities and the Pro's target audience.