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Lights, camera, action! The new MacBook Pro is here - and it’s quite a glowing upgrade.
Today in Hollywood, Apple held a special “Pro and tell” event where it announced the all-new MacBook Pro. It’s powered by the most powerful chips Apple currently offers, and it has a brand-new design with a new kind of display: the PROLED XDR. It’s more colorful, it’s brighter, it’s more color-accurate, and it does something no other MacBook has ever supported: you can touch it. Yes, for the very first time in Apple’s history, the MacBook Pro has a touchscreen which lets you touch to open an app, close a window, or interact with the Dynamic Island.
It’s a huge shift for the MacBook, and it comes with a hefty price to boot. It’s been a busy week for Apple, too, beyond just the MacBook Pro. We also got a new iPad mini with an OLED display, an upgraded 14-inch MacBook Pro, and a new 24-inch iMac.
As a team of creators, The Shortcut’s Slack has been blowing up with early thoughts and impressions on everything Apple has unveiled for the past three days, and we’re beyond hype to get a chance to review it all. Be sure to subscribe and share with your friends to get notified when all of these reviews drop.
Let’s get into all the news, shall we?
First things first: dbrand’s new Folio Grip for iPad mini
For years, dbrand has been making some of our favorite accessories for phones, gaming consoles, laptops, and more. But beyond skins, the company doesn’t have much for iPads… until now.
This week, dbrand is introducing the new Folio Grip case. The company took its existing Grip case for devices like the iPhone Duo and stretched it out to protect your iPad. It’s available for the iPad Pro and baseline iPad, as well as the new iPad mini with OLED.
The case wraps around the entirety of your iPad to protect it from drops and scratches, all while giving you a ton of extra grip thanks to a unique texture on the outside. It also comes with a folio flap on the front to protect the display, which can also bend to varying degrees to prop up your iPad exactly how you want. The best part? You can remove the flap and just use the case itself if it gets in your way.
The Folio Grip also accommodates your Apple Pencil on the edge of your iPad, and it has the same clicky buttons as the Grip case for phones and other devices.
In addition, dbrand is also launching a PRISM screen protector designed for iPad. It uses the same premium tempered glass as other PRISM screen protectors in its lineup that repels dust, prevent scratches, and has a fingerprint-resistant finish so your display will always look clean. Plus, you get dbrand’s genius installation tray in the box to make applying the protector to your iPad as idiot-proof as possible. It’s also available for iPad mini, as well as the higher-end Pros and the base iPad.
You can pick up the new accessories right now on dbrand’s website. Here’s how pricing shakes out for it all.
dbrand Folio Grip
iPad mini: $69.95
iPad Pro and iPad: $79.95
dbrand PRISM
iPad mini: $49.95
iPad Pro and iPad: $59.95
But wait… there’s more!
For the new MacBook Pro, dbrand is also releasing a suite of skins for the laptop so you can customize it to your liking. Many of the company’s existing skins are available for the laptops in box sizes, so you should be able to find just what you’re looking for on its website.
🎬 Breaking down all of Apple’s “Pro and tell” announcements
💻 MacBook Pro
Oh yes, that’s a glowing Apple logo - the first we’ve seen on a new MacBook in over 10 years. It’s how you’ll be able to tell someone has the new MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen just from the back.
The biggest news of the week is the new MacBook, which is Apple’s most powerful to date. Let’s break down this behemoth of a machine.
📺 The first OLED screen on a MacBook. Apple has equipped the new MacBook Pro with the first PROLED XDR display its ever shipped. It’s a new tandem OLED display that stacks two OLED screens on top of each other for better brightness, which Apple says can reach 2,000 nits. It’s backed by all sorts of algorithms and engines to tune the display to show off accurate colors, deliver Extreme Dynamic Range, and boast an industry-first 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. You can also add a nano-texture coating to reduce glares and make it easier to see in the sun.
🎙️ Touch me, baby. Cue The Doors, because you can touch the screen on the new MacBook Pro. Apple says that it’s built right into the display panel and not behind it, so it feels like you’re actually touching the content on your screen. You can do things from swipe through webpages to flick windows across your desktop. Apple also says it opens new possibilities for folks like graphic designers who want a 360 of what they’re working on, musicians who want to finely tune a project they’re working on, and more. The laptop is equipped with a hinge that keeps the display sturdy every time you touch it so it won’t wobble back and forth.
🏝️ Dynamic Island arrives on top. Look at the top of the new MacBook Pro and you’ll see something familiar: the Dynamic Island. Apple got rid of the notch for the Center Stage camera and built it into a hole-punch cutout in the display, then added the Dynamic Island to keep things alive and functional. You can do pretty much everything with it as you can on your iPhone, from controlling your music to tracking your Uber Eats order.
