New MacBook Line Now in Malaysia; MacBook Pro Retails from RM5,999

Announced just moments ago at WWDC 2017, Apple’s updated range of MacBook laptops are now in Malaysia. Surprisingly, the 13-inch MacBook Air retain its original price tags, but the MacBook Pro and 12-inch MacBook laptops see quite a bit of a price hike – as much as RM600 price increase, in fact.

Despite shipping with faster Kaby Lake-based processors and SSDs, the 12-inch MacBook still goes for RM5,499 and RM6,699 for the 256GB and 512GB models respectively. Update: Apple’s Malaysian online store just updated the 12-inch MacBook’s product listing; they now retail at RM500 more.

The 13-inch MacBook Air, on the other hand, retains its RM4,199 and RM4,999 price tags for the 128GB and 258GB variants respectively. However, the Air still ships with Broadwell CPUs, albeit slightly faster ones.

Things get a lot more interesting with the new MacBook Pro laptops, which come with faster CPUs and discrete GPUs (for the 15-inch models) now. The most affordable 13-inch MacBook Pro now retails at only RM5,999, but it comes with a small 128GB storage. In order to get double the storage, consumers will have to fork out a whopping RM6,899 – that’s RM600 more than the previous generation’s equivalent model.

A tier up is the Touch Bar-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro, which goes for RM7,999 and RM8,899 for the 256GB and 512GB models respectively. For the sake of comparison, last year’s equivalent models retail at RM400 and RM500 less.

The same applies with the more powerful 15-inch MacBook Pro as well: the 256GB variant with a Radeon Pro 555 GPU now goes for RM10,799 (RM600 more), while the highest-end 512GB model with a Radeon Pro 560 GPU is priced at RM12,499 (RM500 increase).

Although the 13-inch MacBook Pro is now technically “more affordable” than last year’s model, it also comes with only half the storage capacity; we imagine 128GB of storage will not be enough for most consumers. Nonetheless, there’s a good chance last year’s MacBooks will be discounted soon, seeing how their respective updated models are now in Malaysia.