Apple Hardware Shift: New Touch MacBooks and M6 Chips Arrive

Apple ended a week of product announcements by introducing its first touchscreen MacBook Pro. The device marks a departure from the company's traditional hardware design, adding gesture controls to a machine that previously relied entirely on a trackpad. The launch follows several days of updates to its tablet and desktop lines, signaling a coordinated refresh across its ecosystem.

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,899, while the 16-inch version begins at $3,399. Both base models feature the M5 Pro chip, with M5 Max options available for higher performance needs. Preorders opened on Wednesday, and the first units will ship on November 6. The 14-inch model weighs three pounds, making it lighter than previous generations, and features a tandem OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 2,000 nits of peak brightness.

John Ternus, Apple's CEO, presented the device during the "Pro and Tell" event. He explained that the touch sensor is embedded directly into the display panel rather than sitting on top of it, a design choice intended to lower input latency. The laptop also introduces a Dynamic Island to the MacBook line, a feature previously reserved for iPhones. This interface displays real-time updates and allows users to search for files or interact with Siri AI.

Earlier in the week, Apple updated the iPad Mini with an 8.5-inch OLED screen. The tablet is 5.4mm thick and features bezels that are 24 percent slimmer than the previous generation. It includes an A20 Pro chip, a 12-megapixel camera, and IP67 water and dust resistance. The base Wi-Fi model with 128GB of storage costs $699. Apple also introduced an "Acoustic Display" that integrates woofers with the screen to improve bass response and volume.

The standard 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac line also moved to the new M6 chip. The M6-equipped MacBook Pro starts at $1,999, while the M6 iMac starts at $1,499. Apple claims the M6 chip provides up to five times faster on-device AI performance compared to the M4 chip used in the previous iMac model. These laptops and desktops also include the in-house N1 networking chip, which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.

On the software side, Apple is integrating AI capabilities into Keynote, Numbers, and Pages. A new chatbot built on models from Apple and OpenAI can understand the context of a user's document. The tool can design and animate slides in Keynote, restructure drafts in Pages, and visualize data in Numbers. Apple is also adding an AI-powered fill feature to Pixelmator Pro and a new assistant to Logic Pro.