It's goodbye to Apple's 13in MacBook Pro - and the infamous Touch Bar

Home / News / It’s goodbye to Apple’s 13in MacBook Pro – and the infamous Touch Bar

With the M3-based upgrades to the 14 and 16in MacBook Pro laptops, Apple has also – finally – taken the opportunity to put the 13in MacBook Pro out of its misery.

And with it, the infamous Touch Bar has also gone end-of-life. The Touch Bar was good in theory – a customisable display that could show context-sensitive functions in place of physical function keys. But using it felt unnatural and superfluous.

Apple started to transition its lineup to Apple Silicon chips in November 2020 with old case designs in the form of MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini (later upgraded to M2). Then there was a 24-inch iMac in 2021 (which has only just been upgraded to M3).

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At the time, we thought the 13in MacBook Pro was a bit of an outlier, given that we were expecting the advent of a 14in MacBook Pro. This debuted in 2021 alongside a new 16in, both having a slew of ports after criticism the previous generation was too minimal in this department as well as a notched display and refrreshed keyboards.

We thought that the 13in wouldn’t make it to M2, largely since the M1 MacBook Air was such great value in comparison, with the Pro only offering a fan for higher workloads and more ports.

But we were wrong there since there was a 13in MacBook Pro M2 in June 2022 alongside the (again a better proposition new-generation 13in MacBook Air M2 (joined by a 15in version this year).

Otherwise, though, the 13in MacBook Pro M2 was unchanged from the previous-gen model. That means it remained the only Mac in the line-up with the TouchBar – the M1 Pro and M1 Max 14 and 16in MacBook Pro ditched it on debut. Finally, then, it’s gone from the lineup. That gap isn’t really a gap at all, it’s been filled by the MacBook Air M2. And presumably, there will be a MacBook Air M3 next year.

The 13in model originally launched in 2009 alongside a refreshed 15 and 17in models. The 17in was discontinued in 2012.

Apple MacBook Air 15in vs MacBook Air 13in: what’s the difference?

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website. Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.