MacBook Pro gets an OLED touchscreen: the first Mac with touch

On 28 October Apple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display, and with it the first Mac with a touchscreen. The 14 and 16-inch models get a tandem OLED display, a new hinge and a Dynamic Island on the Mac. Pre-orders open on 28 October, and deliveries start on 6 November.

The first touchscreen on a Mac

The touch sensor is built into the panel itself rather than layered on top. You can scroll, pinch to zoom, drag and drop and tile windows with gestures. A new hinge is meant to keep the screen stable when you touch it. Most existing apps work with touch, because macOS converts touches into clicks. Developers get new APIs for gestures, and apps from Apple and a number of third parties get support later this year.

The Dynamic Island, known from the iPhone, comes to the Mac and replaces the notch. It is the home for Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI. Spotlight only appears there when Siri AI is available and enabled.

PROLED XDR display

The display is 14.2 or 16.3 inches and consists of two OLED layers. Peak brightness is up to 2,000 nits for both HDR and SDR, the contrast ratio is 10,000,000:1 and the refresh rate varies from 10 to 120 Hz. The display covers P3 and Adobe RGB, with more than 80 percent of Rec. 2020. A nano-texture glass option is available.

M5 Pro and M5 Max, thinner and lighter

Inside the MacBook Pro are the same M5 Pro and M5 Max as in the models from last spring. You can choose up to 128 GB of memory and up to 16 TB of storage. According to Apple the 14-inch weighs 3 pounds (about 1.4 kg), half a pound lighter than before, and is about half a millimetre thinner. The 16-inch weighs 4 pounds (about 1.8 kg), 0.7 pounds lighter, and is nearly a millimetre thinner. The battery lasts up to 24 hours.

Ports are three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card reader, MagSafe and a headphone jack. With an M5 Pro you can connect up to three external displays, with an M5 Max up to four. There are also Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, Touch ID, a six-speaker sound system and a 12 megapixel Center Stage camera. It runs macOS 27.

Dutch pricing

According to iCulture the 14-inch MacBook Pro with OLED touchscreen starts at 3,349 euros and the 16-inch at 3,949 euros. The standard configuration has 24 GB of memory and 1 TB of storage.

For business users

This is a considerable price step up from the new MacBook Pro with M6 at 2,329 euros. The display is the big difference, as the chips are the same M5 Pro and M5 Max as in spring. For creative and technical professionals doing colour-critical work the display is the reason to look, and for everyone else the M6 version is probably the more sensible choice. Here too, mind Siri AI, which arrives in beta with macOS 27.2 but not in Dutch.