Well, pour one out for another piece of the Jony Ive era.
On Monday night, Apple hosted its "Scary Fast" event where the company unveiled the entire M3 chip family, the new MacBook Pro, and the new iMac. While the biggest story of the night was definitely about the chips that powered all of the computers rather than the computers themselves, there was one interesting thing that Apple did with the MacBook Pro lineup.
Actually, it had more to do with what the company has removed from the lineup instead of what it added. At the event, Apple showed off the next generation of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max processors. While the internals of the MacBook Pro got a bit of an update, the outside of the laptop generally remained unchanged except for the new Space Black color option.
But wait, Apple. What about an update to the weirdest remaining laptop in the entire lineup — the 13-inch MacBook Pro? Well, there wasn't an update to give since it appears that the company has quietly discontinued the model — ending the era of the Touch Bar MacBook Pro.
The TouchBar originally debuted on the MacBook Pro back in 2016 and was supposed to be a more capable replacement for the function row. While it was cool in some scenarios, the Touch Bar became more of a nuisance than a help for many users and quickly became a controversial element of the Mac. While some enjoyed its ability to be custom, others argued that it was actually less efficient since — if the options change based on your context — you'll never remember which options are available.
That seemed to resonate with Apple as well over time since when the company debuted the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro a few years ago with the M1 processors, it removed the Touch Bar from those models. That left just the 13-inch MacBook Pro to carry the torch...until today.
RIP Touch Bar. You lived a weird life and we probably won't miss you.
