NEW VIDEO - Apple decided to drop a touchscreen Macbook Pro today. Let’s talk about it: https://t.co/4VDcD4vFv9 https://t.co/kHmPHyIcW5

Touchscreen MacBook Pro: A Cool Demo, but Just an Option

TL;DR: Apple introduced a new MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED touchscreen that’s lighter, thinner, and starts at $2,900; but MKBHD thinks the touchscreen doesn’t solve any real problems—the real reasons to upgrade are the OLED display and the substantial weight reduction.

An Old Promise Reversed

The video opens with an old statement from Apple:

We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically terrible.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” MKBHD says. “They said for a long time they weren’t going to do this, but now they’ve decided to do it anyway.”

Apple today unveiled the latest addition to its laptop lineup—a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen. But there’s more to it than just a touchscreen: it’s also a little thinner, a little lighter, and a little more expensive, starting at $2,900.

The Basics: Tandem OLED Steals the Show

The sizes remain the same: 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pros, but now with tandem OLED displays that look stunning in person. The current mini-LED models don’t look bad, but this OLED brings an insane 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio—true blacks and less blooming have always been OLED’s strengths. Even before more extensive testing, it’s safe to say that high-contrast and/or HDR content looks great on this machine.

Other changes include:

• Slightly narrower bezels, making the screen just a tiny bit larger
• Rounded bottom corners on the display (“They don’t know why either”)
• Slightly upgraded speakers, with better sound when the lid is closed and deeper bass
• A Dynamic Island at the top instead of a notch, though it actually contains only a camera and an ambient light sensor—still no Face ID

Apple calls it the MacBook Pro with a ProLED XDR display, “because apparently they still have to give everything a name.” The screen comes in standard glossy and matte nano-texture options.

The Real Reason to Upgrade Is the Weight

Honestly, “If I were upgrading, I’d do it for the weight reduction rather than the touchscreen.” Thanks to the OLED display and a redesigned internal cooling system, the laptop is lighter:

• 14-inch: down from 3.5 pounds to 3 pounds
• 16-inch: nearly a full pound lighter

“That makes a big difference when you’re picking it up and carrying it around every day.”

Apart from the display, the rest is largely what we’re used to: the same design, ports, keyboard, battery life, M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and Touch ID in the same corner.

The Glowing Apple Logo Is Back, with a Twist

“You’ve got to let people tell it’s the new one, right? That’s Apple’s whole thing. If I’m spending $3,000 on a new laptop, there can’t be no new color and then nobody can tell I bought the new one, right?”

Apple has brought back the glowing Apple logo on the back, which still has that reflective metallic look when the laptop is off. A fun fact: the logo’s brightness matches the display’s brightness. Dim the screen, and the logo dims; brighten the screen, and the logo brightens.

Bringing this logo back with OLED is harder because OLED has no backlight. Older models simply needed an opening in the back, letting the backlight shine through and illuminate the logo; this one has extra components specifically designed to light up the back, “because there’s no backlight providing free light anymore. They’re using a little extra battery power for it. Just so you know.”

As a Current Owner, What Am I Looking For?

“You really don’t need to replace yours for a long time. This thing will last for years.” But if you forced me to say: OLED ranks pretty well, and I’d put Face ID pretty high—they didn’t do that. And a touchscreen would never rank very high on my list.

Over the years, he’s owned and tested plenty of touchscreen laptops, and almost every time he forgets they have touchscreens because he simply never needs to use them:

I never want fingerprints on my screen. I never want the screen wobbling when I touch it. I never want to reach my arm out and have it get sore. Those concerns still hold.

Does Apple’s New Approach Solve Any Problems?

Apple’s usual approach is to enter long after a technology first appears, then do it better in Apple’s own way. So what about this time?

“I think the honest answer is no.”

The hands-on experience itself is fine: it’s very responsive, and everything works perfectly. You can swipe where you’d expect to swipe, pinch to zoom where you’d expect to zoom, and it can even respond to all ten fingers at once—the gestures you used to perform on the trackpad to switch Spaces can now theoretically be performed by swiping up and moving four fingers around on the screen to switch Spaces. “It feels a little weird to be able to do that. But yes, you can now do that on a MacBook too.”

