Imagine spending close to $15,000 on a night out and all anyone asks you was what the fork was made out of.
That’s what Apple’s new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display means in 2026, an Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra clone that includes Apple’s first laptop touchscreen. But for the price—about $14,549 plus tax—the touchscreen itself fades into the background.
That’s the Apple premium in 2026, where Macs now cost about what I paid for a used car a year or so ago.
You know where this money is going, of course. Apple’s latest 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,899, and the optional 16-inch model—where the premium goodies really begin—starts at $3,399. Load up your MacBook Pro with 128GB of memory, and you’ve just committed to a $7,399 laptop, at or above the highest echelons of the Surface Laptop Ultra and competing RTX Spark machines. As it is, I reviewed a “low end” 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra (base price $2,599) and the $3,699 review price would be at the high end or higher than laptops from a few years prior.
It’s when you add storage that MacBook Pro PROLED prices really soar: 2TB of storage is included on the base 16-inch laptop, but a 16TB SSD is a $7,000 addition. Just for the ability to download and store additional AI models (because let’s face it, everything is AI these days). And it doesn’t even run an M6 chip, just an M5 Max or Ultra.
In true Apple fashion, Apple doesn’t even give a reason for including a touchscreen. Like royalty, Apple is never early nor late; it is always on time. There’s nothing particularly amazing about this touchscreen, though you can touch and swipe and rotate and so on. TikTok may be full of influencers explaining how this new way of interacting with their laptop is at once cool, revolutionary, and a dynamic improvement over the status quo. It’s just as likely, however, that the touch display will end up as interesting as the illuminated Apple logo on the back of the device.
Who’s the new MacBook Pro for? Not me
In 2020, PC users might have had actual debates about what the incremental value of a laptop meant, and what premium users could expect to pay for features such as a 1200p screen, a faster processor, 32GB of memory versus 16GB, and so on. Since the average consumer could afford such upgrades—even if it meant stretching their budgets a bit—those discussions were worth having.
But more and more, the price tag of computing is climbing out of reach of a broader segment of the population. In 2025, according to the government, the median household income was $87,460. Divided by 12, that’s $7,288 per month, which sounds like a lot. But add rent, healthcare, food, gas, car payments, and it all adds up.
For a family in Iowa—heck, for a family in Chicago—a laptop is a considered purchase. But you know as well as I do that there’s a segment of the population that sees a $14,000 laptop as an investment, as well as a flex. Look what I can do! Look what I can afford! When you can write “AI” several times on a business plan and land several million dollars in seed money, a MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR becomes not just a necessary investment but proof that that investment was well spent.
Apple is decades late with touchscreens
The grim realities of the current world economy take out all of the fun of the historical Apple versus Windows face-off, too. Nvidia RTX Spark machines were clearly built with the MacBook Pro, and their ability to run local AI compute efficiently, in mind. Just compare the MacBook Pro PROLED to the Surface Laptop Ultra: they’re both black, with touchscreens, somewhat similar Arm CPUs, HDMI, and three Thunderbolt ports (one magnetically connected). The Surface Laptop Ultra beat Apple’s touchscreen MacBook to market, so it’s a clone, right? Ha-ha. Whee. Sure is.
Walk out the door, however, and you can’t escape the fact that AI is putting more and more people out of jobs. CNN is reporting that generative AI is being used to flood the market with racist ads to sell garlic supplements. Disinformation abounds as the United States, Israel, and others go to the polls for key elections.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
Set against that backdrop, Apple’s use of a touchscreen fades into irrelevance. I mean, it’s literally been a rumor for years. I still remember when Steve Jobs offered reporters typing notes onto iPads (why??) front-row seats at press conferences.
But Jobs told Playboy in 1985 that what Apple wanted to do “is make computers into appliances and get them to tens of millions of people.” Decades later in 2008, he said there were customers whom “we choose not to serve,” and that we “don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk.”
For all of Jobs’ quirks, I always thought that was Apple’s mission: to sell as many units as possible without compromising its principles. I don’t know what Apple’s principles are now these days. For that matter, I don’t know what principles Microsoft or Google or Anthropic hold, either. Regardless, capitalism forces Apple and its competitors to chase the market that the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display was designed for.
But it’s the market whose customers seem like they’re actively trying to make the world worse for the rest of us, too. That’s far bigger than a touchscreen.
