Apple has spent well over a decade insisting nobody wants to touch a Mac screen. Steve Jobs called it ergonomically wrong, and the company has repeated some version of that line ever since. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is about to change its mind in the most expensive way possible.
The vehicle is a brand new laptop, the “MacBook Ultra,” and it is shaping up to be the biggest rethink of the Mac in years. OLED screen, touch input, a higher price than anything in the current line, and a launch window of late this year into early next. If the rumours hold, it breaks several of Apple’s oldest rules at once.
A New Tier Above the Pro
The first thing to understand is that the MacBook Ultra is not a replacement for the MacBook Pro. Apple only just refreshed the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro, and those stay exactly where they are. The Ultra sits above them, a new halo product aimed at people who want the most extravagant laptop Apple can build and will pay whatever that costs.
Apple has done this before with the name. The Ultra badge already signals the top of the range on the Apple Watch and inside Mac chips, and it always comes with a price to match. Slapping it on a MacBook tells you exactly where this thing is going to sit, and roughly how much it is going to hurt to buy.
The Firsts Are the Real Story
Any one of these features would make headlines on its own. Stacked together, they are a genuine reinvention.
The touchscreen is the headline, because Apple has resisted it for so long and so loudly. The OLED display is a proper upgrade too, bringing deeper blacks, better contrast and the kind of panel Apple already ships in the iPhone and iPad Pro but has kept off the Mac for years. There is also talk of a Dynamic Island arriving on a Mac for the first time, borrowing the iPhone’s pill-shaped camera housing and turning it into something interactive.
The one that genuinely surprised me is cellular. A MacBook that can get online through mobile data, with no hunting for Wi-Fi and no tethering to your phone, would be a first for the Mac line. For anyone who works on the move, that is arguably a bigger deal than the touchscreen, because it fixes a daily annoyance rather than adding a party trick. None of this is confirmed hardware yet, but the pattern of leaks is consistent, and OLED plus touch on a Mac has been rumoured for a long time.
The Odd Chip Decision
Here is the wrinkle that had everyone scratching their heads. The first MacBook Ultra will not run a next-generation chip. Gurman reports it will use the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max, the same silicon in the MacBook Pro that just went on sale, rather than a new M6.
The reason is that Apple is skipping the M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely. The plan is to jump from the M5 generation of high-end chips straight to the M7 Pro and M7 Max, which are earmarked for a second-generation MacBook Ultra further down the line. So this first model is a new body and a new screen wrapped around familiar internals, with the chip leap saved for the sequel. If you were hoping for a full top-to-bottom reinvention on day one, that is the part that gets held back.
Should You Wait
If you have been eyeing a high-end Mac, this complicates the decision. The MacBook Pro on sale today is excellent and available now. The MacBook Ultra is more exciting, later, pricier, and running the same class of chip as the Pro you could buy this afternoon. This is the same wait-or-buy dilemma that has hung over the Mac line for a couple of years, only sharper now that the OLED touchscreen future finally has a shipping window.
My honest read is that the first MacBook Ultra is one for the enthusiasts and the deep-pocketed, the people who want the newest thing and do not mind paying a premium to own the first version of it. Everyone else can happily sit tight. The touchscreen OLED Mac is coming, but the version worth waiting for might be the second one, when Apple finally drops the M7 chips in and the reinvention is complete rather than half done.
Either way, the headline is the same. After years of telling us we did not want to touch our Macs, Apple is about to sell us one that begs to be touched. That is a bigger shift than any spec sheet lets on.
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