Apple is finally warming up to touchscreens on the Mac.
Multiple longtime Apple insiders, including Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, say the company is developing its first OLED touchscreen MacBook, reportedly code-named K114 and K116 internally. The machine is expected to sit above the current MacBook Pro line, possibly under a new MacBook Ultra name, and run on the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than new silicon. Gurman says it will keep a full keyboard and trackpad, so the touchscreen is optional, not a replacement for how you already use a Mac. Hints of the hardware have already surfaced in the macOS 27 developer beta, including pull-to-refresh gestures and a Dynamic Island style notification cutout.
This is a reversal from a decade of Apple executives, including now-CEO John Ternus, insisting Macs didn't need touch. Windows laptops like the Dell XPS 14 have shipped OLED touchscreens for years, so Apple is catching up on hardware, not inventing a category. If the price pattern from the iPad Pro's OLED upgrade holds, expect a thinner, lighter machine that also costs noticeably more.
Apple's iPad Pro got 20% thinner, 15% lighter, and roughly 20% pricier when it adopted OLED in 2024, and if the Mac follows that same formula, touch may arrive bundled with a real price premium, not just a design flourish.