Touch-screen Macs is kind of a terrible development for anyone who loves the Mac. It's not just a harmless feature that you can ignore if you don't want it, because it's customer-facing and will now generate complaints and bugs from people who do use it. Those people will complain (rightly) that macOS UI widgets are too small to accurately manipulate with your fingers (they are indeed too small) and don't make sense with a touch screen (they don't make sense).

That means Apple will begin imposing all sorts of UI dreck on all of us, whether we want to use our screens as touch surfaces or not.

This is basically what happened with Microsoft - Windows Vista and 7 were installed in plenty of laptops with touchscreens, and customers would complain about not being able to maximize windows without closing them, not being able to open menus without touching toolbar buttons, etc.

Eventually Microsoft listened to them and we got Windows 8. Now this is the beginning of the same process for macOS.

Everyone's focused on the touchscreen, but I'm seriously impressed how they managed to cut down the weight.

* For the 14-inch: 3.5 lb (1.59 kg) -> 3.0 lb (1.36 kg)

* For the 16-inch: 4.7 lb (2.13 kg) -> 4.0 lb (1.81 kg)

About 15% lighter on both models. Switching from LCD to OLED saves weight because the screen does not need a backlight and has fewer layers. They also made the laptop thinner by nearly 1 mm. But that's not enough to push the weight down by 300 grams. They must have redesigned internal components to cut weight as well.

There must have been a dedicated effort to reduce weight. Kudos to the MacBook Pro team!

Oh wow, it’s like they’re trying less and less.

When they introduced the Apple Pencil and people were like “haha it’s a stylus”, the thing was decidedly NOT a stylus (it actually couldn’t be used to control some parts of the UI). It was an actual digital pen, something that used to be specialized and expensive external hardware, and it worked beautifully with the iPad. It was literally “stylus but GOOD”. I saw it and thought “people will make memes about this, but Apple totally gets it”.

When they introduced the Vision Pro, VR was just kind of shit. Bulky, ugly, uncool. Vision Pro tried to resolve some of the issues, but it was still kind of half-assed. Like they wanted to have a VR device but couldn’t actually make it work. Good resolution, but not great. Vergence-accomodation conflict not addressed. Still bulky and ugly. Isolation kind of addressed (with the AR-ish UX and the “see-through” display), but not enough.

Now we got the foldable iPhone and a touchscreen MacBook.

Foldable phones are still awfully delicate and the whole concept doesn’t have a clear “killer” use case. There’s no new UX, no new features, it’s just an iPad Mini in a marginally smaller device that’s expensive as hell. Apple didn’t even try to address the obvious shortcomings, they just built the same stupid thing everyone else is failing to sell.

Touchscreen laptops still wobble, they still get covered with fingerprints, they’re still uncomfortable and there’s still no meaningful UX. This thing doesn’t even try to address any of that. Their marketing images literally just show hands hovering above the keyboard and touching the screen for no good reason. They’ve been mocking touchscreen laptops for years now and now they release one like it’s the most obvious thing ever. 1984 vibes.

Does anyone use/like touch on their windows (linux?) laptops? I've never really been drawn to wanting to do that. My mouse is far more accurate and doesn't block my view. But maybe it's just because I don't have it and I would find tons of uses for it. Also, I don't love the idea of putting fingerprints all over my screen. I guess I can understand for testing iOS/iPad apps but past that I just don't see myself wanting to use that.

Then again, it really doesn't matter to me at all what the screen looks like or what features it has, I use my MBP docked 99% of the time with the screen closed, to the point that my next computer will almost certainly be a Mac Studio and I'll just use my MBP on the rare occasions I need it on the go.

Fully willing to accept that I could be an outlier, but I have never understood how a market exists for laptops with touch screens.

Apple is not what it used to be… We see it in the hardware AND the software.

It used to be: think different

It used to be: It just works…

Now we got “apple intelligence” and subscriptions all over the place and also the lock-in feels stronger over time. Don’t even get me started that one can’t easily replace the battery oneself. They gradually convinced us that reduced repairability is fine.

I got my first MacBook Pro in 2006… things were quite different back then.

Anyway, I’ve decided I wanted to get away from BigTech a while ago. Apple is the hardest part for me. They used to have this annoyance-free usability that I loved so much. iPhone Duo, Touchscreen on the Mac, liquid glass, visionPro, etc. are all valid things to go after and I don’t think these are bad things per se. But it is not what I care about. And clearly the focus has shifted away from the values I used to share with this company about what constitutes a good product.

I took the hit on the ownership/control side because their products were so ‘seamless’.

Now I hope the Framework and Fairphone (with eOS) have matured enough to not regret when I am getting off the Apple-train. I don’t expect a frictionless experience - it just has to be sufficiently annoyance-free. I’ll happily take some rough edges in exchange for greater control and ownership.

“Unfortunately” their products are really sturdy and it will take a while until my M3 MacBookAir and iPhone 14 need to be replaced ^^

What's the point of a touch display if the laptop doesn't have a 360 hinge !? The interaction looks very awkward and unless they stiffen the hinge compared to previous model, the thin screen will keep tilting backwards.

