Apple
Apple finally kills the Touch Bar (and the 13-inch MacBook Pro)
Farewell, virtual function key row. Farewell, quick emoji reactions.
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Apple’s October “Scary Fast” event just happened, where the company announced the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, powered by the company’s latest M3 silicon, as well as a refreshed M3 iMac.
However, with this launch, Apple also effectively killed off the older 13-inch MacBook Pro while eliminating probably one of the most hated features after the butterfly keyboard design, the Touch Bar.
Yes, you can no longer purchase a MacBook from Apple with the Touch Bar.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro and Touch Bar are gone forever, and it’s a good thing
Apple introduced the Touch Bar to the MacBooks back in 2021, and the company even boasted the new feature, but it failed miserably.
It was a thin touch display just above the keyboard, designed to make life easier for MacBook users. But in the end, it didn’t even receive a feature update in its lifetime, and worse, many users didn’t even bother to use it.
So, it’s not surprising that Apple finally decided to kill the Touch Bar, along with the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
However, if there are still any fans of Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, the device will still remain available through Apple’s refurbished store and third-party retailers until the stocks run out.
The replacement is a cheaper model of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, with the M3 chip. It starts at $1,599, which is not cheap, but Apple has reduced it from $2,000, which was the introductory price for the previous M2 MacBook Pro.
However, this base configuration comes with 8GB of RAM, which really isn’t ideal in 2023, so you’ll be paying at least $200 more to get an acceptable configuration
The pre-orders for the 14-inch MacBook Pro have already started through Apple’s website, with the release slated for November 7.
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