Apple's $2,899 Touchscreen MacBook Pro Opens Preorders, Ships November 6
The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399, with preorders opening Wednesday.
By Elena Menon ·
Apple began taking preorders Wednesday for a MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen, the first time the company has shipped touch capability on the product line. The 14-inch model starts at $2,899, the 16-inch at $3,399, and both ship November 6.
The machine carries a display Apple calls a PROLED XDR, a tandem OLED panel rated for 2,000 nits of peak SDR brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. A Dynamic Island appears on the screen for items such as Live Activities, and the glowing Apple logo has returned to the lid. The touch sensor sits inside the display panel rather than layered over it, which Apple says reduces latency.
Under the lid, Apple offers M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. The 14-inch unit weighs 3 pounds and the 16-inch unit weighs 4 pounds; bezel reductions brought screen sizes to 14.2 inches and 16.3 inches, and the chassis is thinner by half a millimeter and nearly a millimeter respectively. Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours. Ports include MagSafe 3, a headphone jack, an SD card reader, HDMI, and three Thunderbolt 5, with support for three external displays, or four with M5 Max.
Apple's own apps are optimized for touch, and an updated API will let developers add touch support to their apps, the company said in a press release. Its examples of use include testing iOS and iPadOS apps on the display and playing software instruments on the screen.
The release ends a long stretch of resistance inside Apple. On a 2012 earnings call, then chief executive Tim Cook answered a question about convergence this way: "You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user." Steve Jobs called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible" in 2010. Apple replaced the function row with a Touch Bar on MacBook Pros beginning in 2016, returned to physical function keys with the 2021 redesign, and dropped the Touch Bar entirely in 2023.
The MacBook Pro follows a week of Apple announcements that included an iPad Mini with an OLED display and M6-powered iMacs.
Source: The Verge