Their demo example for the touch interface is piano keys? That's a 2010 Scott Forstall level of skeuomorphism that doesn't translate well for a laptop screen because it's not convenient.

I have a Macbook Pro 14 first gen and I love this machine but watching what Apple is doing lately I think they are starting to loose the plot.

A foldable iPhone, macbooks with touch displays, apple watches constantly listening to your conversations, dropping updates for not so old devices like AWU 1, I understand that I am not a target audience for those products but to me this just speaks a lack of vision for the company and their products. I mean this is one of the most valuable companies in the world with some of the best people working there and this is the best that we can get a foldable iphone and a touch display I don't believe it.

The last keynote also was probably the worst one I ever saw couple of years ago I couldn't wait for keynotes this year I am totally over them we are at the Tron meme scene where one the board member asked what was new in the new OS version and seems to be just the number - [0]

[0] - Hacking Encom's new operating system – TRON: Legacy (2010) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeh3E67brBs&t=115s

There's no universe this doesn't negatively affect the UX of the OS for non-touch users. You can't simply support (or rather you can half-arse) new affordances without contorting the rest of the already well worn paths.

Well, at least my children can now instinctively touch the screen and it’ll do something, instead of dad saying “stop, it’s not an iPad.”

I Hackintoshed a 2-in-1 with a touch screen way back in 2018. Wrote about it in a comically long how-to piece about how to put it together.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-to-make-a-hackintosh-lap...

(And yes, I know the code got mangled. I don’t run the Vice archives.)

It was fine then, it will be fine now. This is a non-issue.

Touch is probably not going to be useful in most contexts, but there are two things that come to mind:

1. Since many iOS apps can run on Apple silicon Macs now, this might be useful for apps where touch matters for more than just clicking buttons.

2. For mobile app developers, you can actually try real touches events on the simulator/emulator while developing and get better sense of how it feels without needing to pull out a physical device.

I have a touchscreen on my Googlebook (I know, early adopter issues galore, but I love mine now). I basically forget I have it most of the time, but every now and then, it's been cool.

For local LLM people:

(for comparison, M4 pro has 273 GB/s and M1 pro has 200GB/s and M1 max has 400GB/s)

M5 Pro (20-core GPU): 307 GB/s memory bandwidth (supports 24 GB, 48 GB, 64 GB).

M5 Max (32-core GPU): 460 GB/s memory bandwidth. (36 GB)

M5 Max (40-core GPU): 614 GB/s memory bandwidth (supports 48 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB)

You would think they would add a cellular modem to it now that they have their own, but no we get a touchscreen.

Pro tip always get the silver macbooks because they wear out considerably better. On the black ones the paint near the charger ends up looking terrible and any dents/nicks/scratches look bad.

A laptop starting at almost 3 grand with only 24gb ram is a tragedy, the RAMpocalypse is brutal.

Basically $400 premium for a screen upgrade. I'm sure the screen is brilliant but mini LED is very much not bad. It's a real bummer that we seem to be entering an era where each year with tech it leans more towards a new product offering that is more but for more money versus getting more for our dollar consistently.

OLED feels pretty established at this point... could they really not have pulled off just making that the default screen on pro's or is this just a price gouge for a premium feature.

For work I have a Windows laptop with a touch screen and these were the only times I have wanted to use it:

1. The trackpad on it is so god awful that using any sort of multi finger gesture is a non-starter. In this case the touch screen works significantly better.

2. I wanted to draw in a whiteboarding tool. Drawing with my finger is not ideal so I tried a passive stylus. Drawing with a passive rubber-tipped stylus leaves a lot to be desired. I would much rather use an active stylus or a pen display for artists if I could.

Apple is known for the best trackpads. They have set the bar high and they have consistently met that bar for over a decade. I don't need a touch screen for gestures when their trackpad feels just as good. To my next point, there is no pen support on this screen.

Given this, I feel the touch screen is going to be seen just like the touch bar, a pretty feature that receives some good niche support, but ultimately does not align with how the majority of users use a laptop. I just hope there's an option to turn off the touch screen when they inevitably start shifting this display down to the base model.

I don’t understand Apple’s market positioning here.

Apple has always positioned the Pro as having the best display in a laptop. Now that’s no longer true.

Are we really moving to 3 tier of laptop displays: Air, Pro, and Pro with ProLED XDR?

That seems unnecessarily confusing for consumers.

“Pro” used to mean you were getting Apple’s best hardware, designed for "professionals".

Now “Pro” doesn't mean that anymore.

I had to double check when I saw the "piano keyboard" demo picture. I assumed I was on a parody website. How the mighty have fallen ...

