Apple kills the MacBook Pro 13 and the Touch Bar

Nothing lasts forever as the popular saying goes and in the tech world, the latest example of this is the 13-inch MacBook Pro.  Starting today, the entry-level role of the MacBook Pro family has been passed to the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with Apple M3 processor.

This is why you are no longer able to purchase the model on Apple Malaysia’s website anymore. As the 13-inch MacBook Pro is also the last model to carry the Touch Bar, this also means that it is now time to say farewell to the feature as well – whether you love or hate it.

What the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro with M3 brings to the table

One of the most obvious advantages that you would get from the 14-inch MacBook Pro is having more screen real estate since this model has a much larger 14.2-inch display. In addition to that, the Liquid Retina XDR display on the 14-inch model not only delivers higher resolution but a much higher brightness level as well.

In fact, the 14-inch MacBook Pro can go as high as 1,600 nits while the 13-inch maxes out at 500 nits. In addition to that, the 14-inch option also has ProMotion technology that allows the laptop to deliver an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz.

While the M3 chip for the 14-inch MacBook Pro still has the same CPU and GPU count as the M2 chip in the 13-inch model, Apple said that the new processor is much faster and more power efficient. It also contains a new GPU that has unlocked hardware-accelerated ray tracing for the first time ever on a MacBook.

The new M3 chip also provides AV1 decoding capabilities which users to enjoy streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube while continuing to be power efficient. Furthermore, the 14-inch MacBook Pro solid state drive options start at 512GB instead of 256GB.

There are also plenty of other features that make the 14-inch MacBook Pro more superior than its 13-inch predecessor including a higher-resolution 1080p FaceTime HD camera. That being said, this might be a point of contention though because the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the last model to come without a display notch.

Nevertheless, there is still the six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers and an HDMI port with support for multi-channel audio output. The laptop also has a built-in SDXC card reader alongside the support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

The 14-inch model also features a larger 70Whr battery which offers longer battery life for certain use cases. For example, it can playback movies from the Apple TV app for 22 hours which is two hours longer than the 13-inch model.

But the 14-inch MacBook Pro somehow loses out to its 13-inch counterpart when it comes to wireless web serving. The newer model can only run for up to 15 hours of wireless web surfing as compared to the M2-based 13-inch model which maxes out at 17 hours.

Being a bigger laptop, the 14-inch MacBook Pro is also slightly heavier at 1.55kg when compared to the 1.4kg 13-inch model. Unfortunately, this applies to the price tag as well since the M3-based 14-inch MacBook Pro has a starting price of RM7,499 which is RM1,800 more than the launch price of the M2-based 13-inch MacBook Pro.

You can still buy the 13-inch MacBook Pro from Apple Authorised Resellers

Even though it is no longer available from Apple Malaysia’s online store, you can still purchase the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 from Apple Authorised Resellers. For example, Machines is currently offering the 256GB variant of the laptop for RM5,699 over at its official website while the 512GB version is going for RM6,499.

Over at Switch’s website, you can only purchase the 512GB model. However, only the 256GB option is still in stock at Thundermatch and SNS Network (IT World) online store.

With that, we recommend you reach out to the retailer’s branch first to check in-store availability before making your move there. This way, you can save some time if there is no stock at the store and move on to other retailers.