🚀 Unreal specifications. Apple equips the MacBook Pro with either the M5 Pro or M5 Max chip, depending on your performance needs and preferences. The chips deliver insane performance boosts for AI processing, handling 8K ProRes video, rendering complex 3D graphics, and more. But look on Apple’s specs page and you’ll see some other staggering configurations. You can load up to 128GB of RAM into these things, as well as an insane 16TB of storage. Yeah, if you plan to use your computer for the next, I dunno, 15 years, this is the one to get.
💡 A slightly slimmer design that glows. Apple was able to shave a bit less than a millimeter from the thickness of both the 14.2-inch model and the 16.3-inch model. They’re also a bit lighter, coming in at three and four pounds, respectively. But the coolest design touch? The Apple logo on the back glows, which makes me extremely happy as someone who used to fawn over Apple laptops back in the 2010s when everyone had glowing Apple logos.
🔊 Industry-leading speakers. Apple claims to have reinvented speakers once again with its new MacBook Pro. There’s a new six-speaker audio system that gets you 50% deeper bass, while all-new tweeters should give your music and movies more definition. The most interesting tidbit here is the fact that Apple optimized the speakers to perform well when the lid is closed, which is how a lot of professions wind up working if they need an external monitor. I’ll be the judge of how good this sounds when I get to test it for myself at Swider Studios, so stay tuned.
🔌 Plenty of ports, solid connectivity. Apple is still giving professionals all the ports they need to get work done. You get three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe, and a headphone jack on both models. You also get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for improved wireless performance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Apple has introduced a 5G version of the MacBook Pro, as previous rumors suggested.
📈 Higher and higher. That’s a great way to sum up the prices of the new MacBook Pro. The 14-inch version now starts at $2,899, $900 more than the Mini LED version of the laptop. Meanwhile, the 16-inch now starts at $3,399. If you max out your configuration for the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, you’ll wind up paying $14,549. Yeah, these things ain’t cheap, folks.
📆 Launching November 6. Apple is putting the new MacBook Pro up for preorder starting today, with orders beginning to ship on Friday, November 6.
📱 iPad mini with OLED
One of the most anticipated updates to the iPad lineup arrived early this week with the new iPad mini, which is now equipped with an OLED display. While it’s more expensive than before at $699, there are plenty of upgrades to talk about.
📺 A much prettier screen. Apple swapped the 8.3-inch LCD panel from the old iPad mini for a new 8.5-inch OLED, which will deliver higher brightness, deeper black levels, and better contrast. Your movies, e-books, and games will all look far better on this display. What’s more, Apple is offering an option to upgrade to a nano-texture display, similar to what the iPhone Duo has that lets you see the screen easier in the sunlight.
📐 Thinner and more durable. With the OLED display, Apple was able to make the tablet even thinner than before at just 5.4mm. On top of that, it’s the most durable iPad mini yet with an IP67 certification, which means it’s safe against dust and water. You’ll be able to take this thing to the pool next summer without worrying about getting it wet, no problem.
⚙️ A big performance boost. The specs inside the iPad mini are the most powerful we’ve seen yet in the tablet. Apple gave it the A20 Pro chip (the same that’s inside the iPhone 18 Pro Max), the N1 and C2 chips for faster Wi-Fi and 5G, quicker charging speeds, and iPadOS 27 with Siri AI.
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🖥️ M6-powered iMac and MacBook Pro
The smallest upgrades Apple introduced this week also happen to be quite powerful. The iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro both got a brand-new chip: the M6.
🚀 More power to ya. Apple touts that the M6 chip, which was announced back in August, gives the iMac and base MacBook Pro big leaps in performance. From editing videos to AI-related tasks, the M6 delivers a faster CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine so that the entire experience is smoother and snappier. You can pair the chip with up to 32GB of RAM, 2TB of storage in the iMac, and up to 4TB of storage in the MacBook Pro.
🛜 Better connectivity. Apple also upgraded the two Macs with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, both of which will give you more reliable connectivity. The iMac’s Ethernet port is also capable of 2.5Gb speeds, which will make your internet speed even quicker.
📐 Same design and colors. Beyond these key internal upgrades, the iMac and MacBook Pro remain largely unchanged. Apple kept the same designs and colors as before for both models, as well as the same array of ports. The iMac costs a bit more at $1,499, while the MacBook Pro starts at the same $1,999 as before.
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⬇️ 7 more stories on The Shortcut
The Acer Predator Atlas 8 will be the most affordable Intel-powered gaming handheld
Acer has announced it will make its Predator Atlas 8 gaming handheld available for retail on November 1 for $1,299 to start.
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