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I can only speculate, but my guess is they reasoned that all-day battery life would make MagSafe obsolete.

I think the reason is dumber than that; removing MagSafe allowed the laptop to be more symmetrical and sleek. Ditto with SD readers and HDMI ports.

The intel series MBPs do not have all day battery life, though, they last 3-5 hours when being used for software development.

Yup. Ironically they're bringing back mag safe at the same time as moving to processors that might make the battery life dream real.