LOS ANGELES—Apple today announced and gave a first glimpse of its first major MacBook Pro redesign in more than five years. As rumored, it includes an OLED display, and for the first time on macOS, a touchscreen—a change that Apple has long debated the merits of. (Former CEO Steve Jobs famously was opposed).
Apple’s demonstration video showed users interacting with applications by reaching up to touch the screen, including file dragging and multi-touch gestures like pinch-to-zoom. It does not appear to be a 2-in-1 convertible design, though; all the footage was of people reaching up to touch the screen in a normal laptop configuration.
The OLED display (which Apple is, of course, calling the PROLED XDR) seems to be the real highlight here, compared to earlier models: It can achieve 2,000 nits in terms of maximum brightness, and Apple says it has a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. References were made to burn-in protection, but details on which approach it’s taking for that weren’t yet shared. The display retains the 120Hz variable refresh rate of its predecessors.
Beyond that, the design is largely similar to the existing one, but there are a few notable differences. First, it’s much lighter. Apple said when announcing it that the 14-inch model is just 3 pounds, down around half a pound from the previous model, depending on configuration.
