Apple confirms Oct. 28 LA event for first touchscreen Macs

Apple will host a product showcase in Los Angeles on October 28, inviting press and influencers to view what Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports will be the company’s first touchscreen MacBooks. The event, billed as “Pro and Tell” on invitations sent this week, marks Apple’s third hardware presentation of the season following a smart home-focused reveal earlier this month.

The all-day format signals a broader hardware refresh rather than a single flagship announcement. Gurman reiterated previous reporting that new M6-powered Macs and an OLED-equipped iPad mini will share the stage with the redesigned laptops.

Touchscreen capability on a Mac represents a sharp departure from years of executive resistance. Former software chief Craig Federighi famously dismissed the concept in 2018 as ergonomically exhausting, calling it “gorilla arm.” Apple instead pushed touch interfaces exclusively through the iPad lineup and its Sidecar accessory feature. The expected shift arrives more than a decade after Microsoft introduced touch-enabled Windows laptops, which now dominate enterprise fleets where workers toggle between keyboard input and direct screen interaction.

According to industry reports, the touchscreen models will run M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets. Apple plans 14-inch and 16-inch configurations. Both sizes are said to carry OLED displays and weigh significantly less than current MacBook Pro units.

A separate 14-inch MacBook Pro refresh and a new iMac are also slated for the event. Those machines will run the M6 processor, which debuted in August inside the latest Mac mini.

The iPad mini is expected to gain an OLED display, a panel technology Apple has been migrating across its portable lineup since introducing it on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro in 2021 and expanding it to the M4 iPad Pro models in 2024.