Apple has put a touchscreen on a Mac, something its leadership resisted for more than a decade. The company’s first touchscreen laptops, announced on October 28, begin at $2,899 and go on sale on November 6.

Apple chief executive John Ternus unveiled the machines at an event in Los Angeles, part of a run of product launches ahead of the holiday shopping season. Ternus, a long-time hardware executive, became chief executive last month, according to reports. Pre-orders opened on the day of the announcement.

Two models were shown. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip starts at $2,899, and the 16-inch model with an M5 Max chip starts at $4,799, according to The Standard (Hong Kong). The 16-inch model is 0.7 pounds lighter than the older non-touchscreen version. The display is an OLED panel, which Apple highlighted for contrast, sharpness and brightness. Apple also redesigned the chassis to draw warm air away from the screen, and it uses the M5 chips to keep the display refreshing in a way that guards against burn-in. A glowing logo returns on the back of the lid. Reports reviewed by GyanMuse do not give memory, storage or battery-life details.

The touchscreen laptops use the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, so they offer no major performance gain over current models. Apple this week also announced an upgraded base-model MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip.

Why it is a break with the past

For years, Apple’s leaders argued against exactly this. Steve Jobs said in October 2010 that touchscreens on laptops were “ergonomically terrible”, and he also warned that such a screen “looks great when you demo it, but after a while you start to fatigue”, according to BigGo Finance. Tim Cook said in 2012 that “you can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.” BigGo also attributes to software chief Craig Federighi a 2018 remark that “reaching up to touch a screen is quite tiring.” Before he became chief executive, Ternus argued that Apple already made a touchscreen computer in the iPad.

At the launch, Ternus said: “Look, we love the Mac, and it’s the reason why so many of us found our way to Apple in the first place.” BigGo quotes him separately as saying the Mac “is still a device that uses a keyboard and trackpad”. GyanMuse has not found that second statement in the other reports reviewed, so it is attributed to BigGo alone.

What analysts say

Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy said: “I believe they were always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in.” Tom Mainelli of IDC said the target buyers are creators, designers and photographers who will “leverage that high fidelity screen”, and that OLED screens should last about as long as typical LCD screens.

Others are more cautious. The Standard reports that some analysts doubt Apple can gain much ground in a market dominated by enterprise buyers, where Lenovo, HP and Dell sell cheaper devices. IDC data cited there says PC makers shipped 33.4 million touchscreen notebooks in 2025, about 16% of all notebooks, at an average price near $1,009. Touchscreen Windows laptops have been widely available for over a decade. The Standard also notes that the cheapest new touchscreen Mac costs more than an entry-level iPhone, MacBook, iPad with accessories, Apple Watch and AirPods combined.

Jason Calacanis, host of the All-In Podcast, argued that users want more memory and better processors for local AI models rather than touch. Mac sales have risen, Khaleej Times reports, but much of the growth comes from enthusiasts and businesses buying Macs for on-device AI work.

The wider shift

Experts argue that Apple’s post-Jobs leadership is abandoning positions the co-founder held, and also reports that Apple Pencil support has been added to the folding iPhone Duo, launched in September. GyanMuse could not confirm the Pencil detail in other reports, and there is no price or sales data for either product. But it takes us back to the 2007 Jobs line “Nobody wants a stylus”, something which seems to have been shelved with this launch. Apple’s fiscal 2025 revenue of $416.2 billion and Services revenue above $100 billion as context for how far the company has moved.

For buyers in India, the reports do not give local pricing or availability dates. Whether the touchscreen models reach the Indian market on November 6 has not been stated in the sources reviewed.