I mentioned in an opinion piece back in April that while Apple still sells a single non-Retina MacBook Pro model, it does its best to tuck it away out of sight – not mentioned at all on the main MacBook Pro page, and hidden at the bottom of the ‘buy‘ page. It now appears that the company is doing the same thing in its retail stores to the last remaining product of an optical drive bygone era.
We’ve been hearing reports of the model being withdrawn from display in Apple Stores for a week or so now, and checks by both AI and TNW appear to confirm that this is official …
You can still buy the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro in retail stores, just as you can online, but you do have to know that it exists.
As a purchase, it doesn’t make too much sense these days unless you need integrated Ethernet, DVD and don’t mind a slow non-retina display. Apple is charging $1099 for a machine with 4GB RAM and a slow 500GB spinning metal drive. Just $100 more will get you the 13-inch MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and a super-fast 256GB PCIe-based SSD that will, in most real-life situations, deliver better performance in a far more portable form.
We’re expecting a major update to the MacBook Pro line-up later this year, with the headline feature looking set to be an OLED touchscreen above the keyboard. We’ve seen some clues about what Apple has in mind for this, and I outlined my hopes about what it might mean.
