rip touch bar — Apples cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro is killing the old 13-inch version The M2 MacBook Pro was the last gasp of 2016-era MacBook design.
Andrew Cunningham – Oct 31, 2023 12:30 am UTC Enlarge / Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro, gone but not forgotten.Apple reader comments 57 with
NEW YORKApple refreshed its MacBook Pro lineup earlier today, and there was one surprise that the rumor mill hadn’t anticipated: a new base model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with a plain-old M3 chip in it, starting at $1,599. That new 14-inch MacBook Pro is totally replacing the old 13-inch MacBook Pro in Apple’s lineup.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro still used the same basic design that Apple had been using since 2016, when Apple redesigned the MacBook Pros to make them thinner and lighter and to replace all of their ports with Thunderbolt. The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros backtracked on several of those design decisions, but the 13-inch model stayed as it was, complete with the regular notchless display and the Touch Bar.
This effectively means that the MacBook Pro is getting a price increase from $1,299 to $1,599. But the $1,599 Pro includes many features that were never included in the 13-inch Pro, including the larger high-refresh-rate ProMotion display, the contrast-boosting and bloom-reducing mini LED screen technology, the MagSafe connector, the 1080p camera, and the return of the HDMI port. Apple also now sells a 15-inch MacBook Air at that $1,299 starting point, giving people another option in between the mainstream 13-inch Air and the Pro lineup. Advertisement Further Reading13-inch MacBook Pro review: Apples M2 is a worthy follow-up to the M1
The death of the 13-inch MacBook Pro also means the death of the Touch Bar. Apple pitched the Touch Bar as the Mac’s answer to the increased popularity of touchscreens in Windows PCsby putting a dynamic, adjustable touch surface near where your fingers already were, you could (the thinking went) make it faster to interact with and cut down on arm fatigue.
In practice, this didn’t work out. Third-party developers largely ignored the Touch Bar entirely, and many users complained about the lack of a fixed, physical function row; these were widespread enough that later Touch Bar iterations made room for a physical Escape key on the left side. The Touch Bar never came to more popular devices like the MacBook Air, and by the time the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro was introduced in 2021, the idea was dead. Apple’s press release for the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro neither depicts nor mentions the Touch Bar, sweeping it under the rug despite its continued presence.
It probably doesn’t help that the Touch Bar was so closely associated with Apple’s ill-fated and breakage-prone butterfly-switch keyboard.
Apple is said to be working on touchscreen Macs, though this would run counter to over a decade of vociferous public objection to the very idea of touchscreens in computers. They may (or may not) arrive in 2025, after a tasteful mourning period for the Touch Bar’s passing. reader comments 57 with Andrew Cunningham Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars