The port arrangement is the same as the 15-inch model, and the same as last year's 13-inch Pro: with two Thunderbolt 2 ports, two USB 3.0 jacks, a headphone jack, and an SD card slot, there's little want for more anyway. I do wish Apple would upgrade its speakers: audio comes through the Pro's keyboard, and is tinny and shallow. Neither has changed in years, and neither really needs to - other manufacturers still need to catch up. It also still has a roomy, clicky black keyboard, with a customizeable backlight and slightly more travel than the MacBook Air.

It still has a big, roomy, class-leading glassy trackpad, with responsive gestures and two-finger scrolling. There has to be a catch this year too, right? Last year it was the Pro's processor, which all too often appeared to be teetering on the edge of its capabilities. But for that kind of laptop, there's always a catch - a terrible trackpad here, a hideous heat or battery problem there. And it starts at $1,299, only $100 more than the same-size MacBook Air and $400 less than last year's model. On paper, it looks like the perfect balance: pretty portable and pretty powerful, in a pretty package. It has a great screen, and Apple claims it'll last for up to nine hours. It's powerful, but it's not much thicker than the MacBook Air or your average Windows ultrabook. That's why the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is so intriguing. There's no such thing as having it all, no matter what you're willing to pay for it. Good speakers and screens are hard to come by so are great keyboards and trackpads. You want long battery life and a slim build, gaming's all but out the window. You want power, you're going to need a big, expensive, probably ugly machine. Do I play games? Will I want to play games sometime in the next four years? How much do I travel? How much will I travel? Am I going to be using Office much, or at all, or ever again? I have cable now, but am I going to become a cord-cutting Netflix aficionado sometime before I'm back here shopping for another new laptop?Įverything's a choice with laptops, everything a tradeoff. More so than with any other product category, buying a laptop forces you to make all manner of decisions and prognostications about yourself. Yet it's an almost certain occurrence, at least when you're there shopping for a laptop.

Standing in a Best Buy is an odd time for an existential crisis.

Macbook pro 2013 display