One feature Apple did bring down from the higher-end MacBook Pro is the Touch Bar and Touch ID. Almost three years on, the Touch Bar's usefulness remains highly suspect. It's actually pretty handy when apps support it well, as Safari, Photos, notes app Bear and a few others do. But even at its best, it's just offering a different way to get things done. Whether it's truly faster or more intuitive is still up for debate. I've gotten used to having it and sometimes miss it when it's gone, and it's not like I used the function keys on my older laptops for much of anything besides adjusting screen brightness and volume. But it was nice that you could buy a MacBook Pro without it. Now if you want a modern Mac laptop sans Touch Bar, it's the Air or bust. Nothing I said above applies to Touch ID though: It's a great feature, full stop.

Performance and battery life

The other major feature that's made its way down from the more expensive MacBook Pro models is quad-core processors. The MacBook Pro I tested has a quad-core, eighth-generation Intel Core i5 clocked at 1.4GHz; Turbo Boost can kick things up to 3.9GHz under heavy loads. That's a big step forward from the dual-core, seventh-generation i5 that the entry MacBook Pro had before. And as I noted previously, it's an even more significant advantage over the MacBook Air, which uses Intel's lower-power Y-series processors. It's far easier to push those processors to the limits -- so if your needs extend beyond basics like web browsing, video, music, chat and so on, the new MacBook Pro will be a lot snappier.

While the entry MacBook Pro's processor is clocked much slower than the more expensive options (1.4GHz vs. 2.4GHz), that difference didn't slow me down in practice. Given that Apple is targeting it at college students and more general-purpose users, going with a less powerful option isn't a big surprise. Most of what I do isn't terribly intense, but we all know that modern web browsing with a dozen or more tabs can still put the hurt on an otherwise powerful computer. Pros who make their living editing photos and videos or coding large projects will probably want to spend their money on a faster MacBook Pro. But enthusiasts who like to push their computers a bit will find they have more room for that with this new Pro compared to the Air.