Apple new coffee table book: Designed by Apple in California comes in two sizes, 13-inch at US$199 and 16-inch at $299, and both contain some 450 photographs of Apple products that look back over the years. What’s not to like? Still, these days, Apple’s self-conscious celebration of its past does open it up to some playful parody. Watch this glorious send up of the Apple book by the Late Show. All in good fun, of course.

Apple rolled out a new commercial for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar called Bulbs. The 1 minute, 37 second spot features flashes of some big (and small) inventions using exploding lightbulbs as a metaphor. In fact, MacBook Pro doesn’t appear until the final 10 seconds, accompanied by the tag line, “Introducing a tool for all the ideas to come.” We’re then shown a finger sliding back and forth on the Touch Bar to scrub through a video of another exploding lightbulb. The imagery is compelling, and seems likely to catch people’s attention, with the Apple message pounding home at the end. It’s one of my favorite spots in recent months.

Bare Feats writes: “Both with the best processor, 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB flash storage, but different GPU. Is the 15-inch with Quad-Core processor and discrete GPU really that much faster? Is it worth the extra $$$, size, and weight?” Their test results show that for “21% more, the extra $$$ buys you a bigger screen, an average of 40% faster performance running CPU intensive pro apps, and an average of 110% faster running GPU intensive pro apps.” Quad-Core and discrete graphics always wins. But if you had any doubts, check out these performance tests.