Apple used to delay and deliver their own brand or interpretation of technology with meaningful differences

Nowadays it feels like a gilded copy of existing tech that also failed to find PMF

Moreover they lost sight of excellent UX, each new OS update adds more bloatware and needless "features" while the calendar app weeps in the corner and slow performance and bugs plague the system

i hope there's a linux analog to pro display xdr at which point i can jump ship

It's interesting that they've decided to release a new high-end model this year even though they aren't coming out with new high-end M6 chips. Apparently they have decided to not make Pro/Max versions of the M6 in favor of accelerating development of the M7 series, which will have improved support for on-device AI. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/2027-macs-m7-chips/

Before I bought my first MacBook years ago, I had a Windows laptop with a touchscreen, and the only useful aspect of it for me was pinch-to-zoom, and only because the touchpad pinch-to-zoom gesture felt so bad to use that I'd rather lift my arm up in the air and get fingerprints on my screen.

Once I got my MacBook - with it's phenomenal touchpad - this was no longer an issue, and over the years since, I have never, not once, wished it had a touchscreen.

All Apple needed to do was to introduce a MBP variant with an OLED screen, as an option for those willing to risk burn-in to gain perfect blacks, and that's it!

The touch screen is such a silly idea here. It even looks ridiculous in their own marketing photos. [1] The keyboard and track pad are already a great combo for getting things done.

I don't get why they're doing this other than making another step towards unifying iOS and macOS (and visionOS?).

[1] https://mastodon.social/@allenu/117519656286195439

1. Improved thermal system

2. Even better speakers

3. Thinner and lighter while retaining the 100 Wh battery

4. No more notch

Seems like a solid all-around update to be. Other than cellular, I can't possibly imagine what more people could want.

Steve had been an outspoken critic of touchscreen laptops. It seems that none of his original gripes are addressed in this release. Another drop in the bucket of half-assed hardware releases from apple "our competitors have it so we need it too" (vision pro, new homepod thing, iphone duo, etc)

$3400 for the base model 16”, 24GB/1TB. $2900 for the 14”. Quite steep.

If the main reason to use macOS is that it's required to develop iPhone apps, a touch screen helps with testing them.

I'm going to offer a use case for touch screens: Augmented reality (AR) development.

I think there's a real possibility that AR takes off in the next 1-5 years. The combination of LLMs + smaller AR glasses makes AR a viable computing platform.

For example, simple things like, "Where are my keys?" is a lot easier to solve if (a) you're wearing your AR glasses already and (b) they have access to a frontier LLM.

However, it's very difficult to simulate "touching something" in AR using a mouse/trackpad and keyboard. What if you want to "twist open" a peanut butter jar? I could imagine touching the screen and twisting my fingers in a rotational pattern along the top of the can.

If only we could discuss the OLED display rather than an optional feature. I did not see anything in the marketing materials that indicated I would be punished for refusing to utilize the touchscreen.

I think half of y'all are trying to justify your most recent MBP upgrade. Those of us still on the M1 are probably looking at this thinking about how fortunate it is that we've waited this long.

Apple perfected the trackpad to the point where a touchscreen never felt necessary; and that’s how they got away with not building one.

This feels more like a marketing gimmick, anyone remember the Touch Bar?

For those wondering about the use case for touch screen, anytime you are showing info to someone and need to scroll the screen it’s much easier with a touch screen. I’ve encountered it most at doctors offices. Also scrolling through pictures with a client, or going through excel sheets with payroll is just easier using touch while sharing.

And let’s be honest, I bet those of us that use touch screens often enough have instinctively touched their laptops screen trying to scroll it on more than a few occasions, I know I’m guilty of it.

I wish I could buy this without touch just for the rush of nostalgia, having the illuminated Apple logo on the back

Am I the only one that has never ever felt the need to have a touch screen display on my Mac?

EDIT: I already can’t stand when people touch my display just to point at something, I definitely don’t want my own oily fingerprints smeared all over a screen I spend all day looking at.

Similar to the "hole drilled through the kitchen table" problem of the HomeView ad, seeing the hands/arms floating in to touch the screen immediately makes me imagine the impossible ergonomics of reaching across a keyboard to touch a screen.

Steve would agree: "We've done tons of user tests on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible."

It's like having a remote control to read your kindle that's sitting on a stand 2 feet away (which, coincidentally, Amazon just announced).

Apparently the Ternus era of Apple is focusing on whether something can be built, not whether it should be released.

Steve Jobs on Macbook w/ Touch:

> “We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work,” “Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off,”

> “It doesn’t work, it’s ergonomically terrible.”

“Back to the Mac” event in 2010.

After the unnecessary iOS "glass", touchbar, and now this USD400 'arm-fatigue feature', and other - made soley for the media-money-shot 'features' - Apple is really just in the 'great demo' business and departs even further 'great product' business.

Is there any information about the touchscreen digitizer technology? My understanding is that there are a few different ways touchscreens are integrated into OLED panels (on-cell, in-cell, external grid). I have a Dell 16" laptop with a 4K OLED which happened to come with a touchscreen; I'm not mad about the touch features themselves (although I rarely if ever use them), except, the "on-cell" touchscreen digitizer is slightly visible under some conditions and because the display is otherwise so flawless and amazing, it's pretty annoying.

OLED screens often exhibit poor text rendering.

