THE CRUNCH
Apple has scheduled its 'Pro and tell' event for 28 October at 1PM ET in Los Angeles, and all signs point to the MacBook Pro taking centre stage. Nothing is confirmed yet, but the long-rumoured touchscreen MacBook Pro may finally arrive, nearly four years after that combination first surfaced in the rumour mill. It would be Apple's first laptop with a touchscreen and its first with an OLED display.
The touchscreen is expected to be handled with restraint rather than as an iPad-style hybrid. The Verge's preview suggests a few flourishes, such as a magnification effect when you touch the screen and new gesture controls in native apps, plus an iPhone-esque Dynamic Island, but no dramatic overhaul of macOS. The laptops are expected to stick with the M5 Pro and M5 Max for now, with Apple possibly waiting until the M7 next year to refresh its higher-end processors. The base MacBook Pro could still get an M6 bump, following the M6's debut in the Mac Mini in August, along with a slight redesign that may include a hole-punch style camera.
Two other refreshes are on the cards. The iMac is expected to skip the M5 generation entirely and jump to M6, nearly two years after its last revision, with little change beyond that beyond possibly some new colour options. The iPad Mini, meanwhile, may finally move from LCD to OLED, which would mark the start of a broader screen transition for the tablet line outside the iPad Pro. That upgrade is expected to add $100 to the price, alongside a processor jump from the aging A17 to the A20 chip generation that arrived with September's iPhone 18 line. On pricing, the new MacBook Pros are expected to come with an increase as component shortages reverberate through Apple's lineup, while the iPad Mini's rise is tied specifically to its OLED screen upgrade.