Apple Discontinues its Last MacBook Pro With Touch Bar

Apple took the wraps off the first M3-based Macs yesterday, including new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros as well as an upgraded 24-inch iMac. However, the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro, which starts at $1,599, has now replaced the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar as the new base model.

As you may remember, Apple last upgraded the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar last summer with an M2 chip. This model was announced alongside the redesigned 13-inch MacBook Air, which came with the same M2 chip but with a redesigned chassis that includes a more convenient MagSafe charging port.

The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar used the old MacBook Pro design that was introduced back in 2016. That was the model with the notoriously unreliable “Butterfly” keyboard that Apple ultimately replaced in 2019. The Touch Bar, which was available on all models except the baseline 13-inch model, sat on top of the keyboard in place of the function keys.

Mac developers could optimize their apps to take advantage of the Touch Bar, and Microsoft is one of the companies that opted to do that with Office for Mac. However, with the Touch Bar being only available on a fraction of Mac models, it made little sense for most developers to spend time working on Touch Bar support. Also, it didn’t help that most MacBook Pro users actually missed having regular function keys.

The M1 and M2 MacBook Pros with Touch Bar used to offer excellent battery life (up to 20 hours), but Apple says that its new $1,599 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro pushes that number to up to 22 hours. The base M3 model also comes with a better mini-LED display with adaptive refresh rate support, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, six speakers, and a MagSafe port.

Overall, it’s a good thing to see Apple finally discontinue its last Mac model with a Touch Bar, but the company missed the mark in another area yesterday: The company is continuing to sell Mac accessories such as the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad that uses its proprietary Lightning port instead of USB-C. If you purchase the company’s new M3 24-inch iMac, you’ll get a USB-C to Lightning Cable in the box to charge the mouse and keyboard, which is really disappointing after Apple just released its first iPhones with USB-C ports last month.