Apple's first touchscreen Mac has met its first big YouTube verdicts, and the surprise is how little of the conversation is about touch. In his first impressions video, Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) says he'd upgrade for the lighter body alone before he'd upgrade for the touchscreen (1:58). Linus Sebastian, on Linus Tech Tips, is far warmer about touch, but he too saves real enthusiasm for the tandem OLED panel. Dave Lee, on Dave2D, sides with Brownlee.
If you missed the announcement, Xarmo News covered what Apple's MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is and what it costs. This piece is about how the three creators reacted, and what their reactions suggest for anyone weighing one up. None of these videos is a full review, and none of the creators is claiming long-term testing.
Apple's own newsroom post sets the baseline. The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399, both with M5 Pro, and M5 Max versions cost more. Apple says the touch sensor is built into the display panel rather than layered on top, and that macOS automatically translates touches into clicks so many existing apps work with touch straight away. It quotes up to 2,000 nits peak brightness, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and ProMotion from 10Hz to 120Hz. The 14-inch weighs 3 pounds, half a pound less than before, and the 16-inch is 0.7 pounds lighter. The machines ship from November 6.
MKBHD: impressed by the screen, unmoved by touch
Brownlee opens with archive footage of Steve Jobs explaining why Apple avoided touchscreens on notebooks, then spends much of the video asking whether that argument still holds. His answer is mostly yes. A touchscreen, he says, was never near the top of his wishlist for a MacBook Pro (4:00), and he lists the familiar problems with touch laptops: smudges, screen wobble and arm fatigue (4:36).
He walks through how touch works in macOS, including scrolling and pinching (5:09), and calls the interface changes clever in concept but still a bit messy in practice. His broader point is that pro Mac software is designed around the trackpad and keyboard first, so touch is likely to stay secondary (7:38). He frames it as an optional extra rather than a redesign of the MacBook Pro.
What he is excited about is everything else: the tandem OLED display and the weight savings (10:02). That's a useful signal: one of the biggest tech channels has reacted to Apple's touchscreen Mac by, in effect, recommending its screen and its weight.
Linus Tech Tips: the case for touch
Sebastian takes the opposite line on touch. Early in the video he pushes back on cynical dismissals of Apple adopting an old idea (0:26), and points to small interface details, such as context menus spaced differently for a finger tap than for a mouse click, as the kind of thinking that could give macOS an edge over Windows on touch (0:56). Later he argues that having more ways to interact with a computer is simply better (5:21).
He is not uncritical. He dislikes Apple putting Spotlight into the Dynamic Island on macOS (3:57), and finds it a little disappointing that the top-end OLED models use M5 Pro and M5 Max rather than Apple's newer M6 (5:48). But his enthusiasm for tandem OLED arriving on a laptop used for colour-critical work (3:16) lines up neatly with Brownlee's. The video also covers Apple's other announcements from the same week, which are outside this piece.
Dave2D: the weight is the upgrade
Lee opens by saying touchscreens have never been much of a selling point on laptops, and that the weight reduction is the more impressive change (0:20). He spends time on the thermal redesign and the OLED panel's contrast before getting to touch (1:45).
On touch itself, he finds a mouse or trackpad faster for most laptop tasks (3:22), raises the arm fatigue problem (5:15) and describes touch as an auxiliary input rather than a replacement for existing controls. He suggests developers testing iPad apps are one group who could get real use from it (7:23). His closing note is about cost: he thinks the new models are a lot more expensive than people would hope (8:06).
The verdict, and who it's for
The comment sections under the MKBHD and Linus Tech Tips videos, read up to each video's six-hour mark, are sceptical and having fun with it. Many of the jokes are about fingerprints and smudges on a $2,900 screen, and several commenters bring up Apple's old line that touchscreens on laptops don't work ergonomically. The glowing Apple logo on the lid gets a surprising amount of attention, mostly tongue in cheek. That's mood, not evidence, but it sits closer to Brownlee's scepticism than to Sebastian's optimism.
Put together, two of the three creators are lukewarm on touch, Sebastian is the enthusiast, and all three spend their warmest words on something other than the touchscreen. My read is that this is the clearest takeaway for buyers. If you want this MacBook Pro, the early reactions give you better reasons to buy it for the OLED panel and the lighter body than for touch.
The practical caution is price and timing. Apple's own figures put the entry model at $2,899 with M5 Pro, Lee thinks the range is pricier than people would hope, and Sebastian's point about the chip generation is worth weighing if you plan to keep it for years. Touch support across pro apps also starts, by Apple's own description, from click translation, so how useful it becomes will depend on developers. If touch is the reason you're interested, it's worth waiting for full reviews after the November 6 release.
From the creators
Watch the videos
Reporting notes
Sources
- Marques Brownlee — Macbook PROLED XDR Impressions: They Said They Wouldn't!
- Marques Brownlee — comments up to the six-hour mark
- Linus Tech Tips — Apple Made a MacBook for ME
- Linus Tech Tips — comments up to the six-hour mark
- Dave2D — The NEW MacBook Pro - First Impressions
- Dave2D — comments up to the six-hour mark
- Apple Newsroom
