Apple brings touch to the Mac, reversing years-old stance on touchscreen laptop

Apple on Wednesday announced its first laptop with a touch screen, which it is calling MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR Display.

Apple said that the laptop has a new display, using OLED technology, that offers more brightness, better colors and wider viewing angles. It's using Apple's M5 Pro or Max chips, and Apple said on Wednesday that it's lighter than Apple's current pro laptops.

It's still an Apple laptop, and is running MacOS, not a version of the iPhone or iPad operating system. In a video, Apple showed users swiping on the screen to manipulate videos or images. It also has a glowing Apple logo on the laptop's lid.

The new laptop will go on sale on Nov. 6 and the 14-inch version will start at $2,899. The 16-inch version will cost at least $3,399. Both are notable price increases from existing models.

This is Apple's third major product launch under new CEO John Ternus, signaling a faster cadence for hardware releases. It's also a major reversal for Apple, which has resisted putting touchscreens on its laptops for decades as some Windows machines gained the feature.

"Yes, for the very first time, we are bringing touch to the Mac," Ternus said in live remarks to media and analysts in Los Angeles.

The new MacBook Pro comes at a time when the laptop market has been going through one of its worst slumps ever. Overall shipments are expected to be down 11% this year. Analysts say the AI-driven global market shortage of memory has contributed to higher laptop prices, which has hurt sales and demand.

In the third quarter, total PC shipments dropped 20% on a year-over-year basis, according to market researcher IDC. Apple's own shipments fell 11% during the quarter, according to the estimate.

Even Apple's not immune to rising memory prices, after former CEO Tim Cook warned this summer that the situation around memory prices was "unsustainable." Nearly all Macs got price hikes this year. Mac Minis introduced in August got a $300 bump, for example.

The announcement caps a busy two months of product launches under Ternus.

Apple also introduced new iMac and MacBook Pro models with M6 chips this week, after price hikes to the lineup totaling several hundred dollars in June. Apple introduced an iPad Mini on Monday that starts at $699, $100 more than its predecessor.

In September, Apple released new iPhones, including its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. It also revealed a new smart speaker with a display called HomeView that uses a redesigned version of Siri to answer a broader range of questions.