MacBook with Retina Display
The New Mac Book
This is the thinnest Mac that Apple has ever made: at its thickest point it's just 13.1mm thin (about half an inch), 24 percent thinner than the existing 11-inch MacBook Air. It's also the lightest at 2 pounds (0.9 kg).
Making the laptop this thin required complete redesigns of just about every component, including the keyboard, trackpad and battery.
The keyboard, for example, uses a new butterfly mechanism for keys. It uses a single assembly that's four times more stable than a traditional scissor mechanism, while being 40 percent thinner. Apple says the keyboard is shallower, but with a larger face for each key. The backlight has a light for each key, which is nice -- backlit keyboards sometimes blow you out in low light.
The new trackpad no longer has a top hinge to physically click down. Instead you'll be tapping on the pad, which uses four Force Touch sensors that sense a range of pressure from the lightest click to a deeper press that Apple calls Force Click.
Instead of the mechanical click of past trackpads, you'll just get the feel of a click through haptic feedback. The lack of downward motion allowed Apple to shave space off the design. This seems to make the capacitive glass surface behave more like a touchscreen, too, expanding what the trackpad can be used for.
