Apple announces touchscreen MacBook Pro with OLED display

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 Apple has long debated. (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 120 Hz 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.

Second, the top-of-screen camera notch has been replaced by the small black cutout that Apple calls the Dynamic Island. Presumably it works similarly to the one we’ve seen on the iPhone, expanding or contracting to show live activities and other information.

Finally, there’s a retro throwback: The Apple logo on the back of the lid glows like the logo on MacBooks of yore.

In terms of specs, this refresh includes the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips—the same ones in the previous refresh. The M6 series has already arrived in other Macs, but it seems Apple is skipping them for this refresh; there were previously reports that Apple planned to hold off on updating the chip until the M7 series, which could have significant improvements for AI performance, just like the recently released A20 Pro chip for the iPhone does.

Memory configurations top out where they did in previous MacBook Pro models with M5 Max: up to 128GB of RAM. That said, storage can now go up to 16TB—if you can afford it.

Preorders start today, and the device will reach consumers on November 6. As expected, the price is the catch. The M5 Pro-equipped 14-inch model starts at $2,899, while the 16-inch starts at $3,399. But if you want the M5 Max, you’re looking at a $4,499 starting point for the 14-inch, and $4,799 for the 16-inch—and that’s not accounting for any potential RAM or storage upgrades.

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