Following Monday’s launch of the M3-powered MacBook Pros, Apple discontinued the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It was the last MacBook in the company’s lineup with a Touch Bar, a thin, customizable OLED strip at the top of the keyboard that replaced the usual row of function keys.
A cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 chip replaces the older Touch Bar model.
The MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar was a technological marvel in its day. It brought the magic of multi-touch to macOS and, with its stand-alone T1 chipset, it put ARM-based Apple Silicon inside the MacBook when the M1 chip was still just a twinkle in Cupertino’s eye.
There’s no doubt it was a clever piece of engineering, but it proved unpopular with pro users. Many missed the tactile feedback of the traditional Escape key and function keys.
Apple rejigged things last year, shrinking the Touch Bar to make room for a physical escape key, but it was too little too late. Many will be glad to see the Touch Bar go, but I’m gonna miss that little sliver of multi-touch magic at the top of my keyboard.
Apple will finally ditch the MacBook Pro’s controversial Touch Bar and replace it with a row of full-size function keys when it unveils its big refresh later today, according to a new report based on leaked schematics for the new device.
Apple first brought the Touch Bar to MacBook Pro in 2016, and despite it being a neat idea, it never really took off among power users or app developers. It seems most MacBook Pro owners try their best to ignore its existence.
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If you’ve grown to love your MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar and all the tools and shortcuts it provides, you likely miss it when you have your machine hooked up to an external display. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Here’s how to bring the Touch Bar to any screen so that you can continue to use it even when your MacBook Pro is closed.
Whatever your opinion may be on the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, there’s no denying it comes in handy from time to time. Except when it freezes — which can be a common occurrence — and then it’s no use at all.
You might reboot your MacBook Pro to get its Touch Bar working again when this happens. But there is a quicker, much less disruptive fix. Here’s how to restart your Touch Bar without rebooting your Mac.
From the sound of things, Apple is going back to the past for its next-gen MacBook Pro — and, depending on who you ask, that could be a very good thing.
The next MacBook Pro is already rumored to bring back the MagSafe charger and kill off the LED Touch Bar in favor of a row of physical keys.
Now, in a new note to clients, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says this year’s pro laptop will come with a built-in SD card reader and an HDMI port. These have been MIA since 2016, when Apple went all in on USB-C — and started ditching MacBook ports like they were going out of style.
From CES product unveilings to juicy rumors, this week suffered zero shortage of new for Apple fans. You’ll find the cream of the crop in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. As always, it’s free — and it’s ready for consumption on your iOS device of choice.
I don’t want to slow you down on your way to the week’s top news stories. But if you use Safari (and you really should), don’t miss our new series of how-tos on getting the most out of Apple’s web browser. Those Safari Pro Tips are in the mag as well.
Or you can get it all, plus our reviews of the new Apple TV+ seasons of Servant and Dickinson, in your browser at the links below.
According to reliable TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the next-gen MacBook Pro will come in 14- and 16-inch sizes, feature more ports and bring back the MagSafe charger in some form (!). And, of course, the high-end laptops will run on new Apple Silicon chips.
But the first big MacBook Pro redesign in half a decade also do away with the Touch Bar, the controversial — and never entirely successful — innovation Apple debuted back in 2016.
Some people love the Touch Bar. Others simply see no use for it, which can be frustrating now that every MacBook Pro ships with one. If you fall into that second camp, here’s how to bring back traditional function keys.
Snapping a screenshot of your MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar can be useful for so many things, and it couldn’t be easier to do. All you need is a simple keyboard shortcut … and at least a couple of fingers.
Twitter today rolled out its latest client update for macOS, adding Touch Bar and Sidecar support for the first time.
The release comes just a few months after Twitter took advantage of improvements in macOS Catalina that allowed it to port its iPad app to the desktop.
Just like anything else on your MacBook Pro, the Touch Bar can freeze and become totally unresponsive. And, just like with every other frozen process on the Mac, there’s an easy way to fix it: You just have to force the Touch Bar to restart.
Today we’ll see how to fix a frozen Touch Bar so you can keep using the MacBook Pro’s best feature.
If you have a Mac with a Touch Bar, do this right now. Hold down the Option key (⌥), and tap the volume icon in the Touch Bar. For non-Touch Bar-using readers, this is what happened: The Mac’s Sound Preferences launched instantly.
This is such a typical Mac feature that it should be obvious. But when I shared this tip with fellow Touch Bar aficionado and Cult of Mac writer Graham Bower, he was all like, “Oh!” and, “That’s pretty neat!”
So, what other tricks can be done with the Option key and the Touch Bar?
