Specs at a glance: 15-inch 2015 Apple Retina MacBook Pro Screen 2880×1800 at 15.4" (220 PPI) OS OS X 10.10.3 "Yosemite" CPU 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4870HQ (Turbo up to 3.7GHz) RAM 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L (non-upgradeable) GPU Intel Iris Pro 5200 (integrated), AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 HDD 512GB solid-state drive Networking 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (up to 1.3Gbps), Bluetooth 4.0 Ports 2x USB 3.0, 2x Thunderbolt 2, card reader, HDMI, headphones Size 14.13" × 9.73" × 0.71" (358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm) Weight 4.49 lbs (2.04 kg) Battery 99.5 WHr Warranty 1 year Starting price $1,999.99 Price as reviewed $2,499.99 Other perks Webcam, backlit keyboard, dual integrated mics, Force Touch trackpad

Apple released a new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro last month, but it’s not the update we were expecting.

When the company held off refreshing the 15-inch model alongside the 13-inch Pro and both MacBook Airs earlier this year, we assumed it was waiting for the oft-delayed quad-core Broadwell processors from Intel. Those were just announced and should begin showing up at retail within the next 30 to 60 days. Assuming they follow the same pattern as the dual-core Broadwell parts, those chips would have provided small CPU and battery life boosts and larger increases to graphics performance.

Instead, Apple released the new MacBook Pros with the exact same chips they’ve been using for almost two years now, quad-core Haswell chips with Intel’s Iris Pro 5200 GPU. It’s not clear why this happened—given the timing I’d guess Apple knows something we don’t about how well Intel’s quad-core parts are ramping up—but whatever the reason, the new model is neither as significant nor as interesting as it might have been.

The new MacBook Pros do include a handful of other upgrades, though. A different dedicated GPU in the high-end model, a marginally larger battery, and faster PCI Express-based storage are all welcome improvements. Apple sent us the high-end $2,499 model for review so we could at least test out all of those tweaks, but if you were hoping for something significantly better than the 2013 and 2014 models, you’ll come away disappointed.

Look and feel, 4K and 5K, and the Force Touch trackpad

Nothing about the design of the new MacBook Pro is a surprise. This is the same unibody aluminum chassis Apple has been using for the 15-inch model since the Retina model was introduced back in 2012.

If you’re upgrading from an older 15-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, this laptop will still seem relatively thin and light. Those models weighed 5.6 pounds where the Retina version weighs 4.49 pounds; they were 0.95 inches thick where the Retina model is 0.71 inches thick.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Of course, compared to any other product in the modern MacBook family, the 15-inch version is chunky. The 13-inch Pro only weighs 3.48 pounds, the 13-inch Air weighs 2.96 pounds, and the MacBook weighs 2.06 pounds. The 15-inch model uses the extra space well—it’s drastically more powerful than the other MacBooks even though none of its year-to-year updates since 2012 have been very impressive.

The display is the same 15.4-inch 2880×1800 display Apple has used in all the Retina MacBook Pros, and it still looks great—it's nice and sharp and has good-looking colors and great viewing angles. Out of the box, it's set to look like a 1440×900 screen, but you can set it to look like a 1680×1050 or 1920×1200 screen, too. When you're just using the internal display, the OS X UI and all its animations and transitions run fairly smoothly on the GPU in either of those scaled resolution modes even if you have more than a dozen windows open (we tested with Mission Control, which is one of the more intense animations in the OS once you're running a bunch of apps). It gets smoother when the system switches over to the dedicated GPU, though, assuming you spent the extra cash on the AMD Radeon-equipped model.

Since it's got relatively powerful Intel and AMD GPUs and DisplayPort 1.2 (thanks to Thunderbolt 2), the Pro also continues to be able to support external 4K displays—it can do 4K at 60Hz over DisplayPort or 4K at 24Hz over the HDMI 1.4 port. In the Radeon model with switchable graphics, hooking up an external display always causes the laptop to kick over to the dedicated GPU, which keeps animations and transitions nice and smooth if you're pushing an external 4K display and the built-in screen at its native resolution. Things get choppier if you use a higher scaling mode on either or both displays, though it remains more than usable.

The Radeon version of this new MacBook Pro is also one of the few Macs that can drive an external 5K display at 60Hz, though you'll need two DisplayPort cables to do it (the entry-level Iris Pro model can't). 60Hz 5K over a single cable will need to wait for DisplayPort 1.3, which provides the necessary bandwidth for driving these even-higher-resolution panels, though the newly announced Thunderbolt 3 is apparently able to do it independently of DisplayPort.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

The 15-inch Pro has exactly the same port layout as the 13-inch Pro: an SD card reader, HDMI 1.4 port, and USB 3.0 port on the right side, and a MagSafe 2 connector, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, another USB 3.0 port, and a headphone jack on the left side. It would be nice if Apple could try to fit a few more USB ports on this thing since it’s so much larger than the 13-inch model, but it’s still a fine selection of ports for a laptop.

The sole physical change is the switch from the standard multitouch trackpad to the clickless Force Touch trackpad, which we’ve talked about several times at this point. Force Touch trackpads use strain gauges to provide pressure sensitivity. Electromagnets vibrate against a metal rail to provide haptic feedback that approximates a “click.”

Going to the Trackpad preference pane lets you configure the amount of haptic feedback—at the “firm” feedback setting, the Force Touch trackpad comes the closest to recreating the feeling of the regular trackpad that’s in the MacBook Airs or the older Pros. It’s not quite the same, but it’s close enough.

Playing with the new Force Touch trackpad. Video edited by Jennifer Hahn.

While the Force Touch trackpad was first introduced in the new MacBook, where space is at a premium, its inclusion in the Pros seems like an effort to get developers to use the new Force Touch and pressure sensitivity APIs. Force Touch trackpads are now in three MacBooks, and the Apple Watch uses Force Touch as a primary input mechanism. Expect to see the feature proliferate across the rest of Apple’s lineup over the next year or so. This is the new normal.