RIP Touch Bar — Apple sends the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the grave

13-inch MacBook Pro is no more

It's official — the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 has slain the 13-inch MacBook Pro, bringing an end to the Touch Bar.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro stuck around in Apple's lineup for years after anyone expected it to. The aging design and Touch Bar served as a reminder to Apple's historically bad butterfly MacBook Pro era.

That changes with Apple's Scary Fast event held on October 30. The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at a lower price with the M3 processor.

Apple chose the most obvious path available. Rumors suggested the 13-inch MacBook Pro would get some kind of redesign and continue to be sold at its entry $1,299 price point. Instead, the company ditched the outdated model entirely and brought its $2,000 14-inch MacBook Pro down to $1,499 with M3.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is truly removed from Apple's lineup too. It isn't hidden away on the website to hold some kind of awkward price point for education, it's just been buried.

Apple has commented before that the MacBook Air is its most popular MacBook, but the 13-inch MacBook Pro was the most popular pro model because of its price. People who didn't know better bought it for the pro name, not knowing its feature set was limited and any other Mac would be a better option.

Customers interested in the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 can pre-order starting October 30. Initial shipments begin the week of November 6.

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12 Comments

macxpress

said about 5 months ago

And not a moment too soon!

atonaldenim

said about 5 months ago

called it! 😊

tht

said about 5 months ago

Hmm... Jason Snell, John Gruber were thinking Apple was coming out with an all new MBP13. Their birdies were telling them something about this, and just didn't quite know what. They knew something regarding the MBP13 was up, and knew it wasn't going to be an MBP13 with M3.

MBA15 with M2/M3 would be better machine than this MBP14 with M3 imo, for most people. Imo, small niche of folks who want the miniLED, ports, and fan. I'm still mystified that a ~$1500 MBP model is primarily bought because it has the word "Pro" in its name, among enterprise customers they say. In the next 6 months, the M3 models will have advantages its advantages, but for regular web browser workflow and office app consumers, MBA15 is a better machine.

22july2013

said about 5 months ago

An external keyboard with TouchBar wouldn't hurt anyone. I'd buy it, even if it was wired, which it would probably have to be, due to the higher power draw.

anome

said about 5 months ago

The Touch Bar needed to be implemented across the line, and not just on the one model for it to really go anywhere, and given it was apparently driven by spare processing power in the T-series chips, putting it in a standalone keyboard might have been tricky, if not expensive. Then again, they've put TouchID in a standalone keyboard, so...

The one thing having a Touch Bar taught me was that I didn't use the Function Keys very often, as I never missed them. A physical Escape key, I did miss, and they at least fixed that in later models.

Of course, the one thing I really miss is the extra TB port they sacrificed for the HDMI and SD-Card slot on the current models. I mean the reason I didn't consider the 13" Apple Silicon MBP was that it only has two ports, which is just not enough.

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