I'm curious to see this in person. Looks like the "PROLED" is not using an RGB stripe layout.

Pixel density can reduce text fringing, but I have not seen a laptop OLED panel that renders text as well as an LCD yet.

My iPad Pro has a plenty big screen, a touch screen, and a processor that's faster than my M1 Air...by a lot. I would be ecstatic if they would put MacOS on the iPad. Instead, they put the damn screen for the iPad on the MacBook.

Glowing logo is back!

The pictures of people touching the screen are incredibly ergonomically cringe

The glowing logo is back. It's all I ever wanted.

Sure, we wanted OLED (my ROG G14 has a wonderful screen compared to my mac).

But touch will go about as well as the touchbar did

I have never wanted to touch my laptop screen or felt any sort of desire to do so. In fact I try really hard not to touch it so that I don't get smudges on it.

The laptop touch screen always felt like an awkward use case to me because the ideal UX for touch and KBM are so different. If you're designing for use on laptop/desktop you need to design for KBM-first -- since the majority of devices will be -- and therefore the touch experience suffers, and users with a touchscreen just use the KBM.

I don't think the average consumer cares that much about this either. I've noticed my grandparents often buy laptops with touchscreens accidentally and then proceed to mostly interact with it by accident.

Part of me wants to believe that a company like apple must/would do this right if they were going to do it but on the other hand there's the whole touch bar debacle and it doesn't seem like their foldable phone is starting off with the best reviews either.

For those HDR video editing / color grading specialists, how do these compare to Samsung + LG OLED TVs, Sony HDR Reference Monitors, or else?

I’ve always been interested in HDR video (HDR 10 +, Dolby Vision, HLG) and have wondered if the marginal upgrade in producer display quality will further impact the consumer HDR consumption. Also I think it’s noteworthy that they showcase DaVinci Resolve instead of Final Cut Pro, which is their own non linear editor and color grading app.

I wasn't sure how I would feel about my newish MBP M5 Max when they released this, but given the price increase, and the fact that I have zero interest in a better screen since I dock most of the time, I am happy I paid $2K less for the same horsepower earlier this year.

Update: The one nice thing I noticed is the weight of the 16" is only 4.1lb vs. 4.7lb from the previous model. I guess OLED is a lot lighter. THAT would be nice.

I’m surprised because Apple has famously (and publicly) argued in the past that touchscreens on laptops were a bad idea. Things can change, of course, but I don’t see anything here that even attempts to invalidates any of the arguments they made against touchscreen laptops at the time, which I still think were pretty compelling.

For example, raising your arm to interact with a screen for any sustained period just doesn’t work ergonomically. In my experience, people who buy touchscreen-enabled laptops quickly loose the habit of using the touchscreen for exactly that reason.

It also makes the display look dirty. I expected Apple to pair this with some new coating or display technology that would reduce fingerprints and smudges, etc, but I’m not seeing anything like that either.

Overall I’m surprised Apple would add a whole new interaction model to the MacBook and barely explain why. Given how central UX has always been to Apple (they make a big deal of the mouse, the click wheel and multi-touch, etc.) That feels very... un-Apple.

When I saw rumours of it being touch I thought it would be a continuation of the iPhone Duo* idea but swapping between MacOS and iPadOS with a detachable keyboard, so if you are detached you have a screen, ipadOS and touch, if you plugin the keyboard it has additional hardware and macOS "swaps in" like some companies have attempted in the past

I've always thought the ideal future is to have the phone just be the desktop when docked, if computing advances well enough, and super disappointed this is just some random touch laptop.

The OLED is great as I use a 32" 4k 240hz OLED on MacOS and it has made a huge difference in my eye strain but I don't understand the point of the touch without a proper use for it.

* that you can use the Duo folded 90deg like a mini laptop.

Between open-weight models largely not worth their salt, and me setting up a VPS to do all my development now because I kept running into CPU limits with my M1 Pro, I think I'm just going to replace the battery on my M1 Pro and wait until a MacBook Pro with cellular arrives.

It's wild to think that even just 12 months ago, I would have hailed the touchscreen MacBook Pro. Now I don't need much more than an Air. (I also did more video editing back then, whereas now I don't really do it) (and I also want to play games)

Wasn't "touchscreen for a laptop" another one of those things that Apple intentionally refused to do? Is this the effect of the new leadership?

I am going to jump on the touch hate bandwagon but more specifically I think it’s odd in the format they designed. I think the MSFT surface is brilliant because you can fold it down into an iPad like device which can be great for travel and other non-desk uses.

Touch while still being a normal laptop does feel odd. I would be curious who wants touch in this form factor.

Wasn’t the Touch Bar also supposed to be “a new dimension for pro workflows”.

I guess if users don’t touch it, then you just have to keep trying with something bigger to touch.

My god they finally did it. After all the fears of canibalizing iPad sales and gorilla arms. An Apple touchscreen MacBook.

Absurd it took this long when they basically led the field in touchscreen innovation (especially on the UX side of things)

I always thought the Surface Book design by Microsoft was very Apple like and it always seemed like the logical step: let the screen detach but keep the extra horsepower in the base.

