The First MacBook Pro — The First Mac Notebook on Intel

The first MacBook Pro was announced at Macworld San Francisco on 10 January 2006. Pre-orders opened on Apple's online store the same day, and Apple said it would be available in February. On 14 February Apple announced it was shipping: the $2,499 model that week and the $1,999 model the following week. In Japan it shipped from late February, a little behind the US.

It cost $1,999 and $2,499 in the US, and 249,800 and 309,800 yen including tax in Japan. The MacBook Pro replaced the PowerBook G4 and was the first Mac notebook with an Intel processor. On the same day Apple also announced an Intel-based iMac.

The dates

As announced and as shipped

The processors Apple announced in January were raised before shipping. On 14 February Apple said every model would ship with a faster Intel Core Duo than announced, at no extra cost.

In February a 2.16 GHz processor was also added as a build-to-order option. The case was aluminium, one inch thin and 5.6 pounds by Apple's figures.

"Up to four times" and Rosetta

Apple claimed the MacBook Pro was up to four times faster than the PowerBook G4 it replaced, on industry-standard benchmarks it ran itself. In the press release, Steve Jobs said: "MacBook Pro delivers dual-processor desktop performance in a thin, sleek notebook."

Changing processor families means apps built for PowerPC do not run as they are. The MacBook Pro's Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger included Rosetta, a translation technology that ran most PowerPC applications. Apple's own apps such as iLife '06 came as Universal applications that ran natively on Intel. By 14 February Apple counted more than 700 Universal applications for Intel Macs. The Rosetta name returned in 2020, as Rosetta 2, for the move to Apple silicon (see Apple M1 and ARM vs x86).

MagSafe and the other new parts

The MacBook Pro debuted MagSafe, a power connector held on by magnets. When the cord is pulled it comes away from the machine, which, Apple explained, keeps the notebook from being dragged off a desk if someone trips over the cable. It also had a built-in iSight camera for video calls, and Front Row with the Apple Remote for controlling media from across the room. Apple said the display was 67 percent brighter.

Later generations

The main milestones after the first model:

The butterfly-mechanism keyboard used in the thinner designs from 2016 was not well liked. On 22 June 2018 Apple launched a keyboard service program offering free repairs for keys that repeat unexpectedly, fail to appear, or feel sticky. According to Macworld, the covered models included the 2016 and 2017 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro. Apple said only "a small percentage" of keyboards were affected and gave no numbers. With the 16-inch of 2019 it switched to a Magic Keyboard with a scissor mechanism and 1 mm of travel.

The 2021 14-inch and 16-inch models partly reversed the direction taken in 2016. A row of physical keys took the Touch Bar's place, MagSafe came back as MagSafe 3, and the machines also had an HDMI port and an SDXC card slot.

Where it sits

The first MacBook Pro was one of the first machines to embody Apple's move to Intel, and it started the line of Intel Mac notebooks that lasted until Apple silicon arrived in 2020. The MagSafe name it introduced would be used again in 2020 for the magnetic charging and accessories of the iPhone 12. For the thin-and-light line see MacBook Air; for other hardware milestones, the hardware timeline. The companies are on Apple and Intel.