Instead of a new MacBook Air, Apple gave us a Touch Bar-less MacBook Pro
The MacBook Pro sorely needed an upgrade, but so did the MacBook Air, Apple’s original ultra-thin laptop, which never ever got the Retina screen treatment. Well, it was not meant to be. At today’s “Hello World” event, Apple’s Phil Schiller essentially killed off the Air by showing its replacement: the cheapest version of the new, 13-inch MacBook Pro.
This variant does not have the new, customizable Touch Bar, but it has the same design and form factor as its more advanced brother, which makes it — as Schiller pointed out during the keynote — thinner and smaller than the 13-inch Air. In terms of specs, this 13-inch Pro starts with a 2GHz, dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, Intel Iris Graphics 540, 8GB of memory, a 256GB SSD and two Thunderbolt 3 ports (as opposed to four ports on the 13- and 15-inch Pro with the Touch Bar).
Of course, if you want something even smaller, you can get the 12-inch MacBook, which has been updated in April 2016. But it doesn’t seem like there will be a new MacBook Air anytime soon — or ever. It’s hardly unexpected. With the new MacBook and MacBook Pros getting thinner and lighter over the years, the once super-thin Air made less and less sense. Only the 13-inch variant of the Air is still available for purchase on Apple’s website at the time of writing, starting at $999. Schiller said the company will continue to offer the 13-inch variant, but not the 11-inch one. We’ll update this story when we find out more about the MacBook Air’s long-term future.
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The Touch Bar-free MacBook Pro is available for purchase now, ships immediately and starts at $1499.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