Other than the “you can now make software samplers and soundboards” I don’t know why you would want a touch screen on a laptop.

The entire purpose of the laptop (for me at any rate) is to do real work without the touch screen.

I’m not sure what pro workflows would actually benefit from this vs. a wirelessly paired iPad. I would not pay a dollar extra for touch personally - but that screen does look nice.

The OLED screen is actually a nice development given the original MBP screens had noticeable latency while gaming.

If only you could run Linux on the damn thing so you could play games now.

Where is the reverse engineering army when you need them lol

From the top of my head, things Apple said they wouldn't do, but later did:

- Native mobile apps

- Bigger iPhone

- Pen, as you mentioned

- Foldable iPhone

- Now touchscreen laptop

Anything else?

It looks cool but I just don't think it's something I'd buy. If I wanted touchscreen, I'd just get a windows laptop. What's everyone else's thoughts on touch and display on Apple?

No pen support is lame.

Having said that, I'd be afraid to touch it. On one of my MBPs, I held it by putting my hands near the hinge, with my thumbs resting in the lower corners of the screen. Over (a short period of) time, the protective(?) coating on the screen wore away.

M5 MBP owners, did Apple finally manage to fix the permanent "keyboardprint" on the screen?

I had it very badly on Intel MBP, and now on my M3 Max. I tried some screen protectors, but none of them stuck (pun intended).

I suppose touch only makes it worse?

I love how their marketing is increasingly trying to convince M1 mac owners why they should upgrade. The m1 is still way overpowered for what most people need, including developers. I'm keeping my m1 and m1 max until they stop supporting it.

This is truly groundbreaking! I've always wanted to play piano on a 14" screen.

Everybody worried about the usefulness of touch (which I do find occasionally useful), meanwhile they've literally set base pricing at $2900. For a 14 inch mbp, with 24GB. Hilarious.

How on god's green earth is this worth $2900?

No cellular which is literally the only thing missing from the macbook pro :(

1. Mini LED is fantastic so the OLED jump is marginal at best 2. I know many people with a touchscreen windows laptop. None of them uses the touch function on a regular basis

If i wanted a touch screen mb air, id get an ipad. i will actively avoid these. apple has been dropping the ball big time lately. ive noticed siri has a 5 second delay on my phone now, making reminder setting not so easy.

is graphene os ready for primetime yet?

Dont really care for a touchscreen, but this being Apple I wouldnt be surprised if you will be able to disable touch input in the settings.

Otherwise this seems like a great upgrade, cant wait to get the M7 Pro version of this next year! (My M1 Pro holds up great for now.)

I almost can't imagine a laptop that is less for me. But for the people it is for (like my wife) it's hard to imagine one that's for them more. Really fascinating feeling—kinda glad this exists, even if not for my benefit!

Personal highlight: Seems like the GLOWING apple logo is back!

(don't care about the touchscreen)

Can you use the touchscreen for the "run iPhone and iPad apps" feature of Apple Silicon Macs?

And if so, has Apple changed the policy from developer opt-in to automatic on touchscreen Macs.

My god they’re really running out ideas in Cupertino. What I need is a screen that gives an electrical shock to anybody that dares to touch it with their filthy fingers.

I am on board for touchscreen (and pencil support) for macOS due to my dream of only carrying an iPad Pro for all development; however, I think they’re making the same mistake as the touch bar - touch is only available on the most expensive Mac’s which will ensure they’re niche. Niche options for user input ensure very few apps get updated to use the new user input (foldable phones, I’m speaking about you).

If iPhone duo and touchscreen MacBook are the signs of what's to come under John Ternus then i'm really afraid for the future of Apple.

I think the audience who touches the screen to work AND uses the screen to accurately reproduce colors is basically zero

I really hope the screen no longer has the slow response and ghosting anymore. I'm surprised by the responsive difference every time I use my outdated 2013 MacBook Air's trackpad and immediately feel the difference over my 2021 MacBook Pro M1 daily driver.

Seems like this is essentially a 400$ upgrade for the M6 Pro MacBook Pro. Those 400$ get you better sound, a better display and touch.

This is clearly targeted at creatives, the touchscreen feels more like a nice bonus they give out so people can experiment with touchscreen macOS and polish their apps for it - my guess is that this is preparation for a more convenient touch-based macOS device they're going to launch in a year or so.

Ah, HN is truly the successor to /., developers crying about touchscreens on laptops and gorilla arms.

Brothers, there is a market beyond your bash shells!

;p

All these marketing facts and figures sound great. Nits and contrast ratio and True Tone. The blackest blacks. All great.

Those greasy finger marks are really going to dazzle like never before.

Not a fan of touchscreen on inclined surfaces, personally. I think the ergonomics of this will be bad for shoulders/elbows.

Like the iPad when it’s docked to its smart keyboard, I don’t like touching it at the point, it’s better to use the trackpad that’s laying flat.

