Apple’s new MacBook Pros are its best-selling models yet despite price hike

There has been plenty of flak fired at Apple over the freshly revealed MacBook Pros, but this hasn’t stopped them selling, with the firm’s marketing guru coming out and stating that these models are the company’s fastest selling ever.

Yes, despite a good deal of criticism – much of which has focused around the price of the new models, and also the potential usefulness of the Touch Bar, as well as other issues like the removal of the SD card slot – Phil Schiller told The Independent that Apple has currently taken more orders online for the new Pros than any other previous MacBook Pro generation.

Early interest, then, is strong according to Apple’s own internal figures, and while Schiller said he was rather surprised at some of the negative reaction against the laptops, he noted that it was par for the course for a new Apple product to receive “its share of early criticism and debate – and that’s cool.”

He also partly attributed some of the heat Apple has taken to the passion of its fans, who are always likely to have a strong opinion when it comes to the direction the company has taken.

Best laptop ever made

But Schiller told The Independent in no uncertain terms that this is one sterling laptop, and indeed the best one ever seen. He noted: “We know we made good decisions about what to build into the new MacBook Pro and that the result is the best notebook ever made, but it might not be right for everyone on day one.”

Certainly, there now seems to be a bit more excitement about the possibilities around the Touch Bar than there was at the press launch last week, which mostly focused on the OLED strip and various demonstrations of how it could be used for a diverse range of purposes including DJ’ing, for example.

Currently, there is a four to five week wait for the kick-off of shipping of the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar across all models on Apple’s online store. The base 13-inch model without the Touch Bar is the only laptop currently on sale as opposed to pre-order.

You’ll need to steel your wallet (or perhaps steal someone else’s) for any purchase, though – for a Touch Bar version, you’re looking at paying $1,799 (£1,749, AU$2,699) for the base 13-inch model, and prices only go up from there. (Here in the UK, Brexit has also negatively impacted prices).

There is, however, hope that we’ll see a meaningful price cut next year, with a refresh which is already rumored to pep things up on the performance front with either Coffee Lake or Cannonlake processors.

Via: MacRumors

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).