New MacBook Pro models to feature magsafe, no touch bar and more ports: analyst

I'll believe it when I see it. I could believe them getting rid of the touchbar, but bringing back magsafe? I'm sticking with my 2015 MacBook until it's irreparable, and I do like the magsafe port, but is there really any point in going back after moving to USB-C? I think I just like magsafe because it's cool more than that it actually has some sort of superiority over USB-C. I've tripped over the USB-C cable to my work laptop(2018 model) a handful of times and somehow the cable always manages to unplug without flinging the laptop across the room or damaging the USB components themselves. It doesn't seem like going back to magsafe would achieve anything.

I know it&#x27;s from Kuo, but these leaks don&#x27;t pass the smell test for me. It makes no sense for them to add the touchbar to the base model 13&quot; MBPs only to remove them from the higher end versions. It makes even less sense to add more ports which aren&#x27;t USB-C, as the bits about MagSafe and no dongles imply. Further, I don&#x27;t understand what is meant by &quot;iPhone 12 like&quot; non-curvy design - I have a 2018 MBP 15&quot;, and the sides of this thing are pretty flat and not curved.<p>I mean, these features sound like a dream come true, but I&#x27;m having a hard time believing them.

If anyone from Apple is reading, let me just say – this is exactly what I want. Magsafe charging. Function keys instead of the touchbar. 15-16&quot; screen. M1 CPU. 32GB Memory.<p>I also prefer the 2015 keyboard, but it&#x27;s not a dealbreaker.<p>I&#x27;ll pay for the kickstarter now if it means it&#x27;ll come out in the next 18 months. Please make it happen.

It&#x27;s not fully impossible to build an up-to-specs magnetic USB C connector, it just hasn&#x27;t happened yet. I am 100% if anyone ever pulls it off, it&#x27;ll be Apple.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;USBCGuy&#x2F;status&#x2F;1186718432932159488" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;USBCGuy&#x2F;status&#x2F;1186718432932159488</a><p>&gt; No, because per the spec, and current technological limitations, there is no way to do a proper connector and logic board.<p>&gt; It might be possible some day with active electronics, and special electrooptical couplers. But I haven&#x27;t seen any yet.<p>Written by Nathan Kolluru. He and Benson Leung were the two guys who did early through technical reviews of USB C cables, later he joined Google as well as a Hardware Engineer, Technical Program Manager. They gave this presentation recently <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usb.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;D1T2-3b%20-%20USB%20Type-C%20Linux%20Connector%20Class.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usb.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;D1T2-3b%20-%20USB%20...</a> In other words, he actually knows what he is talking about USB C wise, unlike little me :D Interesting writings on USB C hw at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@kolluru.nathan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@kolluru.nathan</a><p>Edit: please, ffs, stop recommending non specs compliant garbage magnetic connectors. One, you might have very serious ESD issues because now your USB C pins are much more exposed than the normal connector. Two, you might have very serious data integrity issues because those pogo pins do not and can not adhere to the very rigorous specs. I find it absolutely astonishing that people would trust a thousand dollar electronic device on a piece of uncertified cable transmitting 100W and tens of gigabits...

Reading this, it feels like the MacBook Pro of 2015 is finally getting an upgrade.<p>Took them 5 years to go back and restore the old school.<p>Great to hear a couple iterations ago they restored the keyboard. Now with dropping the touch bar and bringing back mag safe. My 2015 daily driver might see retirement.

I was literally just commenting to a co-worker about how I haven&#x27;t used my touch bar even once in the past year.<p>Give us TACTILE interfaces! I don&#x27;t want to accidentally push a virtual button just by brushing my hand across a smooth surface.<p>Honestly, what would actually be pretty cool would be tactile keyboard buttons with screens built into their surfaces. That way you could actually assign visual hints to your function keys, and they could still require tactile presses to use. That will unfortunately probably never happen though, due to manufacturing costs and complexity.

And THAT will make me finally replace my MacBook Pro 2015. No touch bar, MagSafe, good amount of ports. The iPhone 12-esque design is a good bonus too (I like it more than all others before it).<p>Only took 5-6 years but I am again excited about MacBooks.