It also wobbles when you do touch it. The macbook may not do the wobble, but it will constantly push further open and this may weaken the hinge mechanism over time.

I always thought if Apple did touch on the macbook it would come with a redesign to merge macOS with touch elements from the iPad. As it stands this feels like more of an afterthought.

If there’s one killer feature though, it’s iOS device mirroring and the iOS simulators. I’ve instinctively reached up to touch the iOS simulator so many times.

I wonder how they do the glowing apple logo with no backlight.

The promo video looks like to be shot in Prague, but feels somehow 'off', does it have some ai edits?

Amazing that they've managed to keep prices down. I paid $3300 for a base 15 inch in 2018. The 16 inch now starts at $3400 8 years later. Not bad...

Will this be another touchbar? Only time will tell but I never want to touch my screen. I don't even really do it with my iPad, lol

A macbook with apple pencil support that can be held like a tablet (turn the screen 180 degrees?) would be incredible for digital drawing. Hope to see it in my lifetime.

My god the prices. Good thing I lost interest in high-end laptops. Beefy desktop + light laptop is how I roll nowadays

Back in the day this would have been a “One more thing…” announcement. Apple must be upset with the hardware prices to bury this a late October press release.

Curious to see if oled actually helps battery life. My experience with OLEDs are they absolutely drain power on white scenes. My oled monitor pulls ~90w on a white screen, you can feel it get hot like an old CRT.

I had a Dell OLED 4k laptop 4 years ago that depending on screen brightness would absolutely murder the battery.

Years ago like 2010, 11 Microsoft had demo touchscreen computers running an art application in the Kids Room at the MOMA museum in NYC. It was responsive to actual brushes and was quite an interesting interface. As far as I knew it was a beta.

Does this mean that macOS will natively support touch screens so I don't need to look anymore for after-market solutions[0] for mine? That would be cool.

[0]: https://www.touch-base.com/

The full spec is significantly more expensive in my local currency (Denmark, DKK) than in USD. Something like $7500 even after sales tax of 25% is added.

What gives?

Didn't OLED screens age bad with use as with plasma back in the day? I'd rather not want a less bright mac screen in a few years.

Don't take me wrong, OLED displays on a a MacBook screen is quite a nice feat compared to regular the regular displays we have as of today.

I see. The iPad and Macbook are converging. Interesting. I can’t say I get the use case but perhaps it will fold in some interesting way that makes it usable. I have no problem using a touchscreen occasionally but in the standard configuration the screen will wobble if you touch it.

2000 nits peak screen brightness with nano texture is going to look incredible outdoors. Not sure I'm feeling the need to upgrade yet but glad the brightness+coating combo will continue to be a thing

Hoping for a follow-up convertible touchscreen pen-capable MacBook Air. iPad Pro is just too limiting with iPadOS and it's thicker and heavier than a MacBook Air or any of my convertible Chromebooks.

> Up to 13 more hours than Intel-based MacBook Pro

Even though this reveal seems genuinely cool, this stat sounds weird. Why compare it to Intel Macs when the status quo has been Apple Silicon for half a dozen years?

Will the keyboard and trackpad leave a mark on the screen despite us keeping surfaces clean?

Some of my students use touchscreen Windows laptops. They seem to be OK with them but I never found them usable particularly for coding. A touchscreen laptop has ergonomically bad design. Or it could just be a generational thing.

Finger prints on my screen are a capital crime or at least family meeting time.

Aside: Does anyone else find the new AI texture explosions Apple's using on their marketing pages now a little unsettling and un-Apple? I guess I'm desperate for at least one tech brand to feel / remain human.

No Apple Pencil is a huge miss for consumers. I guess they don't want to cannibalize the iPad though.

I would probably never touch the screen with my fingers, but I would draw with it. Would also be really useful during calls.

Apparently no Apple Pencil support (not mentioned in their press release or on the sale page)

You can find the steve jobs video showing where they wouldn't make a touch screen laptop. He is probably rolling over in his grave now.

I do like how they are brining back ports. I think they need to add back the Ethernet port.

I don't like touchscreens. I watch the people I work with who have them and none of them use theirs. How much of this was just Apple user FOMO?

As an iOS engineer I am actually pretty excited about how this will improve manual testing on simulator.

15% weight reduction over previous gen macbook pro is great.

No folding and no Apple Pencil support sadly, would've been a kickass 2-in-1. Would have to wait for ProCreate to be ported to macOS though

Funny how half the press release tries to hide the notch/island/whatever its called. I almost thought they gave up on that, then I finally saw it like 7 or 8 images in.

Doesn't look like it folds back or does tent mode. Those are some good use cases for touchscreen PCs, being able to walk around in tablet mode in something like a warehouse, for example.

Dynamic island looks nice.

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out, it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demos. But after a short period of time, you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It's ergonomically terrible." —Jobs

I think this is more for the generation that grew up on phones and tablets, who are now in the professional space and like that interaction model

Got the m5 pro like last month. Actually no FOMO this time. I wonder how the AMOLED looks irl, I bet it's sweet but the current pro motion is already top notch.

