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Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro feels both familiar and radically improved

It's thinner, lighter and has a better screen — but it's still a MacBook Pro.

As expected, Apple announced its first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen at its "Pro and Tell" event today in Los Angeles. I've gotten a chance to quickly check it out the "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display" and — it feels like a MacBook Pro. Apple didn't reinvent the wheel with this redesign, even though there are a ton of significant changes. The company kept the standard 14- and 16-inch screens, though the display has obviously been massively improved.

Despite the reduction in weight (the 14-inch is three pounds, while the 16-inch is four), Apple kept the same set of ports on these new models, and the keyboard and trackpad appear to be the same reliable and comfortable options that have been on the MacBook Pro since its big 2021 redesign. It's funny how shaving half a pound makes a huge difference, but it absolutely does in this case.

This isn't the first time that Apple has dramatically reduced the weight of the MacBook Pro — the infamous 2016 Touch Bar models were also about the same weight. But they also ran Intel chips and had notorious difficulty staying cool and performant under heavy work loads. I have to wager that won't be the case here, but it's definitely something we'll want to look out for when we do more in-depth testing.

The screen is a star

In 2024, Apple released the iPad Pro with its "tandem OLED" screen, one that I called the nicest display I had ever seen on an Apple device. Well, that title now goes to the MacBook Pro. The OLED technology makes for the blackest blacks, and the set of demo photographs and videos loaded on the laptop really show it off.

Using touch on the MacBook Pro works just as you'd expect. You can swipe through images, use two fingers for multi-touch gestures like panning and zooming, draw in apps like Pixelmator or adjust editing sliders in Photos. The UI has not significantly changed — you'd never know at first glance that this MacBook Pro was designed for touch. UI elements like the "stop light" buttons in the top left for window management expand slightly when you touch them, but there's otherwise no major concessions to this being an OS that supports touch.

The touch performance is pretty good, though I did feel like there were occasional stutters while switching between Spaces or full-screen apps. But I'm also chalking that up to the fact that I'm not at all familiar just yet with swiping and tapping in macOS just yet. The good news is that if you're familiar with gestures on your trackpad, like using a three-finger swipe to move between full-screen apps, those gestures work here as well. You can also "flick" apps to different sides of the screen to set up how your windows are laid out, something that you can already do on the iPad.

Ultimately, this is one of those expected product glow-ups where almost everything significant has changed, but it still feels perfectly familiar. That's a good thing: the 2016 major MacBook Pro revamp was one of the darkest moments for the Mac, as the company threw out too much of what worked while adding things of questionable value.

That's not the case here. The new MacBook Pro still has a great keyboard and trackpad, it still has powerful chips and plenty of ports. But the size and weight reduction is significant and the new display is extremely impressive (even if you don't use the touchscreen). Of course, this will cost you; Apple's highest-tech has never been cheap, and it's even worse than usual thanks to the ongoing storage and RAM crisis. But the $400 premium for these new laptops over the non-OLED verions at least feels justified.

Oh — and the glowing logo on the lid is just as cool now as it was 30-something years ago. I'm glad it's back.