The

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

-based MacBook Pro is a discontinued line of

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

notebook A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking. History ...

computers sold by Apple Inc. from 2006 to 2021. It was the higher-end model of the MacBook family, sitting above the consumer-focused

MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of ultrabook computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. It consists of a full-size keyboard, a machined aluminum case, and, in the more modern versions, a thin light structure. The Air was originally positi ...

, and was sold with 13-inch to 17-inch screens. The aluminum MacBook Pro used the design of the

PowerBook G4 The PowerBook G4 is a series of notebook computers manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple Computer between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line of notebooks. The PowerBook G4 runs on the RISC-based PowerPC G4 processor, designed by th ...

, but replaced the

PowerPC G4 PowerPC G4 is a designation formerly used by Apple and Eyetech to describe a ''fourth generation'' of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various (though closely related) processor models from Freescale, a former part ...

chips with

Intel Core Intel Core is a line of streamlined midrange consumer, workstation and enthusiast computer central processing units (CPUs) marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors displaced the existing mid- to high-end Pentium processors at the time ...

processors A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

, added a

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or periphera ...

, and introduced the

MagSafe MagSafe is a series of proprietary magnetically attached power connectors developed by Apple Inc. for Mac laptops. MagSafe was introduced on January 10, 2006, in conjunction with the MacBook Pro, the first Intel-based Mac laptop, at the M ...

power connector. The 15-inch model was introduced in January 2006; the 17-inch model in April. Later revisions added

Intel Core 2 Intel Core 2 is the processor family encompassing a range of Intel's consumer 64-bit x86-64 single-, dual-, and quad-core microprocessors based on the Core microarchitecture. The single- and dual-core models are single- die, whereas the quad-co ...

Duo processors and LED-backlit displays. The unibody model debuted in October 2008 in 13- and 15-inch variants, with a 17-inch variant added in January 2009. Called the "unibody" model because its case was machined from a single piece of aluminum, it had a thinner flush display, a redesigned trackpad whose entire surface consisted of a single clickable button, and a redesigned keyboard. Updates brought

Intel Core i5 The following is a list of Intel Core i5 brand microprocessors. Introduced in 2009, the Core i5 line of microprocessors are intended to be used by mainstream users. Desktop processors Nehalem microarchitecture (1st generation) "Lynnf ...

and i7 processors and introduced Intel's

Thunderbolt A thunderbolt or lightning bolt is a symbolic representation of lightning when accompanied by a loud thunderclap. In Indo-European mythology, the thunderbolt was identified with the Proto-Indo-European mythology#Sky Father, 'Sky Father'; this ...

. The retina MacBook Pro was released in 2012: the 15-inch in June 2012, a 13-inch model in October. It is thinner than its predecessor, made solid-state storage (SSD) standard, added

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controll ...

, and included a high-resolution Retina display. It eliminated

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

and

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony a ...

ports and the optical drive. The Touch Bar MacBook Pro, released in October 2016, adopted

USB-C USB-C (properly known as USB Type-C) is a 24-pin USB connector system with a rotationally symmetrical connector. The designation C refers only to the connector's physical configuration or form factor and should not be confused with the conne ...

for all data ports and power and included a shallower "butterfly"-mechanism keyboard. On all but the base model, the function keys were replaced with a touchscreen strip called the Touch Bar with a

Touch ID Touch ID is an electronic fingerprint recognition feature designed and released by Apple Inc. that allows users to unlock devices, make purchases in the various Apple digital media stores (iTunes Store, App Store, and Apple Books Store), and ...

sensor integrated into the power button. A November 2019 revision to the Touch Bar MacBook Pro introduced the Magic Keyboard, which uses a scissor-switch mechanism. The initial 16-inch model with a screen set in narrower bezels was followed by a 13-inch model in May 2020. The Intel-based MacBook Pros was succeeded by Apple silicon MacBook Pros beginning in 2020 as part of the Mac transition to Apple silicon. On November 10, 2020, Apple discontinued the two-port 13-inch model following the release of a new model based on the

Apple M1 Apple M1 is a series of ARM architecture, ARM-based system-on-a-chip, systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) Apple silicon, designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac (computer), Mac desktop compu ...

. The 16-inch and four-port 13-inch models were discontinued on October 18, 2021, following the release of 14-inch and 16-inch models based on the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

Aluminum (2007–2008)

The original 15-inch MacBook Pro was announced on January 10, 2006, by

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

at the Macworld Conference & Expo. The 17-inch model was unveiled on April 24, 2006. The first design was largely a carryover from the PowerBook G4, but uses

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

s instead of

chips. The 15-inch MacBook Pro weighs the same as the 15-inch aluminum PowerBook G4, but is deeper, wider, and thinner. Other changes from the PowerBook include a built-in

iSight iSight is a brand name used by Apple Inc. to refer to cameras on various devices. The name was originally used for the external iSight webcam, which retailed for US$149, connected to a computer via a FireWire cable, and came with a set of mou ...

and the inclusion of

, a magnetic power connector designed to detach easily when yanked. These features were later brought over to the MacBook. The optical drive was shrunk to fit into the slimmer MacBook Pro; it runs slower than the optical drive in the PowerBook G4 and cannot write to dual-layer DVDs. Both the original 15- and 17-inch model MacBook Pro computers come with ExpressCard/34 slots, which replace the

PC Card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and devel ...

slots found in the

. Initial aluminum 15-inch models retains the two USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire 400 port but drops the FireWire 800, until it was readded in a later revision, the 17-inch models have an additional USB 2.0 port, as well as the FireWire 800 port missing from the initial 15-inch models. All models now included 802.11a/b/g. Later models include support for the draft 2.0 specification of 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1.

Updates

Apple refreshed the entire MacBook Pro line on October 24, 2006, to include

Duo processors which were the first 64-Bit processors in the MacBook Pro. Memory capacity was doubled for each model, up to 2 GB for the high-end 15- and 17-inch models. FireWire 800 was added to the 15-inch models and hard drive capacity was also increased. The MacBook Pro line received a second update on June 5, 2007, with new

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

Geforce GeForce is a brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, ...

8600M GT video cards and faster processor options. LED backlighting was added to the 15-inch model's screen, and its weight was reduced from to . Furthermore, the speed of the

front-side bus A front-side bus (FSB) is a computer communication interface (bus) that was often used in Intel-chip-based computers duri