I finally cracked about a year ago and replaced my 2015 MBP 15 with a 2020 MBP 16.<p>Now I&#x27;m gonna swap it once this thing comes out.<p>Experiences thus far with the MBP16:<p>- MBP16 has 64GM RAM and can run several IDEs at once, I can compile a project and do other stuff without feeling any lag. It does make the fans come on, which is expected.<p>- Still stutters on certain games, but it wasn&#x27;t purchased for that. Kinda surprising though, I maxed out all the options minus the disk size when I bought it.<p>- The key travel is just right, I think slightly less than the 2015 version but more than my wife&#x27;s 2018. Goldilocks.<p>- The Touch Bar is ok, not something I&#x27;ll miss. I&#x27;ve set it up with BetterTouchTool to have a combination of the open apps and a thing to pull up iTerm2. A minor nuisance is I&#x27;ll be typing something and I slightly touch the bar, and it pulls up another app.<p>- It eats battery. With my old set of MacBooks, you could never tell which power adapter it was connected to, because it didn&#x27;t matter whether it was a slightly lower power. With the 16 it&#x27;s noticeable. If there wasn&#x27;t a virus lockdown I&#x27;d probably struggle to take it out to a café for a day&#x27;s work.<p>- Screen is beautiful as always. They seem to have found a way to reduce the bezel size, because the 2015 and 2020 models look to be pretty much the same size externally. They actually fit nicely one on top of the other when closed.<p>- Larger trackpad is ok, not killer. Maybe it helps some people&#x27;s wrists to not have to move all the way to the middle.<p>Reasons for upgrade:<p>- Less energy use could make the thing properly mobile<p>- Should be a noticeable speed increase<p>- MagSafe makes it feel safer. I have kids, the USB ports seem like they could easily get broken if someone steps on a cable. For now I&#x27;ve got adapters anyway, in order to make use of all my old MagSafe chargers, but it would be nice to have it all the way up to the port.

Apple listening to consumer feedback? What&#x27;s going on?<p>I never thought they&#x27;d add more ports again either - I could actually see myself getting one of these.

<p><pre><code> 1. The two new models are equipped with about 14-inch and 16-inch displays, respectively. 2. In terms of casing design, the new models cancel the curvy design of existing models’ top and bottom parts and adopt a flat-edged form factor design similar to the iPhone 12 . 3. The MagSafe charging connector design is restored. 4. The OLED touch bar is removed, and the physical function buttons are restored. 5. There is no Intel CPU option for the new models. 6. They are equipped with more types of I&#x2F;O, and most users may not need to purchase additional dongles.</code></pre>

One more thing while we&#x27;re fantasising. It would be nice if the sharp edge round the edge of the working surface was removed.

I just wish they would make an Apple Silicon version of the 12&quot; MacBook.

The rumours sound too good to be true, so we&#x27;ll see.

I would buy one. But it feels like I am being trolled to keep my money for longer to replace my aging (7yo) Thinkpad T440s.<p>Touch bar, ports and shallow keyboard is what kept me from buyng Mac for years.

I quite like the Touch Bar, with things like pock it means I can have full screen, hide the dock entire and still have notifications<p>And the ability to set custom apps inside it with iterm, and not have to loose a key on the board itself<p>I spend most of my time in vi when in terminal, and never had a “I’m missing an escape” ever

This is the laptop I want to buy, but I find it really hard to believe. They just released a new ARM Macbook Pro with a touch bar at the bottom end of the Pro lineup, which didn&#x27;t used to come with a touch bar (I have ~2017 pro without). If they wanted to drop the touch bar they could have done it without much fanfare on that model and I&#x27;m not sure why they wouldn&#x27;t do so.

Yeah, doesn&#x27;t pass the sniff test, does it? &quot;All the things you ever wanted with no details on what or why&quot;.<p>Also to be blunt – none of this sounds compelling to me. I know people have different requirements and use-cases, but I find the touchbar is fine, USB-C is great, and I&#x27;m not missing any ports. YMMV but I&#x27;m extremely skeptical.

I wonder about the amount of memory they will support. Based on this article and reviews of the M1 so far, this looks a lot like a “take my money ASAP” situation.

Now also say goodbye to the high-gloss screen (don&#x27;t tie the design aesthetic to a glossy top, and offer matte display options), make a strong statement about the ability to switch off notarization for good, and you&#x27;re golden for developers like me once again, Apple.

I am typing this on the M1 Air. I had the Pro with a Touch Bar before. I don&#x27;t miss the Touch Bar per se, but I did like the ability to customize it for my liking. I also liked scrubbing on video or music software. The escape key is back on all MacBooks now including Touch Bar. I guess I am still on the fence about the Touch Bar and its usability. I think apple envisioned more developer adoption and novelty.

If even half what this report claims is true, a lot of 2012-2015 holdouts are going to upgrade, including myself.

I hope this comes to pass. I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro that finally died a few months back and I want to get a new machine. Because of Covid I haven&#x27;t needed or been able to travel so my desktop has sufficed. Once things open up again I&#x27;ll need a mobile option.<p>The touchbar is neat but almost entirely useless for my workflow. It just takes up space and is honestly the main reason I haven&#x27;t bought another machine. I love magsafe and would like to see it come back but if it just had USB-C that would be fine.<p>No touchbar, new apple silicon, more ports (ethernet please!) - i&#x27;ll be getting one.

