The latest MacBook Ultra rumors: What we know about Apples OLED touchscreen Macs

With a fresh batch of iPhones out of the way, new MacBooks are almost certainly next on Apple’s docket.

An updated MacBook Pro with the M6 chip is expected to arrive sometime this fall, based on its usual upgrade cycle. But rumor has it that another mysterious new Mac is also in the pipeline — the first with an OLED touchscreen.

Here’s a running list of everything we know about the so-called “MacBook Ultra.”

Why an OLED touchscreen MacBook is a big deal

Touch-enabled OLED displays are readily available on most high-end Windows laptops, but Apple has never bothered to equip its MacBooks with OLED panels or touch capabilities before. In fact, company executives have long derided the latter. In 2010, late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs called touchscreen laptops “ergonomically terrible.” In 2018, software head Craig Federighi told Wired that he’s “not into touchscreens” on laptops.

Then-hardware chief John Ternus, who recently ascended to the role of Apple’s CEO, was still dismissing the idea of a touchscreen MacBook in 2021. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he said Apple had already made “the world’s best touch computer on an iPad…And the Mac is totally optimized for indirect input.”

“We haven’t really felt a reason to change that,” Ternus added. For whatever reason, that longtime strategy may have changed.

Apple previously experimented with an OLED “Touch Bar” on MacBook Pros from 2016 to 2021, replacing their physical function row with a customizable touchscreen strip. It was either cool or useless, depending on who you asked.

At present, the only Apple products with OLED touchscreens are the iPad Pros and iPhones. (The former specifically have tandem OLED displays, which are brighter.) The existing 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros have static mini-LED displays. They’re “beautifully crisp,” to quote Mashable’s tech editor, but a touch-supported OLED model would be a more interactive laptop with better contrast, wider viewing angles, and zero blooming to boot.

How do we know Apple is working on an OLED MacBook?

A slate of well-known Apple insiders have all separately claimed to have intel that the company is preparing an OLED touchscreen MacBook for release in 2026.

Bloomberg managing editor Mark Gurman — a fount of Apple scoops — first broke the news in early 2023, calling it “a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy” (see: that Jobs quote). Gurman has continued to report on the device’s supposed development over the years.

In fall 2025, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote on X that an upcoming “OLED MacBook Pro … will incorporate a touch panel using on-cell touch technology.” Kuo has foretold the arrival of Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo, Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, and USB-C iPads.

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This June, a reliable leaker known as Instant Digital added more fuel to the fire with a short post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. “It’s 100% confirmed that the MacBook screen will be touch-enabled,” he wrote.

Just days later, Gurman reported that the developer beta for macOS 27 contained “the first tangible evidence from Apple itself” of the OLED touchscreen MacBook: newly added support for touch-responsive software features like a pull-to-refresh action. (More on those shortly.) At this point, the device is all but confirmed.

What will the OLED MacBook be called?

According to Gurman, the OLED touchscreen Mac is internally code-named K114 and K116. (That probably means it will also come in 14- and 16-inch sizes.) Both he and Kuo have referred to it as a high-end variant of the MacBook Pro, though Gurman’s theorized that it could have a different name: MacBook Ultra, maybe?

“A ‘MacBook Ultra’ label would more clearly signal their [the OLED touchscreen Macs’] position at the top of the lineup,” Gurman wrote in a March edition of his weekly “Power On” newsletter. Apple already calls its most advanced smartwatch and silicon chip the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and M5 Ultra, respectively.

But don’t put too much stock in that just yet. We thought the foldable iPhone would be called the iPhone Ultra for a while, and it wound up getting the Duo identifier.

OLED MacBook rumored features

Gurman said the OLED touchscreen MacBook has a new interface that makes it easy to switch between touch and traditional point-and-click controls. Updates in the macOS 27 beta clue us in to three software features that will likely show up on it:

• A pull-to-refresh action, similar to how you’d reload a website or social media feed on an iPhone or iPad

• The iPhones’ Dynamic Island, a pill-shaped notification area with a hole-punch camera cutout (no more notch!)

• The ability to interact with an extended or mirrored iPad screen via touch inputs

Gurman has also stated that the new MacBook will have a full keyboard and trackpad, so using its touchscreen will be “completely optional.” This is not going to be some sort of MacBook-iPad love child, in other words.

Looks-wise, Gurman thinks the OLED touchscreen MacBook will be “significantly lighter” than existing Pro models, which have had the same form factor since 2021. OLED panels are thinner and bendier than regular LCD panels, so this makes sense. Apple’s iPad Pros got up to 20 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter when they gained OLED displays.

“Apple has reengineered the machine’s interior, miniaturizing parts and rearranging components to make the computer much easier to carry,” Gurman wrote.

In 2024, Gurman reported that Apple was “investigating the idea of bringing cellular connectivity to the Mac for the first time,” but didn’t specify whether that feature was intended for the OLED touchscreen MacBook or another future model. He hasn’t mentioned it since, so Apple might’ve left it on the back burner.

What chip will the OLED MacBook have?

The OLED touchscreen MacBook will reportedly run on Apple’s M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, not brand-new silicon. That’s according to Gurman again, who credited his sources as “people with knowledge of the matter … who asked not to be identified because the plans are private.”

Launched in March of this year, the M5 Pro and M5 Max fuel Apple’s current top-end MacBook Pros. They’re designed to handle the intensive computing workloads of power users like professional creatives, developers, and AI researchers. With that in mind, the OLED touchscreen MacBook will not be a laptop for the average person.

How much will the OLED MacBook cost?

The OLED touchscreen MacBook will most likely be Apple’s priciest laptop, given its upper-end processors and fancy display. For reference, the existing MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip starts at $2,499 in the 14-inch size and $2,999 in the 16-inch size.

Knowing that the iPad Pros got about 20 percent more expensive as part of their OLED upgrade, it’s possible that a 14-inch OLED touchscreen MacBook will start around $2,999. Of course, that’s assuming the global memory crisis doesn’t wreak any more havoc on component costs before its launch, which may be overly optimistic. (Apple already had to raise its MacBook prices once this year amid “RAMageddon.”)

Will Apple release the OLED MacBook in 2026?

Gurman has reported that the OLED touchscreen MacBook will arrive between the end of 2026 and early 2027. This spring, he was leaning towards the latter half of that timeframe because of the memory crisis. But these days, he’s banking on an imminent launch. (So are 55 percent of Mashable readers, according to the results of our Big Guessing Game: Apple Edition.)

“Apple, I believe, will introduce its first touchscreen MacBook Pro this fall, as early as October,” Gurman said in the inaugural episode of his “Power On” podcast, which dropped Oct. 1. “[It] Could slip to November, but as early as October.”

The OLED touchscreen MacBook would mark Apple’s second all-new laptop of 2026 after the outrageously popular budget MacBook Neo.

Source: https://mashable.com/tech/apple-oled-touchscreen-macbook-ultra-latest-rumors-release-date-leaks-2026