Other adaptations include:

• Spotlight and Siri animate out of the Dynamic Island; you can swipe down from the top of the laptop to bring them up, then put your hands back on the keyboard and keep typing
• Window management: grab a window and fling it to one side to fill half the screen, then grab another and fling it to the other side, just like on an iPad
• Handling small touch targets: when you touch the traffic-light buttons in the corner of a window, the system first enlarges them so you can select one. “At least they thought of that. It’s still a little clunky and confusing to use.”

“But they’re not solving any problems. They’re making things slightly more convenient. They’re accommodating you, but they’re not solving any problems.”

The Hinge: Physics Is Still Physics

I originally thought the hinge would be dramatically different—Apple had just done a cool variable-resistance hinge design on the iPhone Duo, so maybe the MacBook Pro would have some wild hinge that’s especially stiff in the middle. But no. They did make it a little stiffer in the middle, but it still has to open and close easily, so there’s only so stiff it can be. “So when you poke it, press it, or for some reason type on the new touchscreen MacBook Pro, it’ll still wobble a little.”

Also, this new MacBook Pro does not support Apple Pencil.

Pro Demos: Cool, but Infrequent

Professional-user demos at the event included bringing up a virtual keyboard in Logic to play piano on the touchscreen, rotating 3D models, and panning around a Gaussian splatting scene stitched together from a bunch of iPhone footage. “Just the occasional poke at the screen. Not particularly frequent.”

The key issue is: as long as these apps are developed for the Mac, they’re still primarily designed for devices without touchscreens. Most Macs don’t have touchscreens, so even when running on a touchscreen Mac, they’ll always prioritize the keyboard and trackpad.

The only use case that felt compelling was iOS app development—opening the iPhone simulator in Xcode to test an app and directly poking the simulated iPhone interface. “That’s one where I think a touchscreen actually has practical value.”

Beyond that, “It’s just an option. A cool demo, but just an option you can get on a MacBook Pro.”

“It Gives Great Demo”—Steve Jobs Is Still Right

I just can’t get that famous Steve Jobs line out of my head. It really does make for a great demo. The entire event featured incredible demonstrations, such as John Ternus using the laptop’s touchscreen connected to a wall of glowing musical instruments that responded to touch in real time. “It looked incredible. I’d never seen anything like that before. Cool demo.”

But ultimately: it’s just an option, and they haven’t really redesigned the entire MacBook Pro around it. It isn’t some all-new MacBook Ultra. “It’s another MacBook Pro that happens to have an OLED display, and making it a touchscreen didn’t add any extra weight or battery drain, so they did it.”

This Seems to Be the New Apple

“This seems to be the new Apple, the new Ternus style.” MKBHD points out that although these products had been in development long before John Ternus took over as CEO, philosophically, the first thing he did upon taking over was the iPhone Duo—everyone is interested in the newest iPhone, but it’s just one option among the newest iPhones, and it may not be right for everyone. Now this touchscreen MacBook Pro is the same: they said they’d never do it, didn’t do it for years, and have now added it to the lineup as an option.

“Everyone looking at a MacBook Pro is going to wonder: Is this the best one? Should I buy this one? But it’s not for everyone. It’s just an option.”

Conclusion

“So I’m fine with it. I’m good. I’m just personally not interested in the touchscreen at all. But I’m actually more interested in this laptop because the OLED screen looks so good, and it’s so much lighter.” He picked up the machine and compared it with the 16-inch MacBook Pro he was using to edit videos, thinking, “Wow, that could actually be really nice.”

He plans to compare this machine with the new RTX Spark laptops in his full review, because there’s a brand-new matte-black touchscreen Surface Ultra laptop that’s an almost exact counterpart.

Source: @MKBHD — Apple Decided to Make a Touchscreen MacBook Pro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2reQut8WNGc)