Apple will soon release its first “toaster-refrigerator” product if Bloomberg’s new leak is accurate. That is, Apple will launch a redesigned MacBook Pro in late 2026 or early 2027, featuring a touchscreen display, a design feature the company has resisted for years. “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those aren’t going to be pleasing to the user,” Tim Cook said in 2012 when asked whether Apple was planning to merge its tablet and laptop products, as Microsoft was about to do with Windows 8 devices. A few years earlier, the late Steve Jobs had a similar reaction, saying that “touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.”
When the first MacBook Pro models with touchscreen displays arrive, Tim Cook’s statement will still stand to some extent. Apple won’t converge the iPad and MacBook lines into a single product. However, the MacBook Pro with a touchscreen would be similar to notebooks sold by most of Apple’s competitors, which already feature touchscreen displays.
On the other hand, there’s also the opposite argument. Apple started work on toaster-refrigerators years ago in both hardware and software. On the hardware side, Apple is using the same M-series chips for iPad Air, iPad Pro, MacBook Air, base MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro headsets. As for software, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 make the two operating systems look almost identical in terms of user interface design and experiences. The only thing missing in macOS 26 is touch input. Meanwhile, iPadOS 26 makes multitasking look more like the Mac. Using a keyboard dock with the tablet makes it feel like a MacBook with a touchscreen display.
Expect price hikes for the redesigned M6 MacBook Pros
Mark Gurman says the M6 MacBook Pros, codenamed K114 and K116, will feature thinner and lighter frames. They’ll also introduce a sturdier hinge design, which, coupled with the new screen hardware, should prevent the display from bouncing or moving when the user touches the screen. As for the display itself, the Bloomberg reporter says the M6 MacBook Pro models will feature OLED panels, a first for Apple’s laptops. Apple uses OLED screens across its iPhone lineup. The iPad Pros also feature OLED panels.
The report also highlights another important design upgrade coming to the M6 MacBook Pro models. The laptops will not have a display cutout at the top for the camera (the notch). Instead, Apple will use a hole-punch design for the camera with a display area around the sensor, similar to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. However, Gurman notes that Face ID won’t replace Touch ID in the M6 MacBook Pro, as the 3D face recognition system won’t come to the Mac for a few years.
The M6 MacBook Pro redesign might bring a price hike to the MacBook Pro lineup on account of the pricier components. Gurman says the new models will cost “a few hundred dollars more than the current versions.” Apple updated the standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 processor earlier this week, but the M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro aren’t coming until early 2026. Those models should retain the design in the current M4 versions. It’s likely the M5 Pro and M5 Max laptops will retail for similar prices to their predecessors, given that the base M5 MacBook Pro model costs the same as the M4 version.
