Apple unveils first touchscreen MacBooks in major product shift

Apple CEO John Ternus introduced the company's first touchscreen MacBooks on Wednesday, marking a significant shift from the longstanding company stance against the technology. The unveiling took place during an Apple event in Los Angeles, where Ternus showcased a MacBook Pro model featuring an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, highlighting its contrast, sharpness, and brightness in front of an audience of creative professionals.

Ternus emphasized the Mac's enduring appeal and strength, stating, "The Mac has never been better, and it’s never been stronger." The event marked a media push filled with new product launches since Ternus, a veteran hardware executive, became CEO at the beginning of last month. Alongside the touchscreen MacBooks, Ternus introduced a folding iPhone, Duo, in September and a smart home hub in New York earlier this month.

The Los Angeles event may reignite the long-standing debate over the integration of touchscreens in Apple's laptop line, a technology Apple has previously dismissed as "ergonomically terrible." Apple executives argued that touchscreens were not suitable for laptops, drawing parallels to the impracticality of combining a toaster and a refrigerator.

However, with touchscreens already commonplace in Windows devices and with the iPhone approaching its two-decade anniversary, a new generation of consumers expects touch capabilities. Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, suggested that Apple's resistance to touchscreens on laptops was "purely inevitable." The new MacBook Pro with the touchscreen starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch model equipped with the M5 Pro chip, while the 16-inch model, which is 0.7 pounds lighter than its predecessor, begins at $4,799 for the highest-end configuration.

Pre-orders for the new MacBook Pro with the touchscreen will open on Wednesday, with sales commencing on November 6. The device targets creators, designers, and photographers who value high-fidelity screens and are accustomed to using touchscreens on tablets and smartphones. To mitigate OLED burn-in, Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro's chassis to effectively draw warm air away from the display and leveraged the computing power of its M5 chips to maintain screen refresh rates.