Apple's touchscreen MacBook Pro has a stunning display, but I'm not sold on touch yet

For years, Apple insisted a touchscreen didn't belong on a Mac...

As of today, that's officially history. Apple just announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, a new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED panel, touch support, and the Dynamic Island, all packed into a "thinner" and lighter body.

It's a genuinely cool machine. I'm just not sure it's the MacBook Pro I've been waiting for, and the price makes that question harder to ignore.

PROLED is here

Let's start with what I'm most excited about, because it's the display. PROLED is Apple's branding for the tandem OLED panel in these new models, which stacks two layers of self illuminating pixels for more brightness without the usual OLED tradeoffs.

The numbers are wild for a laptop:

• Up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness for both HDR and SDR content
• A 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, compared with 1,000,000:1 on the current mini LED models
• ProMotion from 10Hz all the way up to 120Hz
• Both P3 and Adobe RGB color, with more than 80 percent coverage of Rec. 2020
• An optional nano texture finish, now etched directly into the cover glass

Apple also says the panel is calibrated at the factory and that its display engine watches each pixel's usage over time, which should help with the long term wear concerns people tend to have about OLED. There are reference modes, a new Apple Pro Display Calibrator, genlock support for on set video work, and even DICOM presets for reviewing medical images (for research and education, not diagnosis).

The mini LED displays on current MacBook Pro models are already excellent, but no blooming, true blacks, and that much brightness in a laptop is a big deal. Even if you're not a colorist, this is the kind of screen you notice every single time you open the lid.

I wish Apple had brought PROLED to the regular MacBook Pro too. The display is the upgrade I actually want, and right now the only way to get it is to also buy into touch.

Touch on a Mac: I'm not convinced yet

This is the headline feature, and it's the one I'm least sure about.

Apple built the touch sensor right into the display panel instead of layering it on top, which it says keeps latency low. You can scroll, pinch to zoom, drag files and slides around, and double tap or flick windows to fill the screen or tile them. Apple also redesigned the hinge so the screen doesn't wobble when you poke it, which was always my first question about any touchscreen laptop.

The pro use cases are more interesting than the everyday ones. Designers can draw across the whole screen in Pixelmator Pro, musicians get a polyphonic onscreen keyboard and drum pads in Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro editors can mark ranges and drop clips with a finger, and developers can test their iPhone and iPad apps with real touch input. Apple says plenty of existing apps will work right away because macOS translates touches into clicks, and it named a long list of third party apps adopting touch, including Microsoft Office, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, and Zoom. It's worth noting that Apple says those third party apps will arrive later this year, not necessarily on day one.

That said, I keep coming back to the same question: when would I actually reach up and touch my MacBook Pro instead of using the trackpad sitting right under my hands?

For a musician or an illustrator, I get it (maybe). For most people who live in a browser, Mail, and Slack, I'm less sure. Maybe my opinion changes after living with it for a while. Apple has a way of making these things click once you use them every day. But right now, touch feels like a feature looking for a daily habit.

The good news is that you don't have to take it. Apple is still selling the standard M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models without touch, so if you're skeptical like me, the traditional option isn't going anywhere (yet).

The Dynamic Island is great, but where's Face ID?

I love that the Dynamic Island made the jump to the Mac. It replaces the notch and becomes the home for Live Activities, Spotlight, and Siri AI, so you can control music, see a timer, take a call, or accept an AirDrop without hunting for a notification. On iPhone, it turned a hardware compromise into something genuinely useful, and I expect the same here. One small catch tho, Spotlight only moves into the Dynamic Island if Siri AI is available and turned on.

But this is where I feel Apple left something on the table.

If you're going to give the MacBook Pro a Dynamic Island, the obvious next step is Face ID. Instead, these models still rely on Touch ID in the keyboard. There's nothing wrong with Touch ID, but on a laptop that now takes so much from the iPhone, unlocking it by just looking at it feels like the piece that should have come along for the ride. I'd love to see it in the next revision.

Thinner and lighter, at least on paper

Apple says OLED's slimmer display stack allowed for a thinner design. The 16 inch model is nearly a millimeter thinner and the 14 inch model is about half a millimeter thinner than before.

The weight change is easier to appreciate. The 14 inch model now comes in at 3 pounds, half a pound lighter, while the 16 inch model drops 0.7 pounds to 4 pounds.

Slimmer bezels also stretch the screens to 14.2 and 16.3 inches. Honestly, I'd have to see the old and new models side by side before I believe the thinner part will be obvious, but half a pound off a pro laptop is something you'll feel in a bag.

Everything else is a refinement. Apple redesigned the thermals to keep the same sustained M5 Pro and M5 Max performance, the six speaker system gets 50 percent deeper bass plus new tuning for closed lid use, and you get three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot, MagSafe, and a headphone jack. Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours, memory goes up to 128GB, and storage now tops out at 16TB.

The price is a tough sell

Here's where my excitement cools off. The new models start at:

• 14 inch with M5 Pro: $2,899 ($2,749 with education pricing)
• 16 inch with M5 Pro: $3,399 ($3,199 with education pricing)
• 14 inch with M5 Max: $4,499 ($4,199 with education pricing)
• 16 inch with M5 Max: $4,799 ($4,499 with education pricing)

For comparison, the standard 14 inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro currently sells for $2,499, and the 16 inch for $2,999. That's a $400 premium for the PROLED, touch, and Dynamic Island models, with the same chips inside. And that comes after the price increases Apple already made to the Mac lineup this year.

Preorders are open now in 30 countries and regions, including the U.S., with availability starting Friday, November 6.

This is a cool MacBook Pro upgrade, and the PROLED display alone might be worth it for creative pros who need a reference grade screen on the go. But for me, the most exciting part of the package is tied to the part I care about least. I'd happily pay for PROLED and the Dynamic Island on a standard MacBook Pro. Paying $400 more for touch, on a machine that still doesn't have Face ID, is harder to justify.

I hope that Apple brings this display to more of the lineup down the road. Until then, I'm interested, but I'm not rushing to preorder.