Apple launches its first touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple launched its first touchscreen MacBook Pro on Wednesday, starting at $2,899 for the 14-inch model and $3,399 for the 16-inch — nearly a decade after its only previous touchscreen experiment, the Touch Bar, which Apple later discontinued. The new laptops carry a redesigned PROLED XDR display, a Dynamic Island-style camera cutout instead of a notch, and a hinge engineered to keep the screen steady when tapped.

Buyers choose between M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. Memory tops out at 128GB, unified, with storage options running as high as 16TB. The 14-inch model comes in at 3.0 pounds (1.38 kg); the 16-inch version weighs 4.0 pounds (1.82 kg), both lighter than their non-touch predecessors, and each can drive three external displays on the M5 Pro configuration or up to four on the M5 Max.

Preorders open October 30, with the laptops shipping November 6. The launch lands a day after Apple refreshed its standard, non-touch MacBook Pro with an M6 chip, starting at $1,999 for the 14-inch size.

The touchscreen model is the second marquee launch under new CEO John Ternus, who also introduced Apple’s first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, in September. Apple executives — including Steve Jobs, who once dismissed the idea as “ergonomically terrible,” and Tim Cook — spent years publicly skeptical of a touch-enabled Mac, even as rumors that the company was building one circulated for nearly three years before Wednesday’s reveal.

Why it matters

A touchscreen MacBook under Apple’s newest CEO signals a real break from the Jobs-era doctrine that kept touch and trackpad input strictly separate — a line Apple held even through the short-lived Touch Bar experiment.