I literally cannot imagine touching my macbook's screen on purpose. Dual screen phone. Touchscreen macbook. Fairy princess UI. Apple used to lead the way in design language and functionality. They're absolutely rizzless nowadays.

I want it for the OLED but not for the touch or glowing logo

Cue the folks who have used nothing but Apple laptops for the past 20 years coming here and wondering who would possibly want a laptop with a touch screen.

Since you can configure it with a 16TB SSD, I wonder, is it QLC or did Apple manage to make it TLC?

This means they've figured out a way to keep the screen from wobbling when poked … let the theorizing commence!

I guess they're testing the water before turning on native iPad app support? Not sure why they wouldn't ship it straight away.

Just make a fast, sturdy laptop, don’t keep making it lighter, and touch??

They're finally getting OLED, which is one thing that's kept me on competitor laptops. They're just so much easier on my eyes.

The touchscreen would make sense for a hybrid laptop convertible. But in this form factor I cannot understand.

I'm so perplexed that they chose this product name, while still retaining their existing Macbook Pro product line.

Have they figured out how to fit an LTE modem into a 16” MacBook Pro?

Or does one still have to go to Dell for that?

The fancy OLED display would actually be a potential reason to finally upgrade from my M1 Pro but even if I could afford it, I find prices like that hard to swallow (and I couldn't care less about touch in a laptop fwiw). Guess I'll buy one used in a year or three, maybe.

It's sort of outrageous to launch a new product like that but not with M6, I am gonna wait for the M7 version

Such an advanced OLED display only to be covered by fingerprints after a week of use.

looks like they brought back the glowing apple logo on the lid for the first time in a decade!

the older macbooks used the display's backlight to illuminate the logo, but since these new OLED displays light up individual pixels I wonder how they're lighting it up now...

Jobs getting cooked in the grave...

I was hoping a 2-in-1 foldable that acts like an iPad too. I have been waiting decades for that.

so many complains on touch screen is how i know it will be a banger

I don't like it, it still will be a popular laptop and within 5 years - one of the best. I am moving away from Apple, thank you for a ride!

Apple directions is going insane. there is no other explanation.

They refused for decades to put a touchscreen because they know very well it will eat on their ipad sales.

One less reason to get an ipad pro.

I'm curious as to how the touch feature will work (if at all) with privacy screens.

I'm just excited the Apple logo glows again

I like OLED screen but don't care at all for the touch screen.

The price is really high too.

Does it support the Pencil?

HDMI, headphone jack, and touchscreen. Amazing.

Apple finally delivers what some users have been screaming about wanting for over a decade and now… people don’t want touchscreen Macs. lol

Touch screen could be nice for running ipad apps

Is there any reason this wouldn't work with an apple pencil too?

how did they reduce the weight? the design looks the same

tandem OLED is one of those techniques that makes me think "why didn't we just do this in the first place?"

A touch screen MacBook is a mistake.

It's ergonomically terrible.

It doesn't work.

Steve Jobs said this in October 2010 during Apple's "Back to the Mac" special event, where the company was previewing Mac OS X Lion.

Everything is going down the drain right in front of our eyes.

I can't make sense of any counterargument as anything but copium.

might lowkey not be that useful if the display cant do a 360 or atleast 180, and also the hinge will probably still be wobbly.

OLED: yes

Glowing logo: sure

Touchscreen: nah

It's very unfortunate that there now isn't a single desktop operating system not ruined by touchscreen support.

No gorilla glass for gorilla arm?

Will touch and dynamic island be supported in clamshell mode? Can they be enabled in other Macs?

I like how I can see its screen quality on my screen.

Foldable iPhones that break and touch screen MacBooks in an age where non professionals do virtually everything in a browser.

What exactly does Apple do different again?

Cellular?

A nice simple lineup, very easy to choose

- MacBook Neo

- MacBook Air 13-inch (M5)

- MacBook Air 15-inch (M5)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch (M6)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5 Pro)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5 Max)

- MacBook Pro 16-inch (M5 Pro)

- MacBook Pro 16-inch (M5 Max)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch with PROLED XDR Display (M5 Pro)

- MacBook Pro 14-inch with PROLED XDR Display (M5 Max)

- MacBook Pro 16-inch with PROLED XDR Display (M5 Pro)

- MacBook Pro 16-inch with PROLED XDR Display (M5 Max)

the angle they show for music is sooo unnatural, what a gimmick

I'd love if Apple made a Macbook Pro where the display opens more than 135 degrees. Am I the only one?

Why do videos of screens look amazing even when viewed on an inferior monitor? This is not a new observation of mine - even as a child, I'd see fuzzy, snowy commercials for big screen TVs on my 13 inch color TV, and they always looked so much better than the TV I was watching them on.

Dynamic Island looks good. I am glad I picked up an M5 max prior to the price hike.

Touch screen on a laptop is objectively disgusting. I have a Lenovo yoga X1 or something with a touch screen (and it folds backwards into a tablet) hence the name. It is stupid and useless. I can imagine Steve Jobs turning in his grave right now.

