Touchscreen MacBook Pros: Evolution Or Revolution?

Apple’s latest releases feel more like a design evolution than a fundamental change. The new 14-inch and 16-inch PROLED MacBooks bring touchscreen OLED displays, while the iPad mini moves to OLED and the iMac gets the M6 chip.

There are some potentially worthwhile upgrades here, particularly if an older Mac is starting to hold you back. But the more interesting questions are about where Apple is taking the design, how useful a touchscreen MacBook will actually be, and whether the extra money buys enough to justify upgrading.

MacBook Pro: Apple changes its position on touchscreens

Apple have always said they were never going to release a touchscreen MacBook. Steve Jobs famously criticised the ergonomics: people want a touchscreen flat on a surface, rather than held vertically in front of them.

That makes the new 14-inch and 16-inch PROLED devices an interesting change of direction. The touchscreen is a headline feature, but we think the OLED display is probably the bigger sell.

The PROLED models start £400 above their equivalent mini-LED models, and Apple also offer them with nano-texture. That option raises another question. We’ve seen people online complain that they dislike nano-texture on the iPads, particularly because it can be difficult to clean.

The lack of Apple Pencil support is also a big hit. For some professional workflows, that could have been one of the most useful reasons to introduce a touchscreen in the first place.

What does the extra £400 get you?

Apple are selling the original non-touchscreen, non-OLED, mini-LED laptop alongside the new PROLED models. That gives buyers a choice, although the entry-level specifications have changed. The 512GB starting option had already disappeared in March: M5 Pro models launched with at least 1TB, while M5 Max models started with 2TB. Apple’s March launch announcement confirms those starting configurations.

The new model is also much lighter—potentially a couple of hundred grams—which could be a meaningful improvement for anyone carrying one every day.

Then there’s the return of the illuminated Apple logo.

Apple, of course, want to differentiate the PROLED models and show that you went that extra mile and spent another £400. We think that’s potentially why they’ve brought back the illuminated logo. It isn’t on the cheaper version, even though it still costs multiple thousands of pounds.

There’s now a clear ladder running from the 13-inch MacBook Air all the way up to these PROLED touchscreens.

The price changes are worth putting in context. Apple increased prices on 25 June, before these new displays arrived. The M5 Pro models went up by £300, while the M5 Max models went up by £500. The new PROLED models add another £400 to those higher starting prices.

These are UK starting prices for each model, rather than a comparison of every configurable specification.

A MacBook facelift, or the first step towards a redesign?

This feels similar to the transition we saw when the M1 arrived: new components introduced into an older design before the hardware evolved further.

It raises the question of how much has actually changed under the display. Has Apple reached a point where the assembly line can simply fit a different screen into essentially the same main body? Is the chassis an identical part?

We’ve seen statements suggesting a redesigned cooling system in the 14-inch and 16-inch Pro. That would be interesting. The M4 Max, followed by the M5 Pro and Max, were among the first chips where we started seeing some thermal impact on performance.

That impact was very minor, but as performance and temperatures change, an improvement to cooling wouldn’t be surprising. It would fit the idea of this generation being a facelift, to borrow the term used for vehicles.

Looking towards March and the M6 Pro and M6 Max, it’s uncertain whether we’ll see a whole redesign. It would be nice, but the current chassis is already very well built. It’s sturdy and feels like a pro device.

Making it lighter would probably be one of the most welcome changes. Weight is one of the few complaints we regularly see, particularly with the 16-inch models.

Smaller bezels, rounded corners and Dynamic Island

The display is another example of that gradual design evolution. We’ve seen Apple move towards more rounded corners over time, and the new screen rounds the bottom corners as well as the top.

The reduced bezel size gives you slightly more screen, and the notch has gone.

There’s some irony in the timing. Golden Gate finally addresses the problem of menu bar items becoming hidden behind the notch—an issue that has been around for years.

For productivity users and proper multitaskers, those items quickly add up. Photoshop, video editing tools, and even cloud storage apps all add items to the menu bar. Eventually, some of them disappear behind the notch.

Golden Gate finally provides a way to show those hidden items on the other side. It’s amazing that it took Apple that long to deal with it.

Now we have Dynamic Island on the touchscreen, bringing the MacBook closer to the iPhone. Apple are notorious for wanting the experience to feel similar across devices, and you can see that happening here: the software design influences the hardware, while both move closer to the rest of the range.

