ItInsightsWorld Report: MacBook Pro Goes Touch After Nearly 20 Years with OLED, Dynamic Island, M5 Pro and M5 Max
Apple’s flagship MacBook Pro line has crossed a boundary the Mac world avoided for nearly 20 years: touch. The new notebook family brings touch support to the Mac while pairing it with OLED, the Dynamic Island, M5 Pro and M5 Max silicon, and two screen choices.
The 14-inch and 16-inch models are thinner and markedly lighter than before. They also form the first Mac family to use an OLED display, the panel direction Apple has adopted across iPhone, iPad and other products in recent years. The Dynamic Island, long familiar on iPhone, now appears on a Mac for the first time.
What Apple is putting on the table
| Element | What Apple introduced |
|---|---|
| Size options | 14-inch and 16-inch |
| Input method | Touch screen support, with the user interface redesigned for touch |
| Display | OLED |
| Interface element | Dynamic Island |
| Processor options | M5 Pro and M5 Max |
| Starting price | $2,899 for the 14-inch model; $3,399 for the 16-inch model |
The interface has been redesigned for touch interaction. Buyers can choose between M5 Pro and M5 Max configurations, with starting prices of $2,899 and $3,399 for the 14-inch and 16-inch models.
The shift in leadership language
Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, described the updated MacBook Pro as “a landmark step forward for the Mac”. John Ternus, the new chief executive, presented the product on stage.
The path from resistance to adoption
Late in his career, co-founder Steve Jobs publicly attacked the idea of a touch-screen Mac, at one point calling such a design “terrible from an ergonomics standpoint”. Tim Cook, his successor, compared combining a laptop and a tablet to merging a refrigerator and a toaster, while other Apple executives also ridiculed the concept in interviews.
About four years ago, Cook and Ternus began supporting a break from that past, as previously reported. The touchscreen move is designed to revive the Mac business and increase revenue by adding premium features and setting higher prices.