Apple released its first touchscreen laptop on Wednesday, named the MacBook Pro with ProMotion XDR Display.
Apple stated that this laptop features a new display with OLED technology, offering higher brightness, better color, and a wider viewing angle. It is powered by Apple’s M5 Pro or M5 Max chip, and Apple said on Wednesday that this new model is lighter than its current professional-grade laptops.
This is still an Apple laptop running macOS, not the operating system used on iPhone or iPad. Apple demonstrated in a video how users can manipulate videos or images by swiping on the screen. It also features a glowing Apple logo on the lid.
This new laptop will be available for sale on November 6, with the 14-inch model starting at $2,899 and the 16-inch model starting at $3,399. Both models are significantly more expensive than the current versions.
This is the third major product launch under the leadership of Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, signaling an accelerated hardware release cadence. It also marks a significant shift for Apple: for decades, Apple has resisted adding touchscreens to its laptops, even as some Windows devices have long featured them.
“Yes, we brought touch to Mac for the first time,” Ternus said during a live presentation to media and analysts in Los Angeles.
Amid one of the most severe downturns in the laptop market, this new MacBook Pro has been unveiled. Overall shipments are expected to decline by 11% this year. Analysts say that an AI-driven global memory shortage has raised laptop prices, thereby dampening sales and demand.
Market research firm IDC reported that global PC shipments declined by 20% year-over-year in the third quarter. According to the firm’s estimates, Apple’s own shipments decreased by 11% during the same period.
Even Apple has not been immune to the impact of rising memory prices. Former CEO Tim Cook warned this summer that the memory price situation was "unsustainable." Nearly all Mac models have seen price increases this year. For example, the Mac Mini, released in August, increased in price by $300.
This announcement will conclude the busy two-month product launch period following Ternus's appointment.
This week, Apple also launched new iMac and MacBook Pro models powered by the M6 chip, following price increases of hundreds of dollars across the product line in June. On Monday, Apple introduced the new iPad Mini, starting at $699—$100 more than the previous generation.
In September, Apple released new iPhone models, including its first foldable smartphone, the iPhone Duo. Apple also launched a new smart speaker with a display called HomeView, featuring a redesigned version of Siri that uses more advanced AI to answer a broader range of questions.
This release indicates that, despite generating less revenue than the iPhone, the Mac's importance in Apple's strategy is growing. Apple reported Mac sales of $10.35 billion in the most recent quarter, accounting for just under 10% of the company's total revenue.
However, many software developers prefer Macs, and it remains the only supported platform for developing iPhone apps. In recent months, Apple has also emphasized its chip and memory architecture to demonstrate that its computers are best suited for running AI locally—known as edge AI—rather than in the cloud.
For example, Meta’s AI model development team purchased hundreds of Mac Minis this year to test agents. Earlier this month, Apple also partnered with Meta to announce that large, near-state-of-the-art models can run on Mac clusters connected by high-speed cables, enabling developers to run agent-based code without paying Anthropic or OpenAI.
Apple has historically resisted touch-screen laptops—software chief Craig Federighi explained in 2018 that such a design would cause user fatigue from an ergonomic standpoint. At the time, Ternus was Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, and he told Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal in 2021: “We made the best touch computer in the world—that’s the iPad. It’s fully optimized for that. The Mac, on the other hand, is fully optimized for indirect input. We never really felt there was a need to change that.”
Since joining the company, Ternus has worked on the Mac business and, alongside chip lead Johny Srouji, is regarded as a leader in driving the Mac’s transition from Intel chips to Apple’s own silicon. Apple’s official CEO transition statement also highlighted Ternus’s work on the Mac.
This may also be why Ternus became the executive who challenged Apple’s long-standing design philosophy early in his tenure as CEO.
Ryan Reith, Vice President of IDC's Global Device Trackers, said that touchscreen laptops on Windows machines have long existed, but they have been merely a feature rather than a key selling point behind most purchasing decisions.
According to IDC data, only 17% of laptops shipped globally this year will feature touchscreens. The average price of touchscreen laptops is also slightly lower than that of non-touchscreen laptops.
He added that hardware technology is not the limiting factor for Apple in integrating its desktop and mobile interfaces; Apple may have been waiting until it could deliver an excellent user experience, refining its software after attempts to make the iPad more like a laptop, before launching a touchscreen laptop.
Reith said, "This is essentially a user interface and software issue. It adds another feature to attract developers."