German-Russian record producer and DJ Zedd (left) and Apple CEO John Ternus look at the new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro during the Apple Experience LA event in Los Angeles on October 28, 2026.
Frederick J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images
Apple on Wednesday unveiled its first touchscreen laptop, calling it the MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR Display.
Apple says the laptop has a new display using OLED technology, which offers better brightness, colors, and wider viewing angles. It uses Apple’s M5 Pro or Max chip, which Apple announced Wednesday is lighter than Apple’s current Pro laptops.
It’s still an Apple laptop, running MacOS rather than a version of the iPhone or iPad operating system. In the video, Apple showed users swiping the screen to interact with videos and images. There’s also a glowing Apple logo on the laptop’s lid.
The new laptop will be available on November 6th, with prices starting at $2,899 for the 14-inch version. The 16-inch version will cost at least $3,399. Both models are significantly more expensive than the existing models.
This is Apple’s third major product launch under new CEO John Ternus, and signals an accelerating pace of hardware releases. This is also a major reversal for Apple, which has resisted adding touchscreens to its laptops for decades, as some Windows machines now have touchscreen capabilities.
“Yes, we are bringing touch to the Mac for the first time,” Ternas said in live remarks to media and analysts in Los Angeles.
The laptop market is experiencing its worst downturn in history. Overall shipments are expected to decline by 11% this year. Analysts say memory shortages in the AI-driven global market are contributing to soaring laptop prices, hurting sales and demand.
According to market research firm IDC, total PC shipments in the third quarter were down 20% compared to the same period last year. Apple’s own shipments fell 11% in the quarter, according to estimates.
Attendees try out the new touchscreen MacBook Pro at Apple Experience LA on October 28, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Frederick J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images
Even Apple isn’t immune to rising memory prices, with then-CEO Tim Cook warning this summer that the situation with memory prices was “unsustainable.” Almost all Macs have increased in price this year. For example, the Mac Mini, which was released in August, increased in price by $300.
This announcement concludes a busy two-month period of product launches under Ternus.
Apple also announced new iMac and MacBook Pro models with the M6 chip this week, after raising prices totaling hundreds of dollars across the lineup in June. Apple announced Monday the iPad Mini, which starts at $699, $100 more than its predecessor.
In September, Apple launched new iPhones, including the iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone. It also revealed a new smart speaker with a display called HomeView that uses a redesigned version of Siri to answer a wider range of questions.
The launch signals the Mac’s growing strategic importance to Apple, even though it generates less revenue than the iPhone. In its most recent quarter, Apple reported Mac sales of $10.35 billion, representing just under 10% of the company’s total revenue.
However, many software developers rely on the Mac, and it remains the only supported platform for developing iPhone apps. And in recent months, Apple has emphasized its chip and memory architecture, making the case that its computers are ideal for local and edge AI that runs on devices rather than in the cloud.
Meta’s AI model development team purchased hundreds of Mac Minis this year to test the agent. And Apple, in particular, announced earlier this month that it had partnered with Meta to enable a large, near-state-of-the-art model to run on clusters of Macs connected by high-speed cables, allowing developers to run agent code without paying Anthropic or OpenAI.
Apple has historically been resistant to touchscreen laptops. Software director Craig Federighi said in 2018 that ergonomics would fatigue users.
“We’re building the world’s best touch computer on the iPad,” Tarnas, then Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, told the Wall Street Journal in 2021. “The iPad is perfectly optimized for that. And the Mac is perfectly optimized for indirect input. I don’t really see any reason to change that.”
Ternus has been working on Macs since joining the company and is credited, along with silicon chief Johny Srouji, with leading Apple’s efforts to run Macs on Apple chips rather than Intel. In its official CEO transition statement, Apple praised Ternus’ work on the Mac.
That’s why Ternas, in his early days as CEO, may be the executive to reverse Apple’s long-standing design philosophy.
Ryan Reese, IDC’s vice president of worldwide device trackers, said that while touchscreen laptops have long been available on Windows machines, it’s just a feature and not the selling point behind most purchasing decisions.
According to IDC data, only 17% of laptops shipped worldwide this year will have a touchscreen. Laptops with touchscreens have a slightly lower average selling price than laptops without touchscreens.
He said hardware technology was not a limiting factor for Apple to integrate desktop and mobile interfaces, adding that Apple could have tried to make the iPad more like a laptop, then waited to launch a touchscreen laptop until it had a better user experience and perfected its software.
“This is really a user interface and software issue,” Reese said. “This is another thing that can attract developers.”
