Today Apple announced the release of a new 16 inch MacBook Pro. The new laptop has a better (and slightly bigger) screen, better video card, and much higher top-end specs (up to 8-core processor, 64 GB of memory, and 8 TB of storage). Overall, it is a substantial update.

Another smaller point that stands out to me is the improved audio system with better speakers and microphones. Marco Arment shared some sample audio recorded with the new microphone system, and while it isn't good enough for podcasting, it is going to make conference calls and speech to text dictation much better.

But the real story is that Apple has abandoned the much-maligned butterfly keyboard. Lately, on the Mac Power Users, it seems like every guest with a laptop made in the last few years has a war story about failed or sticky keys and replaced keyboards. In my mind, it is the most embarrassing hardware failure out of Apple in a long time. Keyboards just need to work. This new machine uses what Apple calls the new Magic Keyboard. You may recognize the name because that is what they call the keyboard that ships with iMacs. I use a wireless Magic Keyboard every day, and I'm very much a fan. If this new laptop keyboard (which uses more reliable scissor switches) is anything like the Magic Keyboard for my iMac, laptop owners will be happy. The only question now is how soon they can get this new keyboard all the way down the laptop line.