John Ternus has been busy since taking over as Apple’s CEO on Sept. 1. Two weeks after the company’s “Welcome Home” smart home launch, Apple held its “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles on Wednesday. There, Apple finally unveiled the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro that many fans have been waiting on for years.
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The new laptop, with a “groundbreaking” display dubbed PROLED, was the last in a series of announcements. Apple surprised the tech world by announcing a bunch of new products before the “Pro and Tell” event, including a new iPad Mini, M6 Mac devices, and updates to Apple Creator Studio, the company’s subscription bundle of creative apps.
Now that the long-rumored MacBook PROLED model has finally manifested, here’s everything Apple announced around its “Pro and Tell” private event.
MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display
Credit: Apple
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Price: Starts at $2,899 for 14-inch; $3,399 for 16-inch
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Release date: Pre-orders start Oct. 28, shipping Nov. 6
The headliner is the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, the first Mac with a touchscreen. It’s a notable reversal for Apple. Steve Jobs famously dismissed touchscreen laptops at Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in Oct. 2010, arguing that reaching up to a vertical screen quickly wears out your arm and calling the idea “ergonomically terrible.”
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Clunky name aside, it’s Apple’s version of tandem OLED, the display technology it already uses in the iPad Pro. Available in 14- and 16-inch sizes, the screen reaches up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness for both HDR and SDR content. It has a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a refresh rate that scales from 10Hz to 120Hz. Apple says it covers both the P3 and Adobe RGB color spaces, a pitch aimed squarely at photographers and colorists.
Apple says the touch sensor is built into the display panel itself, which cuts latency. Many existing apps work right away because macOS translates taps into clicks. Apps like Adobe Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, and Microsoft Office are adding touch-specific features. The Dynamic Island also comes to the Mac as a home for Spotlight, Live Activities, and Siri AI.
The new design is lighter, too. Apple says the 14-inch model now weighs 3 pounds, half a pound less than before, and the 16-inch weighs 4 pounds, down 0.7 pounds. Notably, these machines run M5 Pro and M5 Max, not M6. They support up to 128GB of unified memory, up to 16TB of storage, and up to 24 hours of battery life, according to Apple. Ports include three Thunderbolt 5, HDMI, an SDXC slot, and MagSafe.
This may be partially the fault of RAMageddon, but this device is premium with a capital P. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display starts at $2,899. A fully maxed-out 16-inch model costs $14,569. That configuration includes the nano-texture display, a 40-core GPU, 128GB of RAM, and 16TB of storage. The ongoing memory crisis that’s affecting computer components has pushed prices up across the industry. Pre-orders open today, Oct. 28, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
Credit: Apple
Before Apple announced the MacBook Pro with its new PROLED XDR touch display, the headline product of the week was the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which gets M6’s 12-core CPU. Apple says M6 features the world’s fastest CPU core. Apple claims the 12-core GPU is up to 30 percent faster for graphics and up to 25 percent faster for AI workloads than the M5, while the Neural Engine is up to 1.9x faster. Owners of an M1 model could see bigger jumps: Apple cites up to 11x faster graphics and up to 13x faster AI performance.
Apple’s AI benchmarks are the more telling numbers. It says LLM prompt processing delivers a first token up to 1.3x faster than the M5 model, with similar gains in Blender rendering and Xcode builds.
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Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours, which Apple calls the longest ever in a Mac, and fast charging reaches 50 percent in 30 minutes with a 96W adapter. Memory starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB. Wireless connectivity upgrades to WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the laptop supports up to two external displays.
Speaking of displays, the MacBook Pro has a Liquid Retina XDR display (with up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and a nano-texture option), a 12MP Center Stage camera, six speakers, and the same ports, including HDMI, MagSafe 3, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, and an SDXC slot.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999, or $1,899 with education pricing, and comes in space black and silver. Apple Upgrade leases start at $38.99 per month for 36 months. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, in the U.S. and 34 other countries and regions, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
iMac with M6
Credit: Apple
The iMac skips M5 entirely, jumping from M4 straight to M6. Apple says the CPU and GPU each gain two cores, with configurations offering up to 12 cores apiece and delivering up to 2x faster graphics than the M4. Again, Apple’s big claim is that the iMac can run AI locally. The company says the iMac runs on-device AI up to 5x faster than M4, including prompt processing in LM Studio. For anyone still on an Intel iMac, Apple reports an overall performance gain of up to 18x.
Connectivity gets some of the more practical upgrades. WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6 come standard, available 2.5Gb Ethernet is up to 2.5x faster than before, and Apple says SSD speeds have doubled. Up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports support two 6K external displays.
The rest of the iMac is unchanged, including the 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, 12MP Center Stage camera, color-matched accessories, and seven colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver.
The iMac with M6 starts at $1,499 ($1,449 for education) with a 10-core CPU and GPU, and $1,699 ($1,599 for education) with a 12-core CPU and GPU. That base price matches what the M4 iMac currently sells for after a $200 increase in June. Apple Upgrade leases start at $28.99 per month for 36 months. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
Apple Creator Studio
Credit: Apple
Apple also gave its new Macs more AI software to run. Apple Creator Studio adds intelligent assistants (in beta) to Logic Pro for Mac and to Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. Notably, Apple says those assistants are built on a combination of its own models and OpenAI’s. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers also gain Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, which lets third-party AI agents read documents, make edits, and run automated actions inside the apps.
Elsewhere, Final Cut Pro for Mac now includes MotionVFX’s library of effects, transitions, and templates, and Pixelmator Pro adds Generate Fill, which lets you edit selected parts of an image using text prompts. Logic Pro’s Stem Splitter can now separate drums.
The Creator Studio updates arrive in November at no additional cost for existing subscribers. The subscription costs $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with education pricing of $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year.
iPad mini with A20 Pro
Credit: Apple
Apple’s week of Pro and Tell announcements technically started Monday with the new iPad mini, which Apple calls the tablet’s “biggest update ever.” The headline change is a larger 8.5-inch OLED display that fits in the same footprint, thanks to 24 percent thinner bezels. Apple says peak brightness reaches 1,200 nits, more than double that of the previous model, and a nano-texture option is available.
The A20 Pro chip follows the same local AI script as the M6. It has Neural Accelerators in each GPU core, and Apple claims up to 4.5x faster AI performance than the previous generation. The tablet is also thinner, at 5.4mm, and adds IP67 water and dust resistance, a 12MP front camera on the landscape edge, and Apple’s N1 wireless and C2 cellular chips.
The iPad mini starts at $699 for WiFi and $849 for WiFi + Cellular (education pricing starts at $649), and comes in midnight and starlight. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
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