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MacBook Ultra: Everything We Know About Apple's OLED Touchscreen Mac
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Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
I have touchscreen on my desktop and laptop, been using them for at least 10 years regularly. I still dont have arms like a gorilla, or any other of the other "revelations" that Steve had at the time. He was great at trying to discredit competitors.
"The higher-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro chip starts at $2,499, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,999. The OLED MacBook will be priced even higher."
I think it's pretty safe to say Apple will 'Start' this range from 3500 to 4000 easily. And sales will drop as a result, I hope.
I think it's pretty safe to say Apple will 'Start' this range from 3500 to 4000 easily. And sales will drop as a result, I hope.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Ah bummer. I’ve been waiting a couple years on this laptop to make sure when I upgrade from my m2 Mini it’s to something really next gen, and with the way PC prices have gone I’m priced out before it even releases.
Always self insure and never had to use it. Always purchase with a credit card that gives me an extra year of coverage. I have saved a considerable amount over the years.
I’ve had a few Windows touchscreen laptops over the years, and have almost never used the feature. And with Apple’s awesome trackpads, I just don’t see a use case where I lift my wrist up, touch a perfectly clean screen to zoom/rotate/tap on anything.
Also $3500 for mass adoption for any consumer product as a starting price?! Good luck with that. Apple will quickly see their current price increases stall laptop sales.
Also $3500 for mass adoption for any consumer product as a starting price?! Good luck with that. Apple will quickly see their current price increases stall laptop sales.
This reminds me of phones and buttons before the iPhone. I'm open to it, they might reinvent the wheel here and make it obvious as to what's been missing.
People should calm down about OLED. Honestly, I'm picky about details but I have bought a iPad Pro M5 with an OLED display and I can hardly tell the difference with my "old" iPad that had no OLED. It's really more a marketing thing in my opinion. But of course you'll see a lot of YouTubers showing you side by side comparisons in a dark room, and how incredible the news screens are lol.
NightFox
macrumors 68040
I'm interested to see how this pans out - I've had MS Surfaces for work for the last 10 years, and it's only occasionally I actually remember that they're touch-screen. Most of the time though my fingers are already poised over the mouse/keyboard, so reaching up to touch the screen is actually a disrupter rather than a convenience.
My view is we had Symbian os from Nokia which was okay. We have Windows, which is okay. It wasn't until we had iOS and realised touch didn't have to be poorly thought out that we appreciated it far more. I'm hoping Apple can do the same for us and show where Windows gets a lot of this behaviour wrong.
Only if allowed by the developer. In some cases, that’s due to the dev not wanting to troubleshoot for another OS. For apps like Netflix, Disney+, macOS currently allows broader file access than iOS/iPadOS so it would require more effort to protect their content there than on iPadOS/iOS.
Folks that have been using iPads for years won’t care about it being more secure as they’re not using their systems in that way anyway. For folks that are fans of the current permissions model, well, they’ll be able to buy the less expensive machines. 🙂
vegetassj4
macrumors 68020
atomwork
macrumors 6502
As a long-time Apple user, I’m not surprised. It’s a recurring pattern. Instead of showcasing the latest and greatest technology, such as creating an M5 ULTRA or M6 ULTRA chip before or during this product launch, they consistently revert to older, depreciated technology with higher prices and present it in a new form, labeling it as innovation.
Remember when Steve launched the Mac Pro and placed the fasted chip at the time there. TWBA/CHIAT hat so much fun with the commercials. It was groundbreaking, new, fastest silicon on earth (even for a few months only)
Remember when Steve launched the Mac Pro and placed the fasted chip at the time there. TWBA/CHIAT hat so much fun with the commercials. It was groundbreaking, new, fastest silicon on earth (even for a few months only)
No idea what you're getting at with that reverting story.
You're a long time Apple user and don't know it's "Ultra", not "ULTRA"?
Be that as it may, in order to build an Ultra of a given generation, you need to have a Max in place. The Max is based on the Pro, and the Pro on the base version. Releases are staggered so each tier is field-tested before it gets integrated into the next-higher one.
If I had to guess, for any generation, the breakdown of sales is 95% (probably more like 99.5%, but I'm guessing here) base version, 4.9% between the Pro and Max, and maybe 0.1% Ultra if one is made. The Ultra is probably much, much closer to 0.01% or even less. So you expect them to release the Ultra first? That doesn't make any sense from a market or engineering perspective.
I'm sure when they launch the lowest tier M-chips that they already have production samples of the Ultra if one exists in a generation.
Several years ago when OLED MacBooks were only a year away I tried to wait with my Intel space heater and white noise generator. But ultimately I gave up. SO glad I did.
Where I sit today is OLED is a nice to have but I spend 98% of my time on external monitors. That is a real 98% as it is weeks between me undocking.
Touchscreen seems novel and in that 2% of the time I am undocked I admit to poking the screen, sometimes more than once wondering why it is frozen. So it is also ultimately a nice to have for when your computer is in your lap but probably never on a desk. I believe there is truth to the argument against fingerprints, but if someone uses touch enough to smudge up the screen then touch is probably worth it to them as the cost of having to clean the screen periodically.
In many ways touch screen is EXACTLY like my BELOVED Touch Bar! I thought it was the coolest thing in a long time. I even had an add-on that made it actually functional. But as I abandoned it when I left Intel I realized I never actually used the thing - because it was on the desk off to the side 98% of the time.
With the new information I absolutely WILL NOT buy this though. I am not going to spend $3-4K for a machine whose CPU will be 2 generations old in as little as 8 months!!!
I also believe RAM prices are in a huge bubble and will come down dramatically in the medium term. Both from data center cancellations, which seem the rule rather than the exception, and from more capacity coming online. Whether Apple lowers prices is yet to be seen. That is not a normal thing for them to do!
But my next MacBook will probably be in 2028. An OLED touch screen M7 Max with 196GB of RAM (you can quote me on that guess) and a 4TB disk.
Where I sit today is OLED is a nice to have but I spend 98% of my time on external monitors. That is a real 98% as it is weeks between me undocking.
Touchscreen seems novel and in that 2% of the time I am undocked I admit to poking the screen, sometimes more than once wondering why it is frozen. So it is also ultimately a nice to have for when your computer is in your lap but probably never on a desk. I believe there is truth to the argument against fingerprints, but if someone uses touch enough to smudge up the screen then touch is probably worth it to them as the cost of having to clean the screen periodically.
In many ways touch screen is EXACTLY like my BELOVED Touch Bar! I thought it was the coolest thing in a long time. I even had an add-on that made it actually functional. But as I abandoned it when I left Intel I realized I never actually used the thing - because it was on the desk off to the side 98% of the time.
With the new information I absolutely WILL NOT buy this though. I am not going to spend $3-4K for a machine whose CPU will be 2 generations old in as little as 8 months!!!
I also believe RAM prices are in a huge bubble and will come down dramatically in the medium term. Both from data center cancellations, which seem the rule rather than the exception, and from more capacity coming online. Whether Apple lowers prices is yet to be seen. That is not a normal thing for them to do!
But my next MacBook will probably be in 2028. An OLED touch screen M7 Max with 196GB of RAM (you can quote me on that guess) and a 4TB disk.
Apple MessagePad
macrumors regular
But don't buy it because it'll come with the M5 according to the rumors earlier this week and the M6 and M6 Pro will be out next year.