Apple has introduced a new touchscreen MacBook Pro, starting at $2,899, marking a significant shift after years of resisting touchscreen integration on its laptops. The new models come in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes and feature the PROLED XDR Display, which offers up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and a high contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1. The laptop is powered by Apple’s latest M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, supporting up to 128GB of unified memory and 16TB of storage. To enhance usability, Apple designed a specialized hinge to stabilize the screen during touch interactions and video calls, and replaced the usual notch with a Dynamic Island-style cutout.

Both sizes of the touchscreen MacBook Pro are lighter than their non-touch predecessors, with the 14-inch model weighing 3.0 pounds and the 16-inch at 4.0 pounds. They come equipped with three Thunderbolt 5 ports, an HDMI port, SDXC card slot, MagSafe charging, and a headphone jack. The M5 Pro chip allows for connection to three external displays, while the M5 Max supports up to four. The laptops also feature an upgraded six-speaker array with new woofers to improve audio quality.

This launch follows almost a decade since Apple introduced the Touch Bar on MacBook Pros, which was later discontinued, and represents a more comprehensive adoption of touchscreen technology in its laptop lineup. The device will be available for preorder starting October 30, with general availability commencing November 6. This release is part of CEO John Ternus’s early tenure milestones, alongside the recent debut of Apple’s first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo.

Apple’s new touchscreen MacBook Pro arrival ends a long-held skepticism within the company about touch interfaces on laptops, a stance publicly articulated by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook in the past. Rumors about a touchscreen variant circulated for nearly three years before this official unveiling at Apple’s “Pro and Tell” event. The launch also coincides closely with the release of a new standard 14-inch MacBook Pro featuring the M6 chip, which starts at $1,999 and was announced just one day earlier.