Apple has announced a redesigned MacBook Pro that includes a touchscreen for the first time, according to WIRED Middle East. The laptop also moves to an OLED panel, swaps the screen notch for the iPhone's Dynamic Island and weighs less than the model it replaces. Preorders are open, with deliveries and in-store sales starting 6 November.
The 14-inch version starts at AED 11,999 in the UAE. Apple is keeping the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips it introduced earlier in 2026, so the display and chassis changes define this release rather than a new processor generation.
Why it matters
Touch has been standard on phones and tablets for years, and Apple has spent just as long arguing it did not belong on a laptop. CNBC describes the launch as a reversal of that long-held position. The company is now treating the screen as a third input method next to the keyboard and trackpad rather than a replacement for either.
The shift gives developers a new surface to design for and gives buyers a reason to upgrade that has nothing to do with benchmark scores. It also puts Apple's professional laptop in more direct competition with touch-enabled Windows machines, a category it previously left alone.
A display built for professional work
Apple markets the panel under the name PROLED XDR. According to the published specifications, it reaches up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness for both standard and HDR content, refreshes at a variable rate of up to 120Hz, and covers the P3 and Adobe RGB colour spaces that photographers and designers rely on.
Apple says the display can adjust the colour and brightness of individual pixels in under a millisecond. That speed matters when someone is grading video, retouching photographs or building a layout and needs the screen to keep pace with small adjustments.
The touch sensor sits inside the panel itself instead of being applied as a separate layer. Apple says this lowers latency and makes on-screen interaction feel more direct. The hinge has also been reworked so the display stays steady when a finger presses against it.
In practice, users can sketch on a canvas, play virtual instruments or rotate 3D objects by hand. Apple's own applications are built for touch, and many third-party apps detect touch input without changes. For software that has not been updated, macOS converts a tap into a click, so the feature works before developers ship dedicated controls.
Dynamic Island arrives on the Mac
The notch that has topped recent MacBook Pro screens is gone, replaced by Dynamic Island, the expanding interface Apple first shipped on the iPhone. On the Mac it opens Spotlight, Siri and Live Activities, and it can surface incoming calls, music controls, real-time updates and AirDrop requests.
The change tidies the top of the display while giving users a single place to glance at whatever is happening in the background. It is a smaller alteration than the touchscreen, but it visibly ties the laptop to the design language of Apple's phones.
Lighter bodies, familiar ports
The 14-inch model weighs about 1.36kg, roughly 227g less than before. The larger model comes in at about 1.81kg, a drop of around 318g. Narrower bezels let the bigger screen grow to 16.3 inches.
Port selection is unchanged in spirit: three Thunderbolt ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe charging and a headphone jack. The six-speaker system returns with redesigned woofers that Apple says produce 50% deeper bass, plus a new audio mode tuned for use with the lid shut and an external monitor attached.
The chip options follow the existing lineup. The M5 Pro is aimed at heavy tasks such as 8K video editing, while the M5 Max targets more demanding work, including complex 3D models and AI model development, The Hindu reports. Touchscreen and non-touch configurations share the same silicon.
WIRED Middle East notes that the story first appeared on WIRED Español and was translated from Spanish.
The immediate test will be how quickly developers build touch-specific controls, since the feature's usefulness depends on software catching up with the hardware.
