Apple spent years treating touchscreen laptops as a bad idea. Ahead of its Los Angeles launch event, the prospect of a touch-enabled MacBook Pro was framed as a notable surrender: Apple executives had criticized the category for as long as the iPad era, even as demand to tap and swipe on a Mac continued to build.¹

On Wednesday, the company made the reversal official. Its redesigned MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch version and $3,399 for the 16-inch, with preorders opening immediately and deliveries due November 6. The machine pairs touch with a tandem OLED panel Apple calls PROLED XDR, offering up to 2,000 nits of peak SDR brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate and a claimed 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio.²

Apple’s pitch is that touch has practical uses: scrolling, zooming, testing iOS and iPadOS apps, or playing software instruments. It has also made the laptop lighter—3 pounds for the 14-inch model and 4 pounds for the 16-inch—while restoring the glowing lid logo and replacing the notch with a Dynamic Island.²

But first hands-ons suggest Apple’s breakthrough feature may be its least transformative. One reviewer found the touchscreen works “just about exactly as you expect,” useful for gestures and some creative tasks but largely duplicating the trackpad in a laptop that neither becomes a tablet nor supports Apple Pencil.³ Another was blunter: after 16 years of resistance, “it’s just a touchscreen.”⁴

The consensus is far warmer on the OLED. Reviewers praised its deep blacks, color and brightness, calling it an enormous upgrade over the previous Mini LED generation; the lighter chassis also made an immediate impression.³

Then comes the bill. A tested 16-inch M5 Max configuration with 64GB of memory and 2TB of storage listed at $5,799, while moving from 64GB to 128GB adds $1,600.³ The pricing debate went still further on X, where Elon Musk reposted a comparison claiming a fully loaded 16-inch model costs $14,549—more than a used 2020 Tesla Model 3 listed at $14,190.Elon Musk (elonmusk)⁵

Touch is finally on the Mac. The question is whether buyers will reach for it—or simply stare at the screen.