If you want a screen to touch get a fucking tablet.

Please tell me the rounded corners at the bottom of the screen are just for the effect and they aren't actually physically like that. This would be worse than the current notch, you can even see them clipping the text in the LM Studio picture.

Aww dammit I was waiting for a body refresh with M6, but this is still M5…

Why are Apple's new product lines so..self-defeating now? I wanted to get the iPhone Duo but it has worse cameras than my iPhone 17 Pro Max, and now this Mac..

Looks like people who want the best of everything will have to skip this year.

After having to get a windows laptop for work - I'm still in awe of my old M2 Max.. Apple makes the best general laptops out there by a wide margin

I am pretty sure Steve is rolling in his grave. It's pretty saddening to see Apple losing its vision, what is making MacBook Pro different than other laptops in the market? Apple silicon? Not anymore. MacOS? Probably, but it's getting worse too.

I have had touch screen laptop (Dell Inspiron), and boy, it was such a horrible and useless feature. Screen is always greasier than gas-station hot dog.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure their stock is headed for a new ATH.

This is disappointing, I was hoping they were going to do something interesting with the display hinge to make it make sense as a touch interface. Can’t see it being useful as is.

no point in upgrading from m3 max atm. (it seems)

The example they put front and center on the launch page is someone playing a piano keyboard on their laptop screen? WTF is going on at Apple?

Ah, touch is awful! Nasty ass fingerprints on your display, no thanks. It it means they're going to fuck up the UI even more for touch compatibility.

So unbelievably disappointing, right after the disappointment of the Duo. I was in the market for both, the early reviews of the Duo stopped me from upgrading, and the landing page of this new Mac has stopped me from upgrading that.

1. No cellular? This was honestly one of the biggest selling points in my eyes. The iPhone hotspot has been so unreliable lately.

2. Never would use the touchscreen in software engineering. Agree with others that I don't understand a real use case for it, and apparently their website designers can't either.

3. OLED is nice.

4. 24h battery life is nice.

5. No M6 Pro/Max. Just getting one generation up?

6. Not even a cool name? No Macbook Ultra? Macbook Studio? Obviously not important, but even they couldn't justify it as its own separate product from the existing Pros.

On the bright side, the wallet savings are nice. Absolutely not worth a $4,150 hit (using my M4 Pro 48GB/1TB 16" as reference)

Touch screens are dead, no one ever said good things about them. Also, I think the best setup now (regardless macos or linux) is having your heavy lifting compute at home and you use something like macbook air and ssh into it, that way you get the best portability and also you are secure if your laptop is lost.

A massive overpriced laptop with a novelty touch feature on its monitor gets free promotion on HN. Ah well.

Touchscreens on vertical screens are ridiculous.

Especially if they don't even have stylus support

Looking forward to running Gentoo with Asahi patches on this some day.

I feel Apple had to release a touch display to quiet all the few complainers out there. And the next version won't have touch.

At this point an Apple robot or car make more sense than a touchscreen.

I have never wanted a touch screen on my laptop. I still don't. Who is this for?

If the screen were detachable and you get a giant 16'' ipad, I would consider it. I do not want touch interface on a laptop and will never buy this. I do want non-touch OLED screen though.

Dynamic island sounds like it will be huge distraction if animations will play there.

Very worried to see it's 1mm thinner. The existing macbook pro was already struggling way too much with heat. And now they shave off 1mm.

> PROLED

Really... I would expect this naming from an Onion article.

I just don’t understand stabbing pointed fingers at the screen to use it vs tapping the pads of my fingers like an iPad.

Besides holding my arms up it’s also painful to keep my wrists bent to get a better angle for my fingers to articulate.

so apple switches to oled. gasp. my lenovo is suddently on par with macs? apple switches to touchscreen for macs, double gasp. mostly a gimmick.

I honestly have NO idea what sort of value “Dynamic Island” is supposed to have on a laptop running a full computer OS.

It being marked as a highlight makes even less sense to me.

Someone help an old graybeard out?

devices have become so expensive you can now lease them like a car..you will own nothing and be happy

is it just me or a lot of Apple's copies these days seem too LLM generated?

Why would anyone touch their screen? Madness.

The product itself is fine, I have no strong opinions on it. But what a hell of a disappointing unveiling.

Take down the store and website for a few minutes, boot it back up, boom. That's it. They couldn't even bother with a keynote or a livestream or something.

For their flagship laptop receiving a substantial update after six years. Okay.

As someone who does coding and art, I’m disappointed that there’s no Apple Pencil support. Makes touch feel more like a gimmick.

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I fail to see how Terminal.app benefits from a touchscreen, so what's the point? /s

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I would not buy this, unless you can fold the machine's screen backwards beyond 120° and use it like an iPad.

So without that, having touch doesn't make any sense and once again, won't buy this unless the second generation of touch Macbooks are available.

Worked well with the first foldable iPhone Duo didn't it? /s

M5 chips instead of m6 are SO DISAPPOINTING! looks like a good laptop otherwise though