Apple has pushed out its biggest Mac refresh in years, launching five new computers in one go. The headline act is the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, the first Apple laptop with a touchscreen, but it arrives alongside two more conventional MacBook Pro updates and a new iMac built around the M6 chip.
The touchscreen MacBook Pro uses tandem OLED panels Apple calls PROLED XDR, rated for up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR and SDR brightness and a contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1. Apple is pitching the touch layer less as a gimmick and more as a workflow tool, saying it opens "a whole new dimension for pros to interact with their content, from manipulating 3D models to playing musical instruments onscreen." That framing makes sense given who Apple expects to buy this thing: video editors, 3D artists, musicians, the same crowd that already leans on the Pro line.
It comes in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with a choice of M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, up to 16TB of storage, and a claimed 24 hours of battery life. The 14-inch model weighs 3 pounds, the 16-inch comes in at 4 pounds. Pricing starts at $2,899 / £2,899 for the smaller model and $4,499 / £4,499 for the larger one.
Two more MacBook Pros, no touch
Apple also quietly updated the rest of the MacBook Pro range with a non-touch Liquid Retina XDR display. The 14-inch version gets the option of the new M6 chip, the processor that debuted earlier this year in the Mac Mini, and starts at $1,999 / £1,999. The 16-inch model skips M6 entirely and sticks with M5 Pro or M5 Max, starting at $2,999 / £2,999, meaning the smaller, cheaper laptop actually runs newer silicon than its bigger sibling, at least until Apple extends M6 up the range.
None of the pricing given so far covers India, and Apple has not said when or whether these models will reach Indian stores.
A faster, more colorful iMac
The fifth new machine is a refreshed iMac, still built around a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display and still sold in seven colors, but now running the M6 chip. Apple claims it's up to 12 times faster than the original M1 iMac from five years ago, a comparison that says more about how far Apple has pushed its own silicon than anything about the competition. The M6 iMac goes on sale November 6, starting at $1,499 / £1,499.
Taken together, the launch marks Apple's first real attempt at a touch interface on macOS, something it resisted for over a decade while Windows laptops experimented with convertibles and stylus input. Whether pro users actually want to poke their displays, rather than just look at them, is the question Apple is betting $2,899 and up that the answer is yes.
CDFiled by The Computing Desk
Laptops, desktops, processors, graphics cards and the operating systems that run on them.
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