The M6 MacBook Might Lastly Get an OLED Touchscreen

This 12 months’s MacBook Professional refresh felt extra subdued in comparison with previous years. Apple made much less noise than normal about its new M5 product lineup with a single new 14-inch MacBook Pro mannequin. If the most recent leaks are to be believed, you need to in all probability maintain off for a minimum of one other 12 months. The large MacBook Professional redesign might grant Mac followers all the pieces they’ve needed since Apple switched to its M-series chips. Sure, that features the long-promised OLED display, a touchscreen, and a brand new design that finally excises the notch again to the pits of hell from whence it got here.

You’ll be able to already guess who’s spilling the beans on the subsequent MacBook refresh. Bloomberg’s Apple leaker-in-chief Mark Gurman cited his normal slate of nameless sources when he claimed that the M6 MacBook Professional would arrive someday late in 2026 or early in 2027. The present 14-inch M5 MacBook Professional is being bought alongside an M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook from final 12 months. Based mostly on earlier leaks, we count on Apple to save lots of its higher-end M5 chips for early subsequent 12 months.

Whereas we are able to already guess M6 can have improved efficiency over M5, the next-gen MacBook might lastly supply an natural light-emitting diode show. Such a show makes use of self-emissive materials that gives deep “inky” blacks and higher distinction than a typical LCD. Apple calls the OLED shows in its latest iPhones “Tremendous Retina XDR,” although the cream of the crop amongst Apple’s gadget lineup is the tandem OLED—basically two OLEDs stacked on prime of one another for higher brightness—discovered within the M4 iPad Pro and the newly unveiled M5 iPad Pro.

The icing on the cake might be that Apple lastly presents a touchscreen on a MacBook Professional. Gurman recommended that the PC gained’t be a convertible—these PCs whose screens can twist 90 levels to behave as a form of pill. As an alternative, it will be your normal touchscreen laptop computer, full with the same old trackpad. Apple has lengthy resisted placing a contact display screen on Macs, figuring that the iPad had that management type coated. Nevertheless, now that iPadOS 26 lastly permits for floating home windows for higher multitasking, the strains between pill and MacBook are beginning to blur. Apple’s present CEO, Tim Cook dinner, once compared touchscreens on laptops to converging “a toaster and a fridge.” I suppose we shouldn’t inform him about that toaster with a touchscreen my colleague James Pero not too long ago reviewed.

Not solely might the display screen feel and appear higher, however it might additionally sport options I and different customers have begged Apple to incorporate for years. Present MacBook screens sport a “notch” surrounding the user-facing webcam. The following Mac could push the display screen edge-to-edge and change it with one thing akin to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. This function pops up with notifications and different helpful data relying on the app working within the background, akin to timers or Uber pickup instances.

Each the 14- and 16-inch MacBooks might obtain these upgrades, in line with Gurman. Apple will seemingly improve costs of its M6 MacBooks to compensate for the dearer display screen sort. Present MacBook Professionals use a mini LED format, which Apple calls Liquid Retina XDR. The present base M5 MacBook Professional with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage begins at $1,600.

The previous few MacBook refreshes have left us with machines that carry out higher yearly, however with none modifications to their shell, it’s laborious to argue anyone ought to hassle upgrading to the most recent mannequin in the event that they’re nonetheless utilizing an M-series MacBook. Apple could also be saving its M5 Professional and M5 Max chips for early 2026 alongside a brand new M5 MacBook Air. If the corporate continues to be apprehensive a couple of touchscreen Mac, maybe the corporate ought to have one other go on the wonky Contact Bar on the defunct 13-inch MacBook Professionals, as if we wanted a reminder of why you need to by no means try this once more.