The base M6 MacBook Pro could be the more compelling upgrade

Alongside the display changes, there’s a base-spec 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro. That could be a worthwhile upgrade, even though it still starts at £1,999.

If you’re using an older 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip, moving to a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU can be a substantial upgrade.

For anyone on M1, M2 or even M3, it’s worth looking at if you’re experiencing a bottleneck. The key is whether your current device is actually holding you back.

If it isn’t, you can wait until next year and look at a Pro chip. For a professional workflow, that may be worth waiting for.

Is it enough to tempt an M1 Max user?

As an M1 Max MacBook Pro user, I’m still not quite tempted by this upgrade.

In certain workflows, I am starting to notice that the device doesn’t deliver quite the performance it used to. Whether that’s partly down to the operating system slowly throttling the device is entirely speculation. Apple have been accused of that in the past, so I wouldn’t rule it out, but I don’t have evidence that it explains what I’m seeing here.

For photography, video editing and programming, there are certainly situations where a touchscreen could be useful. Photoshop is an obvious example, especially if Apple Pencil support were available.

But moving from a MacBook to an iPad has never been something I’ve particularly wanted to try.

File browsing and management aren’t the same, and neither are the applications. The iPad versions are generally more toned down, without the same decades of development behind the desktop tools. There’s also the question of performance.

Using an iPad as a screen while the MacBook handles the processing is a different proposition. But replacing the MacBook with an iPad doesn’t offer the same appeal.

That creates a logical opportunity for Apple. If professional users working in Photoshop and Premiere Pro aren’t going to buy an iPad for those workflows, how do you give them the benefits of touch on the device they already want to use?

A touchscreen MacBook needs better ergonomics

For the next generation, we think Apple need to give more consideration to how people will actually use the touchscreen.

A design following the same thinking as convertible Surface devices could make sense: the keyboard folds back, the screen becomes the main surface, and the laptop becomes a tablet. You get the best of both worlds.

That would make Apple Pencil support particularly valuable. A proper MacBook that can lie flat, or be held differently, would make more sense for touch-based work than reaching towards an upright laptop display.

There’s also an opportunity for developers. Adobe, for example, have probably spent millions developing their iPad applications and touch workflows.

With the SwiftUI tools built into Xcode and the ability to share approaches between applications, we don’t see why more of those touch workflows couldn’t be brought across where appropriate.

Developers could build tools for different platforms and performance levels, while users benefit from those tools on the device that suits their work.

That’s where a touchscreen MacBook becomes more interesting: full desktop applications, MacBook performance and a design that makes touch practical.

Display longevity matters as much as the new features

One thing we would really like to see addressed is display wear.

Lamination wear has plagued devices since 2016, and moving to the mini-LED design didn’t make it disappear. At MacFinder, we see how expensive those problems can become, with repairs costing users thousands of pounds.

We hope the new touchscreens will be more like an iPad’s glass surface and less prone to the wear we’ve seen on MacBook displays. We understood this could avoid the same lamination issue, though the screen construction needs checking.

We don’t know how Apple will handle the anti-glare side of that. The existing treatment makes a big difference to reflections, so there’s a balance to get right.

Hopefully, OLED and a different screen design give Apple an opportunity to address it. If you’re spending all this extra money on a touchscreen OLED, you want to know that the lamination wear—and what became colloquially known as Staingate—has been dealt with.

iPad mini: OLED without ProMotion

Both new iPad minis get OLED screens, but neither gets ProMotion. That makes this an interesting choice: the main change is the move to OLED.

The new iPad mini starts at £699 for Wi-Fi and £849 for Wi-Fi + Cellular. The Wi-Fi starting price is £100 above the previous model’s £599 price following the June increase, and £200 above its original £499 launch price in 2024.

Unless you’re using an older iPad, that upgrade is hard to justify. OLED is welcome, but without ProMotion or a more substantial change, it’s a hard choice.

M6 iMac: worth considering if your current Mac is slowing down

The M6 iMac could be the last generation in the current design. That’s our expectation, rather than anything confirmed, but the M6 itself is a very powerful chip.

If you’re experiencing slow performance on an M1 or M2 iMac—which is still unlikely for plenty of users—now could be a good time to upgrade.

As with the MacBook Pro, the decision comes back to what your current device is doing for you. If it’s becoming a bottleneck, it’s worth considering an upgrade. For us, though, the wider story of these releases is the design evolution, and where Apple take it next.

Frequently asked questions