Apple spent a decade telling everyone laptops don't need touchscreens. Today that policy is a preorder page. The first touchscreen MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 — and if you tap every option box in Apple's configurator, it will happily take $14,549 off you.
The whole point: fingers on glass. Ten years of "touchscreens don't belong on laptops," undone by a settings menu.
The damage, line by line: the fully loaded 14-inch runs $14,249, the 16-inch $14,549 — $4,400 above the previous $10,149 ceiling. You're paying for Apple's top-tier M5 Max (18-core CPU, 40-core GPU), and the configurator happily piles on: a 16TB SSD adds $7,000, 128GB of memory adds $2,000. TechCrunch blames the ongoing memory shortage and AI's endless hardware appetite for the pressure.
Launch-floor moment. Preorders open October 30; the machines land November 6.
The kicker: the Touch Bar already tried this once. Apple abandoned it. Now the company is back with actual touch on the display — and charging MacBook Pro money for it.
One of Apple's own launch images. Apparently that's where the $14,549 laptop lives now.
▶ Watch the full breakdown: https://cdn.builder2.com/w/v/apples-first-touchscreen-macbook-pro-costs-up-to-14549/9:16/job_226d7647-4ba.m3u8
Source: TechCrunch