Apple spent most of October rolling out new Macs and an iPad, and the headline act from this week's batch is a MacBook Pro that finally has a touchscreen. It's also the first Mac with an OLED display. But the more interesting story might be what Apple left out.
The new 14-inch and 16-inch OLED MacBook Pro models are about half a pound lighter than the mini-LED versions they sit next to, and at least 0.02 inches thinner, according to MacRumors. OLED panels don't need a backlight, which saves weight, and the touch sensor sits inside the display stack instead of layered on top. The 16-inch model also picks up a slightly bigger screen, 16.3 inches instead of 16.2, thanks to narrower bezels. The 14-inch screen stays at 14.2 inches.
Along with the touch support, the OLED models get a Dynamic Island cut into the display, a glowing Apple logo on the lid, and a redesigned speaker setup. All of that comes at a premium. The OLED 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch starts at $3,399, both $400 more than the equivalent mini-LED configuration.
And here's the catch. Despite being the newer, pricier machine, the OLED MacBook Pro runs on the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips Apple introduced earlier this year, not anything newer. Apple is keeping the mini-LED MacBook Pro on sale too, so shoppers who want the latest silicon without paying for the OLED screen and touch input still have that option, at the lower price.
The rest of the week's lineup
The base 14-inch MacBook Pro and the iMac both got bumped to Apple's new M6 chip this week, but MacRumors notes neither saw much else change. If you don't care about touch or OLED, that's the quieter, cheaper upgrade path.
Apple also refreshed the iPad mini with its own OLED display, the second iPad after the iPad Pro to get one. It's a bigger deal for durability than for the screen itself: the new iPad mini is the first iPad with an official water and dust resistance rating, IP67, meaning it can handle brief submersion and splashing. Apple says a new acoustic display setup, which lets the screen itself help produce sound, made that sealing possible.
Every product announced this week, the OLED MacBook Pro, the M6 MacBook Pro, the M6 iMac and the OLED iPad mini, is open for pre-order now. All of them ship November 6.
The pitch for the OLED MacBook Pro is straightforward: better screen, touch input, lighter build. Whether that's worth $400 and a generation-old chip is the question anyone upgrading will have to answer before next Friday.
CDFiled by The Computing Desk
Laptops, desktops, processors, graphics cards and the operating systems that run on them.
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