In a sharp reversal of a long-held company ethos, Apple announced a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED touchscreen today at its "Pro and Tell" event in Los Angeles. The new "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display" runs on the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, has a glowing Apple logo on its lid, and comes in 14- and 16-inch sizes starting at $2,899. It's set for release on Friday, Nov. 6, and preorders are now live.
The new MacBook Pro marks the biggest redesign to Apple's premium laptop since 2021. The company is positioning it as a device for creative professionals with "the most demanding workflows," according to a press release.
"The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is a monumental step forward for the Mac," said Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer. "PROLED XDR is the world’s best laptop display. ... And with the magic of Touch coming to MacBook Pro, combined with the game-changing performance of M5 Pro and M5 Max, we’ve created a whole new way for pros to interact with their content, taking their workflows to a completely new level."
Srouji added: "The new MacBook Pro is the result of the deep integration between Apple silicon, hardware, and software, and there’s simply nothing else like it."
The announcement isn't a total surprise. Apple insiders have been circulating rumors of an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro since early 2023. But it's certainly a twist, given that prominent Apple executives have spent over a decade and a half dismissing the idea of a touch-enabled MacBook (including now-CEO John Ternus).
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It's not clear what inspired Apple's change of heart, though the logical explanation is that it's simply meeting the competition. Many premium Windows laptops have had OLED touchscreens for years.
The touchscreen MacBook Pro caps off a busy few days of Apple announcements. Earlier this week, the company unveiled an OLED iPad Mini, a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip, an M6-powered iMac, and updates to the Apple Creator Studio suite.
MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display: Specs and features
The new MacBook Pro's PROLED XDR display has a 10 to 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness, and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio for ultra-deep blacks. Apple said its touch sensor is located inside the display panel, not on top of it, to reduce lag. It also has a stronger hinge so it doesn't wobble when you tap it.
Compared to Apple's standard MacBook Pro, which has a non-touch "Liquid Retina XDR" mini-LED display, the new PROLED XDR model has a brighter, sharper picture. It also supports the Adobe RGB color space, not just P3, and has slightly smaller bezels for more usable screen space. Users can still upgrade it with an etched nano-texture (matte) coating for $150 extra.
The new MacBook Pro has a 12MP Center Stage webcam that lives in a hole-punch cutout within the Dynamic Island, an interactive pill-shaped notification area at the top of its screen. (It borrowed this feature from modern iPhones.) Yes, the notch is gone.
The new MacBook Pro is powered by the high-end M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which Apple rolled out in an updated non-touch MacBook Pro this spring. (It's not available with the newer M6 chip.) It's configurable with the same amount of memory — 24GB to 128GB RAM — but its storage maxes out at 16TB SSD, up from 8TB. The beefiest configuration costs a whopping $14,549.
Both sizes of the new MacBook Pro have slimmed down by up to about a millimeter, and they weigh up to 0.7 pounds less than their non-touch counterparts. (The 14-incher is only three pounds.) Apple said it reworked their thermal system so they still run cool despite being so much lighter. They still come in the same two finishes: space black and silver.
On the speaker front, the new MacBook Pro has new woofers and tweeters for better bass and clearer sound, respectively. Connectivity-wise, you still get three Thunderbolt 5 ports, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, WiFi 7, and Bluetooth 6.0.
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 with an M5 Pro chip, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. The 16-inch version starts at $3,399 with the same specs.
