Apple stops selling 13-inch MacBook Pro – the last one with Touch Bar
The life cycle of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, one of Apple’s most controversial laptops, has come to an end – as usual, it will continue to be sold in third-party stores for some time until the already produced copies run out (until stocks are completely depleted), and then disappear from the market forever.
Apple’s Halloween presentation tonight was expected to go off without a hitch, but it marked the final disappearance of the much-hyped Touch Bar, which was part of a major redesign of the MacBook Pro line back in 2016, when all ports except Thunderbolt and a 3.5mm audio jack were removed.
For years, this model has remained a rock star thanks to a combination of top features, high build quality, and a relatively affordable price starting at $1299. The interest in this model grew especially after the transition from Intel CPUs to M1 and then M2. And now Apple has decided not to update the 13-inch “pro” with an outdated design, but simply to remove it from the current lineup, which is generally a fairly expected step. And speaking specifically about the Touch Bar, with the discontinuation of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the last one with the Touch Bar, Apple is closing another round of rake running, similar to the rejection of the notorious Butterfly keyboard and the return to the proven Magic Keyboard with a scissor mechanism.
The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max processors are offered in the price range of $1599 to $3199 depending on the model (the top-of-the-line 16″ MacBook Pro M3 Max with 8 TB of storage and 128 GB of unified storage costs $7199). At the same time, MacBook Pro with M3 Pro or M3 Max processors is available in the new Space Black color.
