Apple unveils its first touchscreen MacBook, on sale from 6 November

Apple, which long opposed the idea of a touchscreen laptop, has now changed its position. On Wednesday the company unveiled a new MacBook Pro with a 'PROLED XDR Display'. It is Apple's first laptop with a touchscreen.

The new MacBook Pro will go on sale on 6 November. It will come in two sizes, 14 and 16 inches, powered by Apple's M5 Pro or M5 Max chip.

The 14-inch model will start at $2,899. The 16-inch model will start at $3,399.

For more than a decade, PC makers around the world have been building touchscreen laptops to keep pace with mobile technology. Apple had lagged behind in this area. Now it is launching the new laptop aimed at its MacBook Pro's core users, especially creative professionals and app developers.

Apple says the touchscreen will let users easily drag slides from one presentation to another. App developers will be able to test directly on their own computers how their apps work. Graphic designers will be able to sketch images and designs by touching the screen, and musicians will be able to play virtual instruments.

The company says many existing apps will support the touchscreen from the start, because the software will recognise a finger touch on the screen as a mouse click.

The new MacBook Pro also adds the iPhone's 'Dynamic Island' technology — the pill-shaped section at the top of the iPhone screen that shows information and houses the front camera. For creative professionals, it also offers higher peak brightness than the non-touchscreen version and Adobe's RGB colour space.

According to Apple, the touch sensor has not been added as a separate layer on the display; it is built into the display itself. That will reduce the response time when swiping and scrolling, and lower latency.

The touchscreen laptop market is more than a decade old. In 2012, Microsoft took a major step towards touchscreen technology with Windows 8, using large tile-shaped icons like those on smartphones and tablets. But it drew heavy criticism for complexity in use and navigation.

At the time, touchscreen laptop hardware also had many limitations. Devices were heavy, expensive and uncomfortable to use as tablets. In 2013, then Apple CEO Tim Cook criticised rival companies' efforts at an event, saying: 'Our competitors are going in a different direction, they are confused themselves. They are trying to turn PCs into tablets and tablets into PCs.'

Those early limitations have since been overcome. With falling component prices, lighter designs and improvements in Windows, such laptops are now much more user-friendly than before. Major PC makers such as Dell and Lenovo now sell various touchscreen laptop models — and Apple has now joined that race, years later.