Apple has finally made a Mac you can touch. On Wednesday, October 28, the company announced a redesigned MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED display Apple calls PROLED XDR, along with a touchscreen, in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes. Pre-orders are open, and deliveries start on Friday, November 6, according to 9to5Mac.
The screen. The new panel replaces the mini-LED display on current models. Apple lists up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness, up from 1,600, and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Engadget reports a 120Hz refresh rate and screen sizes of 14.2 and 16.3 inches. The notch is gone, replaced by a Dynamic Island, the pill-shaped area familiar from the iPhone, which hosts items such as Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri.
How touch works. The touch sensor is built into the display panel itself and not added as a separate layer, and a redesigned hinge is meant to keep the screen steady when you tap it, according to 9to5Mac. Engadget says macOS treats touch input as clicks, so any app can be touched, while Apple’s own apps are tuned for it and apps such as Notion, Canva, PowerPoint and Blender support it natively.
Lighter and thinner. The 14-inch model weighs about 3 pounds, down from roughly 3.4 to 3.5 pounds, and the 16-inch weighs about 4 pounds, down from around 4.7 pounds, according to the two reports. The Apple logo on the lid now lights up. Engadget lists three Thunderbolt 5 ports, MagSafe, HDMI, a headphone jack and an SDXC card slot.
Chips and memory. Both sizes use M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, with up to 128GB of unified memory and up to 16TB of storage. They come in silver or space black, with a standard or nano-texture display option. Touch ID stays, with no Face ID, and there is no cellular model.
Prices. In the US, the 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399. TechCrunch calculates that a fully loaded configuration reaches about $14,549, which it says pushes laptop pricing to a new extreme. Apple is also keeping the non-touch MacBook Pro configurations from March on sale at the same prices. UK pricing was not confirmed in the reports reviewed, so UK buyers should check Apple’s UK store.
The early verdict. Ars Technica’s hands-on says the OLED looks great on a Mac but that the machine is not as different from the previous model as you might expect. That fits Apple’s approach here: a familiar MacBook Pro with a better screen and a new input method, at the highest launch prices the line has seen.
Who it is for. The extra cost over the existing non-touch models is substantial, so this is aimed at creative professionals who value an OLED display and touch for drawing, editing and design. Most buyers will not need it, and the non-touch models remain available.
Sources: 9to5Mac, Engadget, TechCrunch and Ars Technica. Specifications and prices are as announced by Apple and reported by those outlets; battery life was not covered in the reports reviewed.
MacBook Pro (representative file image, not the new touchscreen model), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
