Apple has long resisted the idea of touchscreen laptops — until now.
Apple has long resisted the idea of touchscreen laptops — until now.
Apple announced an all-new MacBook Pro laptop with an OLED touchscreen at its “Pro and tell” event on Wednesday. It starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch model, or $3,399 for the 16-inch version, and it’s available to preorder today ahead of its release on November 6th.
The new MacBook Pro has what Apple calls a “ProLED XDR” display, which is a tandem OLED screen. It offers up to 2,000 nits of peak SDR brightness, up to a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It’s equipped with M5 Pro or M5 Max chips — not the M6 chip on the other MacBook Pros announced this week. There’s a Dynamic Island on the screen that can show you things like Live Activities, similar to what’s available on iPhones. And the glowing Apple logo on the lid has returned.
Apple says the screen’s touch sensor is built “directly into the display panel” and not layered on top of it, which the company claims reduces latency. As for why you’d want to use the touchscreen, Apple offers examples like testing iOS and iPadOS apps directly on the display or playing software instruments on the screen. The company says that the laptop also has a “newly designed hinge” for better stability.
The 14-inch model weighs 3 pounds, and the 16-inch model weighs 4 pounds, according to Apple. The laptop also offers “up to” 24 hours of battery life. It has a MagSafe 3 port, a headphone jack, an SD card reader, an HDMI port, and three Thunderbolt 5 ports. The laptop also supports three external displays simultaneously or four if you get an M5 Max version. Apple is also touting an “enhanced six-speaker sound system” that offers “50 percent deeper bass and remarkable sound clarity.”
Until now, Apple has long resisted the idea of a touchscreen laptop. On a 2012 earnings call, former CEO Tim Cook, responding to a question about why he doesn’t think the tablet and laptop will converge, said , “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.” In 2010, Steve Jobs called touchscreen laptops “ergonomically terrible.” Apple tried replacing the function keys with the Touch Bar on MacBook Pros starting in 2016 , but it went back to physical function keys with the 2021 MacBook Pro redesign and fully dropped the Touch Bar in 2023 .
The new laptop follows what’s been a busy week of Apple announcements, including an iPad Mini with an OLED display and M6-powered iMacs .
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