Apple sets October 28 event for an OLED, touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple makes it official: “Pro and tell” on October 28

Apple is holding a second event in October, less than two weeks after it introduced HomeView, a new Apple TV and the HomePod mini. Marketing chief Greg Joswiak teased it with a post reading “Can’t wait to pro and tell next week,” and Apple followed up with media invitations for an in-person event in Los Angeles.

The event is scheduled for October 28, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time in Los Angeles. Apple’s invitation doesn’t name a single product, but the “Pro and tell” tagline, combined with months of supply-chain leaks, points squarely at one thing: a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, something Apple has avoided for over a decade even as it built touch into every other product it sells.

The headline rumour: an OLED, touchscreen MacBook Pro

The expected centrepiece is a redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro that pairs Apple’s first laptop touchscreen with an OLED panel, replacing the mini-LED display used since 2021. OLED should bring deeper blacks and stronger contrast than the current Liquid Retina XDR screens, and reporting attributes the new models a Dynamic Island cutout in place of the webcam notch, plus a chassis Apple is describing as “significantly lighter” than today’s MacBook Pro.

The naming question appears settled. Rumours had floated “MacBook Ultra” for a redesigned high-end model, but Apple is sticking with the MacBook Pro name for the touchscreen version, according to reporting ahead of the event. Apple may keep selling the current mini-LED MacBook Pro alongside the new OLED models as a pricier, higher-end option rather than replacing the lineup outright.

What’s still unconfirmed: the chip and the price

Sourcing disagrees on which processor the new touchscreen models will carry. Some reports expect Apple to carry over the current M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than debut new silicon, while others point to the M6 chip, which Apple already introduced in the Mac mini on August 25, 2026. Nobody outside Apple has confirmed it either way, and Apple’s own invitation names no chip, screen size or form factor.

Price is the other open question. OLED panels and touch modules both add manufacturing cost, and multiple outlets expect the new MacBook Pro to cost more than the models it’s replacing. Apple hasn’t confirmed pricing, and given how often its launch prices have moved this year, treat any number you see before October 28 as a guess.

Other hardware expected the same day

Alongside the flagship, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported Apple will refresh the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac with the M6 chip, with both keeping their current external design rather than getting a redesign. An updated iPad mini, also rumoured to gain an OLED display, is expected the same day. None of this is confirmed by Apple, but it would round out a fall hardware run that already includes HomeView, the new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini.

What the current MacBook Pro lineup looks like

For context, here’s what Apple is selling today. The 14-inch M5 model launched in October 2025, with the M5 Pro and M5 Max configurations following in March 2026. Apple raised prices across the lineup by $300 in June 2026, citing the global memory shortage, so current Apple Store prices run higher than the figures below, which reflect each model’s original launch price.

Model	Chip (CPU/GPU cores)	RAM	Storage	Launch price (USD)
14-inch MacBook Pro	M5, 10-core / 10-core	16GB	512GB	$1,599
14-inch MacBook Pro	M5 Pro, 15-core / 16-core	24GB	1TB	$2,199
16-inch MacBook Pro	M5 Pro	24GB	1TB	$2,699
14-inch MacBook Pro	M5 Max, 18-core / 32-core	36GB	2TB	$3,599
16-inch MacBook Pro	M5 Max	36GB	2TB	$3,899

All five configurations share the same 120Hz Liquid Retina XDR display at either 3024×1964 (14-inch) or 3456×2234 (16-inch) resolution, neither of which is OLED or touch-enabled. That’s the gap the October 28 models are rumoured to close.

MacBook Pro launch prices by configuration

How a touchscreen MacBook Pro would stack up against rivals

Windows laptop makers have sold OLED touchscreens for years. HP’s Spectre x360 14 is a reasonable benchmark: it pairs a 2880×1800 OLED panel with a 10-point multi-touch digitiser and stylus support, something no Mac has ever offered. The table below lines up today’s MacBook Pro, the rumoured successor, and that existing rival.

Feature	MacBook Pro 14″ (M5, current)	MacBook Pro (rumoured, Oct 28)	HP Spectre x360 14
Display type	Liquid Retina XDR, mini-LED	OLED (rumoured)	OLED
Touch input	No	Yes (rumoured)	Yes, 10-point multi-touch
Refresh rate	120Hz	Not confirmed	120Hz
Starting price	$1,999 (current)	Not announced	$1,499

Apple would be arriving late to touchscreen laptops by Windows standards, which is precisely why the “Pro and tell” framing matters: this is less a new idea for the industry and more a long-resisted one for macOS specifically.

macOS is already showing the groundwork

Software clues back up the hardware rumours. Apple seeded the first release candidate of macOS Golden Gate 27.2 to developers on October 19, a week after the fourth beta, ahead of a public release expected in the coming weeks. Code in that release candidate references new touch-specific gesture recognisers in Safari, Notes, Photos and Quick Look, which MacRumors reads as groundwork for the rumoured touchscreen MacBook. macOS 27.2’s confirmed, non-rumoured addition is Siri AI support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, expanding beyond the English-only rollout that shipped with macOS 27 Golden Gate last month.

Price and availability

Nothing about the October 28 products has an official price yet, including whether Apple will even confirm names before the keynote. What is confirmed is the pricing baseline it would be built on: the current 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 chip starts at $1,999 in the US, and the M5 Pro configuration starts at $2,499, after June’s $300 price increase. In Germany, the equivalent 14-inch M5 configuration with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage lists at €2,199 including 19% VAT. If the new OLED, touchscreen models do carry a premium over these prices, as multiple reports expect, buyers in the EU should expect that premium to show up directly in the euro price rather than be absorbed by Apple.

Also this week

A developer building a Mac temperature-monitoring app with Claude Code got an unplanned result: the coding agent flagged a hidden cryptocurrency miner running on their system. Claude Code reported the xmrig process was using roughly 1,175% CPU, about 12 cores, and had pushed the processor to 112°C after apparently being added to the Mac’s startup items in late August. The agent didn’t delete anything unprompted, instead asking the developer for permission before quarantining the files.

Separately from the touchscreen rumours, macOS Golden Gate 27.2’s first release candidate reached developers and public beta testers on October 19, following the fourth beta a week earlier. Its one confirmed consumer-facing change is Siri AI picking up French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish support, after launching English-only with macOS 27 last month.

What this means for you

If you need a Mac laptop this month and don’t care about touch or OLED, there’s no reason to wait: the current M5 MacBook Pro lineup is unlikely to get cheaper once a pricier flagship sits above it, and retailers are already discounting it ahead of the event.

If you’ve been holding out specifically for a touchscreen Mac, October 28 is the date to watch, but go in expecting a higher price tier rather than a straight replacement for today’s models. And if the chip turns out to be a carried-over M5 Pro or M5 Max rather than M6, as some reporting suggests, the real upgrade may be the screen and the touch input rather than raw performance.

Everything above the “current lineup” table is unconfirmed by Apple. Treat screen size, chip and pricing claims as informed guesses until October 28.