According to MacRumors, the 2018 13” MacBook Pros with Touch Bar include four full-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports, supporting maximum data transfer speeds of up to 40Gb/s. Apple has confirmed that the new models are equipped with Intel’s eighth-generation Core i5 or Core i7 processors, both of which support up to 16 PCI Express lanes.
“All three generations of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar have always had four full-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro with function keys has only two Thunderbolt 3 ports, both full speed.”
Previous 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models could be configured with sixth- and seventh-generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors, which supported up to 12 PCI Express lanes.
This limited full speeds to the two left-side Thunderbolt 3 ports, with limited bandwidth on the other two ports. But now, users can plug higher-performance peripherals into any of the 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports on their 2018 13” MacBook Pros.
Apple refreshed its MacBook Pro line last week with 8th-generation Intel CPUs, new RAM and storage options, True Tone screens, a new T2 subprocessor for security and encryption and hands-free Siri.
