Apple just teased the first full touch-screen MacBook in Los Angeles at Apple’s “Pro and Tell” showcase. The PROLED XDR looks like a winner, and tech experts are excited about what it could mean for future MacBooks.
As PCMag reports, eons after Steve Jobs famously railed against touch screens in Windows laptops, touch-display input is finally a thing in a MacBook, in the form of a new, overhauled MacBook Pro for high-end users. For years, Apple questioned the necessity and efficacy of laptop touch screens but worked on implementing the technology—both behind the scenes and in the open—through its iPhone and iPad product lines.
Now that it has come home to laptops, Apple calls its first touch effort (which comes in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes) the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. Although it’s still early days, it might be the best implementation of a touch screen on a laptop display to date.
It appears to be the swiftest, most responsive touch screen produced so far, and it doesn’t stop there. Apple also used this opportunity to introduce tandem OLED panel technology to its MacBooks for the first time, nailing the implementation with deeper blacks and more vibrant colors than on any OLED laptop so far.
Apple didn’t have to reinvent its entire design ID with these overhauled MacBook Pro laptops…and it didn’t. Instead, it focused on what matters most: the screen and the portability. In those respects, this is a brand-new laptop through and through, hitting all the major areas one would expect from a revamped MacBook Pro.
Touch controls for the first time ever on a MacBook laptop make sense in a professional capacity, pairing the snappy refresh rate of ProMotion and deep color coverage of Apple’s PROLED XDR implementation of Tandem OLED. At least from first glance, Apple has cooked up the absolute best laptop screen in town once again, admittedly having slipped a bit in that regard recently, as OLED made inroads into the laptop world.
All told, Apple’s latest MacBook Pro design is remarkable for what’s been done both inside and out. It’s everything you want from an updated laptop: It’s thinner, it’s lighter, and it has more features than ever—even that light-up logo on the lid for style. And you do get a color choice: As before, the new MacBook Pro laptops come in Space Black or silver.
Apple’s response to these developments, old and new, looks like the wait may have been worth it. PCMag’s experts state they haven’t seen any other laptop to date deliver such a panel-quality coup with both OLED and touch in one. Now we only have to wonder: Which MacBooks might get this screen next, and how might macOS leverage this new input method? Could we eventually get a touch-enabled MacBook Air?
If you want the best touch-screen laptop that money can buy, these MacBook Pro laptops look poised to become major contenders. At this point, you (and your budget) just have to decide whether that’s worth a substantial price increase over the non-touch, non-OLED MacBook Pros: to start, $2,899 for the 14-inch model, or $3,399 for the 16-incher.
Both versions of the laptop are available for preorder now, and they go on general sale starting on Friday, Nov. 6.
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Photo Credit: WeDesing / Shutterstock.com
