Apple is set to release revamped 16” MacBook Pro later this year. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that the new 16” MacBook Pro will feature a completely flat design, similar to the recently released iPhone 12 series. The other noticeable difference will be the replacement of Touch Bar with a standard row of good old function keys. The SD card will also likely make a return along with MagSafe which does not make much sense.
The 16” MacBook Pro was released in November 2019, it marked the return of the scissor switch keyboard after a troublesome three years of butterfly keyboard on the 15” MacBook Pro (and all other MacBooks). Apple replaced the 15” MacBook Pro with the 16” MacBook Pro, however shrunk the bezels drastically to make the display edge to edge. The company also increased the size of the battery, packed high quality speakers, and high quality microphones.
Return of the flat design
In the past few years, Apple has moved to using flat design on all of its products. The iPad Pro (2018) was one of the first to start the trend, followed by the iPad Air in 2020, and the iPhone 12 series followed. The MacBook Pro laptops are reportedly set to follow the same design formula. An interesting point to note is that the iPhone 12 series’ design is almost identical to the iPhone 5 from 2012.
The rumour about Apple ditching the Touch Bar with the next release of MacBook Pro has sparked a lot of happiness in many people. A very small percentage of people actually found the Touch Bar to be any useful, the rest have been asking Apple to not make the same mistake with the future releases. Apple seems to have heard and the next batch of MacBook Pro will feature the much more useful function keys.