I feel for badly for users that adopted the touch bar into their workflow... It never should have been a thing. For those that do use it, an alternative solution could easily be implemented by using a touch display. e.g. touch the bottom left or right of the screen and the OS displays something similar to the touch bar. This might be the first valid use case for having touch functionality on a laptop.<p>If I had to pick between USB-C charging and MagSafe, I&#x27;d pick MagSafe for accident prevention. The option to use USB-C or MagSafe charging would be a win for everyone.

It&#x27;ll be interesting to see how this will work with USB-C unless they&#x27;re being very courageous.

I don&#x27;t understand the port fetish. I admit my mac use case doesn&#x27;t involve plugging much of anything into my machine, but Type C is pretty ubiquitous by now.

This is the part that I really don&#x27;t get. Apple takes away all those features, but then brings them back? What is the reasoning behind this?

What about a touch screen? Anything that might have been good about the old touch bar could then be just an app blending in at the bottom &#x2F; top &#x2F; side. Aside from obviously needing it once running most iOS apps on the device.<p>Plus: there is no 16&quot; touch display in the lineup yet, this would be something adding value also to touch apps.

If they get rid of the touchbar I&#x27;m trading my mac immediately

I have a bunch of USB-C adapters hanging around for different usage and they all have their own caveats with different combinations and different monitors. You get all sort of issues with frame rate, data transfer bandwidth, not enough power to charge the laptop, overheating etc.<p>All because Apple couldn&#x27;t be bothered to either keep more ports in their &quot;PRO&quot; lineup, or at least design and sell a quality dock station for &quot;pro&quot; users that works without those caveats, performance and quality issues, overheating, etc. Apple only makes low-end single or max three ports adapters that aren&#x27;t capable of doing anything serious. It&#x27;s just lame that they aren&#x27;t making a high-end loaded dock station for pro users. I hope they just do it, and they do it without crazy price tag.

Add bringing back SD Card Reader, HDMI and changing the Webcam it seems like the best MBP wishlist ever.

I hope not.<p>I like the multiple use USB-C for also charging. I never charge my two MacBooks (one is a new M1 pro) because they charge when I plug into a monitor.<p>Plus, with about 20 hour battery life, returning to MagSafe is less important.<p>I really like the physical escape key and Touch Bar on my new M1 laptop.

If the assertions regarding the fully-flat design are true, there is hope that this new model will resemble the greatest portable Mac of the 21st century: the PowerBook G4.<p>For the uninitiated, watch the video of Steve Jobs announcing it at MacWorld San Francisco 2001.

I like the touchbar! Especially now that the esc key is physical. I never use f keys, and I like knowing what the “key” is going to do before I touch&#x2F;press it. And 100x so for family members that were afraid of those keys.

If this happens I might replace my macbook air mid 2012. Magsafe, no touchbar, hopefully 14&#x27;&#x27; with 32GB of RAM and M1X.<p>Also, I hope a decent webcam, and ability to support at least 2 external displays..

The only macbook I would buy at this point is a 2015 model, give me the old keyboard I could actually type on, magsafe, and no annoying touch bar. I&#x27;ve been using a 2018 macbook pro literally every day for three years and have never once used the touch bar for anything that wasnt previously mapped to a function key. 2015 macbook air is still the best laptop in the world.

If true, it may be too little, too late for me - and no mention of going back to a good pre-butterfly keyboard either. I will be looking for a nice OLED Windows computer about then (3Q21), with user replaceable RAM and M.2 SSDs, Thunderbolt 4 and maybe a small GPU for a bit of light ML. I already switched from an iPhone and have stopped upgrading my MBPs above 10.14.

Yes. No touch bar. I prefer real buttons. More ports. We regular USB is still a thing in spite of what they might think. Don&#x27;t you dare touch the 3.5 mm audio jack! Leave it alone. Nobody gives a shit that the laptops are half a centimeter thick when they need all these stupid adapters &#x2F; dongles to have basic functionality.

They need to upgrade the camera too. The current cameras on the Air and Pro aren’t good enough for the COVID era video calls.

You can kind of bring MagSafe back to your laptop on your own by buying a magnetic USB-C adapter like this one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Transfer-Compatible&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07TT6NGBC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Transfer-Co...</a>

I hope they also allow at least two displays to be connected instead of the one display limitation on the latest MacBooks

I&#x27;ve been holding out upgrading for the last 2-3 years because I really don&#x27;t want the Touch Bar. I have one with my work laptop and I only ever accidentally hit it. Having the physical music and volume control buttons on my current laptop is a significant usability improvement for me.

