A touchscreen on the Mac

For years Apple kept touch on the iPad and the iPhone. With this model, it adds touch to the Mac for the first time. According to Apple, the touch sensor is built into the display panel itself instead of being a separate layer, which it says reduces latencythe delay between your finger touching the screen and the screen reacting.

The display is what Apple calls PROLED XDR, based on tandem OLEDtwo layers of OLED light-emitting material stacked on top of each other, which allows a brighter screen that lasts longer. Apple lists up to 2000 nits of peak brightness for both HDR and normal content, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and color covering both the P3 and Adobe RGB gamuts. ProMotion varies the refresh rate between 10Hz and 120Hz.

Dynamic Island comes to macOS

The pill-shaped area at the top of the screen, which iPhone owners know as the Dynamic Islandan area around the camera cutout that shows ongoing activities, such as a timer or music, and expands when you tap it, now appears on the Mac. Apple says it becomes the home for Spotlight search, Live Activities and Siri AI. A footnote adds a condition: Spotlight only moves there if Siri AI is available and turned on.

The laptop ships with macOS 27.

Chips, memory and battery

You can choose M5 Pro or M5 Max, with up to 128GB of unified memorymemory shared by the processor and the graphics chip, so they do not need to copy data between them and up to 16TB of storage. Apple claims up to 24 hours of battery life, based on its own tests from September 2026, and notes that battery life varies with use and configuration.

Prices in the US

  • 14-inch with M5 Pro: $2,899, or $2,749 with education pricing
  • 16-inch with M5 Pro: $3,399, or $3,199 for education
  • 14-inch with M5 Max: $4,499, or $4,199 for education
  • 16-inch with M5 Max: $4,799, or $4,499 for education

The M6 model is the cheaper choice

On October 27, the day before, Apple introduced a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 chip, also on sale from November 6. It starts at $1,999, uses what Apple calls a Liquid Retina XDR display and also claims up to 24 hours of battery. Its announcement does not mention touch or the PROLED XDR panel.

So the newest chip and the new display are in different machines. If you want touch and OLED, you get M5 Pro or M5 Max. If you want M6, you get the older display type for $900 less.

If you are updating an older Mac or iPhone, check that it already has the fix for CVE-2024-27834, a 2024 Apple flaw now confirmed as exploited.

Sources

Primary sources we checked for this article: