Apple Unveils First Touchscreen MacBook Pro, Starting at £2,899
Apple has introduced its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, adding touch controls to a laptop line that previously relied on trackpads and keyboards. The new…
Apple has introduced its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, adding touch controls to its professional laptop line ahead of the models’ availability on November 6. The company says the new MacBook Pro combines a PROLED XDR display with M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, with prices ranging from £2,899 to £14,549.
It is a notable change for a product line that had not previously offered touch input. Apple chief hardware officer Johny Srouji called the new model “a monumental step forward for the Mac.”
What can users do with the touchscreen?
The display supports familiar gestures: users can swipe to scroll through webpages, pinch to zoom in on photos, drag slides in presentations and double-tap a window to fill the screen. Apple says macOS translates touches into clicks, allowing multiple existing apps to work with the feature immediately.
Those apps include Adobe Lightroom, Blender, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maxon ZBrush, Notion, Canva, Zoom, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The touch sensor sits inside the display panel rather than on a separate layer, a design Apple says makes it feel as if users are touching the displayed content itself.
That could change how creative work feels on the laptop. Apple says graphic designers can draw across the display instead of being limited by the trackpad’s area. Musicians can play software instruments onscreen, while app developers can test Touch in their iOS and iPadOS apps directly on the MacBook Pro display.
There are practical hardware changes, too. Apple redesigned the hinge for greater stability when people use the touchscreen. The company also created real-time video stabilisation to smooth the camera feed during video calls while users interact with the display.
What else is new in the MacBook Pro?
The laptop comes in 14-inch and 16-inch models, weighing three and four pounds respectively. Apple describes the design as thinner and lighter than previous models and says battery life reaches up to 24 hours.
The new models feature 128 gigabytes of memory and 16 terabytes of storage. Apple says the PROLED XDR screen combines OLED technology with algorithms that control light across the display, aiming to deliver colour, brightness and contrast while keeping brightness and grayscale uniform.
Apple also says the display uses tandem OLED technology and a manufacturing process that calibrates each panel for consistency. The company has described it as “the world’s best laptop display.”
A six-speaker sound system is designed to provide deeper bass and clearer sound than previous models. The laptop also adds Dynamic Island, the search and notification feature currently used in iPhones.
For buyers, the touchscreen is more than a new way to navigate menus: it brings direct interaction to tasks such as drawing, arranging presentation slides and playing software instruments. But Apple has not positioned touch as a replacement for the trackpad; the company’s examples show the controls working alongside the existing Mac experience.
“With the magic of Touch coming to MacBook Pro, combined with the game-changing performance of M5 Pro and M5 Max, we’ve created a whole new way for pros to interact with their content,” Srouji said.
The new MacBook Pro models will be available from November 6, with prices reaching £14,549.
