Apple Launches First Touchscreen MacBook Pro, Reversing Decade-Old Design Stance Under New CEO Ternus
Apple introduces its first touchscreen MacBook Pro with significant price hikes, reversing a long-standing refusal to adopt touchscreens in laptops. The move aims to strengthen Mac's strategic position in local AI development amidst a shrinking PC market and rising memory costs.
Apple announced on October 28, 2026, its first laptop with a touchscreen, named the "MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR Display." This marks a formal reversal of Apple's years-long resistance to putting touchscreens on its laptops, executed under new CEO John Ternus. The new models go on sale November 6, starting at $2,899 for the 14-inch version and $3,399 for the 16-inch version, representing notable price increases over existing models.
The launch comes during one of the worst slumps in the global personal computer (PC) market. According to IDC data, total PC shipments dropped 20% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, with full-year shipments expected to fall 11%. Analysts attribute higher laptop prices and hurt sales to an AI-driven global shortage of memory. Despite generating less than 10% of Apple's total revenue ($10.35 billion in the most recent quarter), Ternus highlighted the growing strategic importance of the Mac, particularly for local or edge AI that runs on-device.
Apple is leveraging hardware-software integration to attract developers. Recently, Meta's AI model development team purchased hundreds of Mac Minis to test agents, and Apple teamed up with Meta to announce that large, nearly frontier models can run on clusters of Macs connected with high-speed cabling, allowing developers to run agentic code without paying Anthropic or OpenAI. The new MacBook Pro uses OLED technology for better brightness and color, features M5 Pro or Max chips, and is lighter than current pro laptops.
However, whether touchscreens will drive purchasing decisions remains questionable. Ryan Reith, IDC VP for worldwide device trackers, noted that while touchscreen laptops have been available on Windows machines for a long time, they are just another feature, not a selling point behind most purchasing decisions. Only 17% of notebook PCs shipped globally this year will have touchscreens. Reith stated, "This is really a user interface and software thing... It's one more thing that can draw the developers in."