Apple did the unthinkable finally and this time, it was for the good course. The company brought back a number of ports and ousted the not-so-iconic Touch Bar in favor of Function Keys on the new 2021 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.

Both of these machines are powered by the 2nd generation M1 Pro and M1 Max chipsets respectively and offer better display technology, faster processing capacity, power management, and better build quality.

But that’s the point. The reintroduction of three Thunderbolt ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as the return of both MagSafe 3 power connectors, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot all made the laptop interesting.

The complaints by MacBook users having to make use of third-party dongles and extensions in order to do basic things on their computer seems to have finally reached the company as the company has brought back the most-used ports.

While Apple favored three Thunderbolt 4 ports instead of giving us at least one USB-A port, there isn’t too much to complain about this year except of course the polarizing notch on the computers. That’s however a story for another time.

With so many ports, anyone that owns either of the 2021 MacBooks will be able to connect about two external displays at up to 6K resolution thanks to the M1 Pro chipset but the number of displays can even be cranked up to four 6K external displays when using the M1 Max chip.

As for the HDMI port, it’s an HDMI 2.0 rather than an HDMI 2.1 which might be disappointing to some.

Key features of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro include the additional ports, Apple’s next-generation M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, mini-LED displays with a ProMotion adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz, up to 10 hours long battery life, and more.

As for the pricing, the base model – 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip starts at about US$1,999 while the bigger 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip starts at US$2,499.

Stock arrival is expected as soon as Oct. 26th.