MacBook Pro Evolves Over Five Years With Apple Silicon

The 2021 Redesign and the End of the Touch Bar Era

In late 2021, Apple completely redesigned the MacBook Pro. It was the first major redesign in years, arriving just a year after the company bet on a new, house-made processor called the M1. With new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, more powerful variants of the first processor introduced in November 2020, the company bet on fixing the flaws of previous iterations by offering a new industrial design with enough space for thermal cooling, a better webcam, an old-new keyboard system, more ports, the return of MagSafe charging after it had been discontinued, and a mini-LED display, as detailed by BGR.

Those laptops remain hardware powerhouses, even as we approach their fifth anniversary. That said, to understand the fallout of the Touch Bar, it is important to see where Apple was at that moment and what happened in the following years. When Apple introduced the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar in 2016, marketing executive Phil Schiller said at the launch event that we actually haven’t been using them [function keys] anymore. So we’ve mapped other functions onto these keys.

“physical function keys, including a wider Escape key, replace the Touch Bar, bringing back the familiar, tactile feel of mechanical keys that pro users love.”

Apple press release, via AOL

Many users complained that if something went wrong with the Mac, they could not use a physical Escape key. From a customer point of view, the Touch Bar felt like an extension of keyboard predictions available on the iPhone — an easy way to send emojis, control parts of the user experience like volume and brightness, and even scrub through a video. What plagued the Touch Bar was more than its existence, but this entire MacBook Pro generation. The keyboard could fail quickly, so much so that Apple had to pay $50 million for the faulty design. Apple also removed its innovative MagSafe charging feature, and without extra ports, customers had to buy several dongles to use the products they were always able to use on this laptop. On top of that, the Intel processors in this MacBook were already experiencing thermal throttling issues. Almost everything that could have gone wrong with this MacBook Pro did.

Processor Evolution: From M1 to the M5 Generation

It is only natural to assume that a lot has changed with Apple Silicon processors since the introduction of the M1, and then M1 Pro and M1 Max. Four generations later, we now have the M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max, and Apple is expected to skip the M6 chip and go straight to the M7. Basically, Apple has focused on improving multi-core processing, graphics, and AI capabilities. The M5 family introduces a new Fusion Architecture with 3-nanometer process technology that significantly increases core counts and efficiency compared to the 5-nanometer M1 series. For example, graphics performance is up to 2.5 times faster on the M5 than on the M1, and base memory bandwidth has more than doubled from 68.3 GB/s on the M1 to 153 GB/s on the M5.

In addition to that, the M5 features a redesigned GPU with dedicated Neural Accelerators in every core, delivering up to six times the peak GPU compute for AI tasks compared to the M1. With the third-generation ray-tracing engine and enhanced shader cores, the M5 family also brings significantly improved graphics performance, which makes an M5 machine a lot better for running games and graphics-related software. While the M1 chips are still very capable, it was only possible to max these computers to up to 64GB of RAM, with the base being 8GB. For the M5, users start with 16GB of RAM and can upgrade to up to 128GB of RAM in the M5 Max version, offering more room for more demanding tasks.

Display Upgrades and the Redesigned Base Model

One could say that Apple has been keeping the same mini-LED panel it introduced in late 2021 in the M1 Pro and M1 Max, but that is not true. With the M4 Pro and M4 Max options introduced in late 2024, Apple updated these computers with a brighter Liquid Retina XDR display, offering up to 1,000 nits of brightness for SDR content and up to 1,600 nits for HDR content. Comparatively, the main change is that the M1 Pro MacBook Pro offers 500 nits of standard brightness, while the new M5 Pro can be twice as bright at the same battery capacity, making this computer a lot more useful outdoors.

With the M3 MacBook Pro, Apple finally ditched the Intel look for the base model. With that, the company brought a more consistent visual identity among its computer lineup, as it upgraded the base model with a 14-inch display with mini-LED technology, all of the ports from the higher-end models, including the beloved MagSafe connector, and the SD card slot. The new M3 MacBook Pro also offered an improved thermal design, finally ditched the Touch Bar, and added a more capable webcam. For $1,599, getting a proper MacBook Pro got a lot more affordable, as users had previously had to spend a few hundred dollars extra to get the new design with the Pro or Max chips. With the M3, Apple brought the redesign to a more affordable model for those who wanted a proper cooling system, a better display, and other perks that only the MacBook Pro offered.

Future Outlook and Upcoming 2026 Redesign Expectations

Even though Apple is expected to refresh the MacBook Pro in late 2026 or even early 2027 with an all-new design, an OLED display, and even touchscreen capabilities, one can say that the MacBook Pro has already changed a lot in recent years, despite maintaining the same chassis. In addition to Thunderbolt 5 support and a new darker color, the device continues to adapt as we approach its fifth anniversary.

That said, this could have been the perfect moment to bring back the Touch Bar, as it could still be really useful for everyday customers with proper tweaks like the addition of the physical Escape key from the start. As rumors show that the company will once again go for a more radical design change, the main difference now is that Apple controls its own processor, and so far it has only shown it can do wonders with it.