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OK, so I have an August 2020 MBP with Intel; running Sonoma. How many more OS versions will they release that it will take? And how long will security updates be provided. This one is plenty fine for me, works great.
You will probably get one more macOS update, one that will be released in 2024. I think that 2025 macOS version will drop Intel support. If I remember correctly, the last PowerPC Mac Pro was released in 2006 and the last OS X supporting it was released in 2009.
 
You will probably get one more macOS update, one that will be released in 2024. I think that 2025 macOS version will drop Intel support. If I remember correctly, the last PowerPC Mac Pro was released in 2006 and the last OS X supporting it was released in 2009.
Negative.

The last PowerPC tower was a Powermac, it wasn't called a Mac Pro (A name that still sounds silly to me). The later G5 systems were launched in the 10.4 era, and last possible os that natively supported PowerPC was 10.5.8. This means that flagship PowerPC systems got only ONE major software update before it was effectively not supported.

Now, early beta of 10.6 did support PowerPC, but official releases dropped that.

 
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The problem with the Touch Bar was always this:

You had to see it to use it.

It's what also happens with touchscreens on cars: you can't keep your eyes on the road if you want to change climate or change a song/album on the infotaiment.

Using standard F keys, you can still type on the keyboard without looking at it. The return of the Esc key in 2019-2020 proves it.

It's as simple as that. Obviously you will not have that problem with a real full touch display: because you don't need to look elsewhere to interact with the function.

That's it. Not a good idea for the majority of pro and power users.
I get your point, however it would be nice if Apple offered it as an option, particularly on the AIR'S & the 14" M3, for us that liked it and found it very useful.
BTW, the real problem, was that Apple didn't have it on all their consumer Mac's
 
The F keys are all media keys for me. I always contended the TouchBar was an upgrade over F keys, especially since they made way superior media keys, but I also never found the cost/complexity worth it. That's a lot of extra stuff for such a minor upgrade.

I don't get the hate. I don't miss the thing, but I never hated it. It was sorta cool when it was first released (except for the non-tactile esc key—good lord, what a miss—at least Apple allowed an easy option to rebind caps lock when they did that).
I'd love to know how to programme an F key to bring up emojis, instead of the 3 keys as a short cut 😏.
The Touch Bar is also great when watching film/video content
 
The F keys are all media keys for me. I always contended the TouchBar was an upgrade over F keys, especially since they made way superior media keys, but I also never found the cost/complexity worth it. That's a lot of extra stuff for such a minor upgrade.

I don't get the hate. I don't miss the thing, but I never hated it. It was sorta cool when it was first released (except for the non-tactile esc key—good lord, what a miss—at least Apple allowed an easy option to rebind caps lock when they did that).
I'd love to know how to programme an F key to bring up emojis, instead of the 3 keys as a short cut 😏.
The Touch Bar is also great when watching film/video content
 
It deserved a better steward. Can’t blame the users for something developers couldn’t reliably target, and that Apple forgot about the moment they released it.

4odomi in particular, I recognize your name and generally like your posts. Care to explain why you disagree?
 
Negative.

The last PowerPC tower was a Powermac, it wasn't called a Mac Pro (A name that still sounds silly to me). The later G5 systems were launched in the 10.4 era, and last possible os that natively supported PowerPC was 10.5.8. This means that flagship PowerPC systems got only ONE major software update before it was effectively not supported.

Now, early beta of 10.6 did support PowerPC, but official releases dropped that.

You are correct.

Does not bode well for Intel Mac machines. I still think they will get one more update but that's it.
 
For the Touch Bar to be on all Macs would mean that their external keyboards include it, so that people on a desktop [...] would get to use it.
This was, IMO, the biggest sign that the Touch Bar was not catching on. If you're using the Touch Bar on MBP but have to do everything a different way when in clamshell mode or on desktop, that sounds like no fun.
 
I couldn't agree more! I don't get it, people hate the Touch Bar but they have no problem with the ugly "notch"?!
The function keys are so antique and while they have been effectively mapped to other permanent functions (volume, screen brightness, media controls, etc) they are static. The static nature of them reminds me of a big portion of Steve Job's speech during the iPhone introudction.

And they all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application. Well, every application wants a slightly different user interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons, just for it.

And what happens if you think of a great idea six months from now? You can’t run around and add a button to these things. They’re already shipped. So what do you do? It doesn’t work because the buttons and the controls can’t change. They can’t change for each application, and they can’t change down the road if you think of another great idea you want to add to this product.
 
You are correct.

Does not bode well for Intel Mac machines. I still think they will get one more update but that's it.
Since I run older systems (not supported anymore by Apple) on the latest versions of MacOS, I am hoping for at least one more Intel release for their sake as well.

One of the best features of the Intel line, was how it was so natively backward compatible. I hated the transition away from PowerPC as it made Macs feel special, but in hindsight the change was great for those of us who hang onto machines and patch them to run newer operating systems.
 
The MacBook lineup is now more clear. The very capable MacBook Airs are the largely consumer level device yet still capable of a reasonable degree of pro work. The Pro line is now more clearly delineated with the demise of the odd-ball Pro 13. The new base Pro 14 is a better and more capable device than the discontinued 13 and the 14 isn’t stuck in the middle of the Air line.

If you opted for more storage on the old 13 you’d be at near the same price as the new 14 with 512 SSD standard. In addition you have a better processor as well as a bigger and better display. Thats a win. It also makes entry into the Pro line a bit less steep.

So why buy a base 14 Pro over a 13 or 15 M2 Air, even when they get M3 as well early next year? It’s for those who want more built-in ports and active cooling for sustained pro level work.
 
