Two hands touch the screen of an open MacBook Pro showing a virtual piano keyboard in a music app

Tech 28 October 2026

Apple finally lets you touch a Mac (it starts at $2,899)

The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro brings the first touchscreen to a Mac, a tandem OLED panel Apple calls PROLED XDR, the Dynamic Island and M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. Pre-orders opened on 28 October in 30 countries, with deliveries from 6 November.

For years Apple said no. On Wednesday it said yes. The new MacBook Pro is the first Mac you can touch, and Apple’s own announcement opened pre-orders the same day.

Touch is only half of it. The other half is the screen, which Apple calls PROLED XDR: a tandem OLED with two layers of self-lit pixels. Apple quotes up to 2,000 nits, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz and coverage of both the P3 and Adobe RGB colour spaces.

What touch is for

This isn’t a laptop pretending to be an iPad. Apple’s demos are pro work: spinning a 3D model, playing an on-screen piano, nudging a video timeline. Plenty of apps should work straight away, because macOS turns every touch into a click, and developers get new gesture tools if they want to do more.

The Dynamic Island moves over from the iPhone too, sitting at the top of the display as the new home for Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI. That last one comes with an asterisk for readers in Portugal, since Apple still hasn’t switched Siri AI on for iPhones in the EU.

Back in 2010, Steve Jobs argued that vertical touchscreens wear your arm out and that touch belonged on phones and tablets. Apple isn’t revisiting that argument out loud. It has simply built the thing.

Prices and dates

There are 14-inch and 16-inch models with M5 Pro or M5 Max, up to 128GB of unified memory and up to 16TB of storage. Apple claims up to 24 hours of battery life, in bodies of 3 and 4 pounds (roughly 1.4kg and 1.8kg).

In the US, the 14-inch M5 Pro starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399. With M5 Max it is $4,499 and $4,799. The release gives no European prices. Pre-orders opened on 28 October in 30 countries and regions, and deliveries start on Friday 6 November.

That is the same day the new OLED iPad mini lands in Portuguese shops, which tells you where Apple’s autumn is heading: OLED on everything you hold, and now touch on the thing you used to only type on.

By Oliver Grant

Image: Apple (Newsroom)

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Tech 24 October 2026

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Tech 23 October 2026

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