Apple's new MacBook Pro brings touch to the Mac for the first time, together with a tandem OLED display Apple calls PROLED XDR. I spent the day with it at Apple's launch experience in Los Angeles, and the display and touch were clearly designed as one package. Whether you come to it from a Mac or an iPad, it feels familiar quickly, which is the hardest part to get right when you change how people interact with a computer they have used the same way for decades.
Good and Ready
Windows PCs have offered touch for years, and Apple itself has spent well over a decade teaching people to use touch on iPhone and iPad while keeping it off the Mac. In 2010, Steve Jobs argued that reaching up to a vertical laptop screen would leave your arm tired, and that clip gets replayed every time the topic comes up.
Since then, AI has changed how we engage with content, from talking to our devices to pointing at what we want help with, and reaching for the screen fits that way of working. There is also a generation that grew up with touch as its first interface, and many of them tap a laptop screen by instinct and are puzzled when nothing happens.
As is often the case, Apple moved when it was good and ready, with a clearer use case today and an OLED display that can support it.
Why the Display Matters
PROLED XDR is the foundation of this launch, giving colorists, photographers and designers a screen they can trust for HDR and color work away from the studio. Apple also reduced the reflections OLED panels usually struggle with, which matters more now that people will be putting their fingers on the screen.
The display is also what makes touch work, with the sensor built into the panel itself so the response feels immediate, and a sturdier hinge that keeps the screen steady when you tap it.
OLED also helped Apple cut weight, taking half a pound off the 14-inch and 0.7 pounds off the 16-inch, and you notice it on a laptop you will be reaching toward more often.
Touch That Feels Familiar
Apple built Touch on the gestures Mac users already use on the trackpad, so scrolling, zooming and dragging work the way you expect. The handful of additions, like tapping a window to fill the screen or flicking it into a tiled layout, are easy to pick up. iPad users will feel at home too, so the learning curve is short wherever you are coming from.
The more conservative part of the Apple base is uneasy about touch on the Mac, much like the negative reaction some loyal users had to iPhone Duo next to the traditional iPhone, and two things should ease that concern. First, Apple kept macOS designed around the keyboard and trackpad, so anyone who has no interest in touching the screen can keep working exactly as they do today. Second, many of the skeptics will see the display in person and come away won over by the color, the brightness and how little it reflects.
Because macOS treats a touch like a click, most existing apps work from day one without any developer effort. The more interesting examples sit in Apple's own creative apps, where touch removes a step: playing an instrument on screen in Logic Pro, drawing directly on the canvas in Pixelmator Pro, or dragging clips into place in Final Cut Pro. Bringing the Dynamic Island to the Mac also gives touch a natural spot for quick interactions like pausing music.
Apple updated its gesture APIs for developers, and Microsoft, Adobe, Blender and Canva are among those adding Touch support, with their apps arriving later this year. Translated clicks get users started, and sustained use will depend on apps designed specifically for Touch.
For the Pro and the Aspiring Pro
Apple's event in Los Angeles included a set of demos showcasing creators across film, photography, music, art and fashion. ILM showed how its artists build virtual production worlds on the Mac before they reach the LED wall. Photographer Jeremy Cowart ran his tethered camera, LED walls and projection from one machine. Grammy-winning mixer Fab Dupont worked in spatial audio. Designers Susan Fang and Orelio de Jonghe used computational design and 3D printing to create pieces that look grown, and botanical artist Azuma Makoto imaged flowers in CT and X-ray to design his installations. It was the most hands-on computing launch I have attended.
It was interesting that AI did not come up in the use cases Apple chose to highlight, even though the M5 Max can run large language models. In the demos, several creators went out of their way to point out that what they were showing was made without AI. For a creative community wary of what AI means for its work, Apple kept the spotlight on the creators themselves, with the Mac as the tool they work on.
The positioning targets two audiences at once: the professional who needs the power of M5 Pro and M5 Max and a display they can rely on away from the studio, and the aspiring creator who wants the same tools as the people in those demos. Pricing starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch with M5 Pro and $3,399 for the 16-inch, with M5 Max models from $4,499 and $4,799. Pre-orders opened October 28, with availability on November 6.
Touch speaks to both audiences. For the aspiring creator who grew up on an iPad, it makes the Mac feel less foreign, and for the professional it adds a new way into tools they already know. How far it goes depends on how many developers use the new gesture APIs to build for Touch directly.
As someone who travels with an iPad Pro, I am now wondering whether a 14-inch MacBook Pro could take its place, and Apple has never been shy about letting its own products compete with each other. Touch also brings back a question I first asked when the Mac moved to Apple silicon. I expected that transition to bring iPad apps and a new wave of developers to the Mac App Store, and that growth never quite materialized. A Mac you can touch gives developers a stronger reason to make the move, and this time the Mac App Store might finally see the growth I was expecting back then.