It may have nothing to do with Jony Ive leaving the company, but Apple has been adding buttons back to its devices. It’s a slow start, but hopefully it’s the beginning of a trend. The new 16-inch MacBook Pro added an Escape key, and a separate power button (you can press the Touch ID button). Plus, the recently introduced iPhone 11 battery case added a dedicated camera button.
After what seems like decades of removing useful hardware features, is Apple finally seeing the error of its ways? And, if so, what buttons would we like to see next? Let’s take a look at the current lay of the land.
The Mac’s Dark Mode isn’t bad. It’s definitely a better view when quickly checking something on your Mac late in the evening. But unless you have it set to switch automatically, toggling Dark Mode on and off is a pain. So, with a shiny new MacBook Pro in front of me, I decided to put the Touch Bar to use.
Did you know you can add your own buttons to the Touch Bar? You can, and it’s totally rad.
There’s a great Steve Jobs story that somehow seems relevant in a 2019 MacBook Pro review. You probably know it, but I’ll tell it anyway. After the iPad launch, Jobs supposedly walked into a meeting with the Mac team, carrying an iPad. He woke up the iPad, which happened instantaneously. Then he woke up a Mac, which took a while to come out of sleep. Then he asked something like, “Why doesn’t this do that?”
Today, he might take the iPad Pro, and the brand new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro, start them both editing a few images, and wait for the fans to spin up on the Mac. While it cranks up to leaf-blower levels, he’d point at the silent iPad, and make some scathing quip.
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is an incredible computer that’s let down by the red-hot Intel chips inside. Apple’s cool, fast, super-powerful A-series ARM chips can’t come to the Mac soon enough. Using this Intel machine after using an ARM-powered iPad for several years, the Mac feels like there’s something wrong with it. And yet, barely 24 hours into owning one, I absolutely love it.
The Escape key is pretty essential to the Mac. You can use it to, well, escape from the current window/view/text field. You can use it to dismiss some dialog boxes. It can even be used to force-quit an unresponsive app. And that’s before we get to the Vim text editor, which is as dependent on the Escape key as Jony Ive is on new kinds of aluminum. So why did Apple remove the physical MacBook Pro Escape key when it introduced the Touch Bar?
Apple made that move, much to the despair of some users, back in 2016. Now, in the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Escape key is back. But what if you have a perfectly good previous-gen MacBook Pro? Are you really going to spend close to $3,000 just to get your Escape key back? No, you are not. Instead, you are going to repurpose the Caps Lock key, and turn it into an Escape key.
Apple finally unleashed its long-rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro on the world this morning, and according to some lucky people who got to play with it early, it was well worth the wait.
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro pulled out plenty of surprises beyond its bigger display. Early hands-on reviews rave about the scissor keyboard, the new audio system, upgraded thermal management and of course, its beastly processing power.
Here’s what reviewers are saying about the new machine.
Apple’s newly unveiled 16-inch MacBook Pro ditches the controversial butterfly keyboard and brings back the scissor switch Magic Keyboard.
In a new interview, Apple marketing SVP Phil Schiller talked about redesigning Apple’s notebook keyboard. And whether or not the non-butterfly keyboard will make it to other Apple laptops anytime soon.
Your MacBook Pro’s pricey Touch Bar is no longer useless when you’re running Windows 10.
A third-party developer has gotten the tiny second screen to work under Microsoft’s operating system. You can use it to access the Start menu and quickly switch between the apps you have running.
iFixit just got its hands on Apple’s newest 13-inch MacBook Pro, which can only mean one thing: It’s time to take a look at what’s inside its svelte aluminum shell.
The new model ships with a Touch Bar, Touch ID, and the Apple T2 Security Chip as standard. It also boasts newer Intel chips that promise up to 83% faster multi-core performance.
But that’s not all you get for your money. There’s a bigger battery inside it, too — plus some other surprising tweaks. And not every change is a good one.
Apple has updated the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro for the back-to-school season. And they’re now more affordable.
The newest MacBook Air now ships with a True Tone display — just like its more expensive siblings. The newest 13-inch MacBook Pro is powered by faster Intel chips, while the entry-level model now offers a Touch Bar with Touch ID.
Some might see the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar as a gimmick, but Apple isn’t giving up on it yet. Its new Sidecar feature in macOS Catalina brings the same function to other compatible Macs with the help of iPad.
Maybe you’re one of the non-vocal majority that doesn’t mind the Touch Bar. Perhaps you even like it. And maybe, at the same time, you can’t see the point of Siri on the Mac.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could tailor your MacBook Pro just for you? A lovely, handy, beautiful Touch Bar, only without that dumbo Siri? Well, yes it would. Here’s how to remove Siri from the Macbook’s Touch Bar.
