Why does the macbook pro 13" m2 even exist?

[Deep_learned_mistake]

When the air costs exactly the same? Wouldn't it have made more sense for apple to release a single macbook laptop with fans in order to clearly seperate the pro 14"+ from the average consumer lines?

If there was a macbook 13" with a fan I would buy it in a heartbeat but my only option is an air ($100 more in AU for some reason) or a mbp13 with a ****** touch bar

 

[Mike Boreham]

It does look a bit of a misfit. The line up would seem to make sense without it.

Comparing the M2 MBA with the M2 MBP (13") they are as you say the same price. This means Apple are pricing the cost of the new chassis of the MBA as equivalent to the cost of the fan and Touch Bar in the MBP (13"), both with the same M2.

As for your wish for "single MacBook laptop with fans" ......there are a lot of people who really like the MBA just because it has no fans...so I don't see that happening.

Yes it means for people like you who don't want "Pro" but do want fans you have to have the Touch Bar.

 

[VivienM]

This has been heavily debated in other threads - the most likely reason, I think, is something to do with supply chains or manufacturing capacity - they don't have 'enough' of some new-design parts, they have commitments to certain old parts, so... the solution is to stick a modern M2 logic board into a laptop that uses the plentiful parts and doesn't use the scarce parts.

Plus, I suspect having the old-style 13" MBP there... probably nudges at least some people towards the pricier 14" M1 Pro model.

 

[GMShadow]

It's Apple's second best selling laptop per their own sales data.

That's why it exists.

 

[curnalpanic]

They made 150 million touch bars in 2016 that they have to sell.