Apple released updated revisions of their 13-inch MacBook Pros today, both to the 2-port and the 4-port models.  While most of the revisions seem small on their own, each adds up to a more inviting whole.

Starting off, both revisions of the 13-inch MBP now get rid of the butterfly keyboard and replaced it with a revised scissor-switch keyboard.  The new keyboards still have less travel than the MacBooks of old, but this does fall more inline with traditional keyboard design and is much more reliable.  I myself haven’t had issues with the new keyboards on machines I’ve worked with, this is only anecdotal as many people have complained about their performance, and Apple has had several repair and replace programs for these machines since they were released.  With this latest update, the maligned butterfly keyboard is not gone from the modern Mac lineup.

Looking over to the processor sides, we have some small updates.  For the MacBook Pros with 2 Thunderbolt ports, the default processor are the 8th-gen Intel i5 chips, running at 1.4 GHz but can be upgraded to 1.7 GHz i7 processors.  The 4-port models see a nicer jump to the 10th-gen i5 processors running at 2.0 GHz, upgradable to i7, 2.3 GHz versions.  These come as well with the newest Intel Iris Plus Graphics, which Apple claims can improve graphics performance by up to 80% compared to previous machines.  While these are no AMD or Nvidia graphics cards, they do allow the MBP’s to display on a single 6K, a single 5K monitor, or two 4k monitors at the same time.  That’s not too shabby, and good for some video and photo editors.

Memory, both in RAM and in storage, have seen some changes, but for different reasons.  As far as RAM is concerned, all the MBP’s now runs with the faster 3733 MHz, compared to the 2133 MHz in the 2019 models.  The 4-port options now start with 16 gigs of RAM and can be upgraded at purchase to 32 gigs of RAM, and this RAM has been upgraded to LPDDR4X from the previous LPDDR3 RAM sticks.

The storage department comes both with a price change and a storage increase.  The base 13-inch MBP now comes with 256 gigs of storage rather than the measly 128 gigs in the previous revisions.  You can upgrade the amount of storage for a little bit less now, up to 2 TB in the 2-port models.  The 4-port models now start at 512 gigs and can be upgraded to 4 TB.  In both cases, the starting price of these machines hasn’t gone up, and the cost to upgrade storage during purchase has gone down.

All-in-all, the new 13-inch MacBook Pros are much more approachable machines than before.  Better starting storage specs, slightly improved processor and RAM speeds, and a much improved keyboard, all without increasing the prices, makes the 13-inch Macbook a great middle machine between the light and portable MacBook Air and the bigger, more powerful 16-inch MacBook Pro.  The 2-port model starts at $1,299 and the 4-port model starts at $1,799.

What do you think of the changes?  Will you be getting this new machine?  Let us know in the comments below or on social media.