Recent changes to Apple’s retail, online stores may indicate near-term exit for non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro with optical drive

The curtain might finally be drawing to a close on the non-Retina MacBook Pro with an optical drive.

Recent changes to Apple’s online store have tucked the model out of the way on the main MacBook Pro page and hidden at the bottom of the ‘buy‘ page. It now appears that the company is doing the same thing in its retail stores to the last remaining product of an optical drive bygone era.

At present, customers can still buy the non-retina 13-inch MacBook Pro in retail locations as well as online, but essentially have to ask for it by name these days. The units, which arrive with 4GB of RAM and a slow 500GB spinning metal drive are still priced at $1,099, just $100 below a starter 13-inch MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and a speedy 256GB PCIe-based SSD.

Current rumors have it that Apple will offer a major update to the MacBook Pro series later this year, complete with an OLED touchscreen above the keyboard.

So, the classic MacBook Pro, which you can boost to 16GB of RAM and swap out the optical drive in exchange for a carrier and a second hard drive, might be on its way out.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via 9to5Mac