I’m extremely sad to see the end of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, let alone this particular body style. I didn’t dislike the Touch Bar, once the physical “esc” key returned and the butterfly keyboard finally went away. It was a good machine, especially once we crossed over into the Apple Silicon era. And it was the last ”new” Mac notebook to not have the stupid notch. I also do hate that an entry level M3 in a MacBook Pro is now $300 more than the entry level M2 and M1 versions of the 13-inch MacBook Pro costed.

That all being said, this decision makes perfect sense on Apple’s part. That design was clearly out-going. They gave IT departments and anyone who relied on the tried-and-true nature of that form factor plenty of time to buy up as many as they needed. Plus, from a marketing standpoint (and let’s not forget that Apple is, after all, a very marketing-centric company), it makes WAY more sense to just have a base M3 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new design than it did with an out-going design. Plus, you get HDMI and an SD card slot in addition to your two ports, plus MagSafe. I’m not saying that this ought to be worth $300, but it’s indesputably an I/O upgrade.

Them bringing M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max to the MacBook Pro line also allows them to create the distance they need from the MacBook Air line to make it stand out. Again, a smart marketing move (as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 15-inch MacBook Air had a weird overlap with M2 that honestly made no marketing sense whatsoever).

I’m guessing that the MacBook Air will probably get the standard M3 around the time that the M3 Ultra comes to the Mac Studio (and maybe Mac Pro as well) and shortly prior to the M4 family coming to the MacBook Pros. Either that, or Apple could do what they’ve been doing with iPhones recently and just update the MacBook Airs to the M3 at the same time that they upgrade the MacBook Pros to the M4, creating the distance in performance across the entire MacBook Pro family from the MacBook Air. Plus, as so many are keen to point out, the MacBook Air isn’t marketed to those that care about what SoC family is inside of it.

I think that, especially with the death of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac for me for the next time I am buying a Mac is now solidly the binned/lower-end Mx Pro 14-inch model with the higher RAM capacity and a 2TB drive. I’m in no hurry to buy such a machine, nor do I need one. But I think that’ll be what I gravitate towards once I’m ready for my refresh cycle to kick in (in a few years).

So long, 13-inch MacBook Pro! You were great when your chipset was made by NVIDIA, trash for most of the rest of the Intel era (until 2020), and then decent and wonderful for the first two generations of Apple Silicon. You will be missed!
 
The Touch Bar deserved better users. Good night, sweet prince.
Exactly! I never got to understand the complaints about it. Some wanted the regular F-keys but they were always there if you hit the fn-key or set them to appear automatically when using specific apps.
 
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So sad, such beautifully designed MBP, for me it was the GOT, I had previous models but that one was the best. Regarding the new one, I’m not into legacy ports, I hate that squared heavier design with ugly keyboard and notch, so that will never be and option, I rather buy a dell computer or Lenovo.
 
I question the character of any person who actually likes the Touch Bar. And I would stay far away from anyone that says they like the butterfly keyboard.
Hitting the keys if the new keyboard with so much deep in them just to please a bunch of bozos is disgusting.
 
It was a feature for feature's sake.

I really don't understand this point of view. You can't understand the appeal of a pitch for a configurable OLED touch strip that can provide context sensitive features to the foreground app?

Just on spec, it seems like a much better idea than buttons labeled F1 to F12. Turns out specs aren't everything, but that's a far cry from saying it was added just for bloat.

I've wondered if it would have done better if it were added to the Magic Keyboard also. It had different reasons for being rejected by different people, but I wonder if devs would have taken it more seriously if it were more ubiquitous.
 
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I will say I will miss the touch bar. On its own it was very medium, but even now I make sure I have that "Better touch Tool" app which made it usable.

also having it show up when I use my iPad as a 2nd screen is still great
 
The 13" Pro was an odd MacBook in the lineup. Not going to miss the MacBook
 
The function keys are so antique and while they have been effectively mapped to other permanent functions (volume, screen brightness, media controls, etc) they are static. The static nature of them reminds me of a big portion of Steve Job's speech during the iPhone introudction.
I don't know. This sounds to me like complaining that a "c" key is inferior because it only produces the letter "c".

Function keys are part of a computer keyboard and have been there for decades, so users were rightfully PISSED about the change. For Apple to swap them into a screen you had to look at was unbelievably arrogant and stupid.

And to do it in a PRO machine, even more so. Thus, backpedal they did.
 
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Being a very proud owner of the now discontinued 13" M2 MacBook Pro, I'm sad to see the Touch Bar is now finally gone.

I'm probably one of the few people that actually finds it handy in day to day use, oh well got a couple of more years with this before i finally say goodbye to the Touch Bar. :(
 
Well, I for one adore my m1 Touch Bar Mac, regularly get comments on how cool it is, and would happily pay a few hundred extra on a new Mac to get it again. It’s amazing and I will hate one day having to replace it for a laptop without it.
 
Apple really thought that developers would find a way to make use of the Touch Bar, and so give it a reason for existing.

Apple has a lot of faith in developers. Historically this has always been true, of course (e.g. WWDC being a pivotal event in the Apple year), but it's since the rise of the App Store that Apple really understood their value. The iPhone was cruising along nicely but the introduction of the App Store – and the developers that empowered it – pushed it into hyperspace. Those heady days of the early App Store were something else. Apple would release a new hardware feature in the iPhone, and developers would jump on it to do cool things.

And so, Apple perhaps started to have too much faith in developers. The Touch Bar didn't make 100% sense, but that's OK. Developers will find ways to make use of it. But unfortunately, they didn't – well, not really, outside a few exceptions.
 
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