One USB type A &amp; one HDMI port will make 80% of the folks extremely happy &amp; power brick free for work

I use a USB-C to mag-charging adapter on my ipad pro, and I love it.<p>I like the idea of using repairable components like this because if my mag-charger gets broken by a toddler, the usb-c port is fine and I just get a new one without having to pay $300 to repair the ipad.

Looking forward to it.<p>I won&#x27;t miss the the TouchBar.<p>It will be interesting to see what the new &quot;Mag-Safe&quot; looks like. I doubt that it will be USB C-based, but if it is, I hope it isn&#x27;t like these stupid &quot;USB C MagSafe&quot; charging cords that are out now.

The only dream feature missing is a smaller trackpad. Doesn’t have to be as small as the 2015 one, but it should have more bezel so I don’t bump it accidentally like now. Unless you have huge hands, the current size is unwarrented.

:( I love the Touch Bar, I love to configure it per application to have the most common shortcut on the top left part of it (in Terminal that&#x27;s the alt as mod for me).<p>Properly configured it really speeded my workflows.

The touchbar is such a cool piece of technology. I&#x27;m sad to see users didn&#x27;t embrace it as much as they could&#x27;ve.<p>It created a dynamically adapting interface that just opened up so many more possibilities.

Will it allow me to hook up two monitors ?<p>I sent back my pro and replaced it with an M1 mini the moment I realized only one monitor worked.<p>I will say Logic X makes a Mac worthwhile, but it&#x27;s like I&#x27;m recording on the road.

Actually listening to what their customers want? Well, thats new.

More types of IO as well? So Magsafe and HDMI making a return?

Please add back the SD&#x2F;micro-SD port. I loved that feature on older Macs. It&#x27;s annoying to have to use a USB converter to import pictures to your laptop.

I absolutely love the touchbar, especially with the new physical escape key. Shame to see it go. Hopefully we can still get an option that has it.

April Fools&#x27; arrived early this year.<p>I&#x27;m in the minority here on hn, but I prefer the touch bar over function keys and I don&#x27;t miss MagSafe at all.

Apple should make the edges less sharp as well. I just got the 13 inch M1 Pro, it&#x27;s too sharp. The 2014-2015 Pro case is just perfect.

Interesting that there is no mention of a mini-LED display. Other than that the 14 inch model seems to be everything I would ever want.

Too good to be true, there&#x27;s got to be a catch: Apple Silicon<p>&gt; 5. There is no Intel CPU option for the new models.<p>I don&#x27;t think they mean AMD.

This sounds more like a wishlist of features that elite Apple developers want, than what Apple is likely to do.

I still own and use a MBP 15 from 2015. And I love it. The options would make me very likely to upgrade...

I will be using my 2015 MacBook Pro until the last viable OS update until they make the laptop better

If I&#x27;d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said &quot;a faster horse&quot;.

yes yes and yes. What took them so long? I am curious what resolution would the 14&quot; have (closer to 15 or 13?)<p>2016 still going &quot;strong&quot; after the keyboard replacement in 2019 but I am not going to expect it to last pass 2021...

It cannot be “no touch bar”...

As somebody who struggles with the touch bar every work day, I hope this is real.

Keep the touchbar. I like it. Just have a model for the fuddy duddy&#x27;s.

Now they just need to get rid of MacOS and it would be an amazing product!

I was hoping they&#x27;d include 16GB memory as the base

This is everything I dream about. Don&#x27;t tease me.

Love that function keys are a feature in 2020.

Can&#x27;t wait to read some Apple fan justifying this change the same way they justified the &quot;less is more&quot; change of removing everything but USB-C.

I don&#x27;t see the point of the F-keys returning. If no touchbar then just use layers on top of the numerals, like other laptops and programmable keyboards.

Does this have the Apple Silicon chip ?

When are they fixing keyboard?

Don&#x27;t tease me.

fuck the touch bar.

There will never be more ports

It’s not that the Touch Bar was bad.<p>It’s that they removed the Function Keys!<p>They should’ve just placed the Touch Bar, above the Function Keys.

Hell yeah. Magsafe has saved my old MacBook several times already.

So, basically an old macbook?

Why is it that software engineers can understand the idea of <i>software</i> ports and adapters, but collectively seem to lose their minds when the idea of physically manifest?<p>USB-C is the one port to rule them all, and is here to stay.

If they do this I won&#x27;t be able to resist buying one. I want to resist though and be one of those people who uses a laptop with libreboot and OpenBSD.<p>... We are Apple. Lower your principles and surrender your dollars. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

Why no one realizes developing software on MacOS&#x2F;ARM and target Linux&#x2F;x86 is a bad idea?