Apple's Touchscreen MacBook Pro Leads a Five-Device Friday Blitz

Apple is closing out a packed fall with one last wave: five new devices, all landing Friday, according to Lifehacker. Four of them are Macs, and one is a new iPad. The headliner is Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro, a machine the company has been stubbornly avoiding for years.

The iPad mini finally goes OLED. No backlight, so individual pixels shut off for dark content, which sharpens contrast for whatever you're watching. It's thinner and lighter than before, runs the same A20 Pro chip as the iPhone 18 Pro and the foldable iPhone Duo, and starts at $699 for 128GB. Nano-texture glass adds $100, cellular adds $150.

The iMac gets the M6 chip — Apple claims up to five times the speed of the M4 iMac and up to 12 times the M1 version — plus Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Otherwise it's the same all-in-one: a 24-inch LED display, two or four USB-C ports, a 12MP webcam. Still no OLED. Price holds at $1,499 for the two-port, 16GB, 256GB setup.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro also swaps in the M6, which Apple says is up to 13 times faster at AI processing than the M1 model. Buyers pick their chip: M6 for entry-level pro work, M5 Pro for mid-tier, M5 Max for the heaviest loads. It keeps the 14-inch mini-LED screen at 120Hz, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot and a 12MP webcam. Starting price: $1,999.

Then there's the touchscreen MacBook Pro, the one worth the wait. It comes in 14- and 16-inch sizes with an OLED panel Apple calls PROLED XDR — 1,000 nits typical, 2,000 nits HDR — and you can scroll, zoom or draw right on the glass, including inside Logic Pro and 3D modeling apps. The notch is gone, replaced by an iPhone-style Dynamic Island that handles Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI. The backlit Apple logo is back too.

It runs M5 Pro or M5 Max only, no M6, and Apple says it delivers up to 13 more hours of battery life than Intel-based MacBook Pros with fast charging to 50% in half an hour. Prices start at $2,899 for the 14-inch and $3,399 for the 16-inch, but a fully loaded 16-inch machine runs $14,549 — roughly half of that going to 16TB of RAM. All of it ships Friday, under new CEO Jon Ternus, who has already pushed out the iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, HomePod mini 2 and Apple Watch Series 12 this fall.