MacBook Pro (next generation)

About MacBook Pro (next generation)

There is no next generation MacBook Pro. Apple has not named, dated, priced or described one, and there is no Apple product page to link to. As of 15 August 2026, the machines Apple sells are the 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro with the M5, M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

This line is worth treating differently from the rest of the Mac range, because it does not refresh on a clean annual date. The chip tiers arrive at different times, and the current high end machines are only months old. What makes the wait or buy question live here is not the release pattern but a reported redesign, and that reporting is set out below as reporting rather than as fact.

Has Apple announced a new MacBook Pro?

No. There is no press release, no product page, no price and no date for a successor.

Apple's own MacBook Pro pages on 15 August 2026 list the M5, M5 Pro and M5 Max machines as current, with nothing behind them.

Everything else is reporting, most of it traced back to Bloomberg. Nothing about a touchscreen, an OLED panel, a thinner body or a new chip appears on this page as a specification, because Apple has published none of it.

The MacBook Pro that is on sale today

The line reached M5 in two steps. Apple put the plain M5 chip in the 14 inch MacBook Pro in October 2025. It then announced the 14 inch and 16 inch models with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips on 3 March 2026, with pre orders from 4 March and general availability from 11 March.

Apple states that the M5 Pro and M5 Max carry a CPU of up to 18 cores with 6 super cores, and a new generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core. It lists up to 64GB of unified memory and 1TB of standard storage on M5 Pro, and up to 128GB of unified memory and 2TB of standard storage on M5 Max, with up to 24 hours of battery life, in space black and silver. The 14 inch model can also be had with the plain M5 chip and up to 32GB of memory, while the 16 inch model starts at M5 Pro.

Apple's stated United States starting prices are $2,199 for the 14 inch M5 Pro, $2,699 for the 16 inch M5 Pro, $3,599 for the 14 inch M5 Max and $3,899 for the 16 inch M5 Max. Those figures belong to the machines Apple sells now. They are the baseline any successor would be measured against, not a forecast of one.

The reported redesign, and why it changes the buying question

For most Apple lines the wait or buy question is about a few percent of speed. Here it is about a different machine.

Bloomberg reporting through 2026, relayed by MacRumors and Macworld, describes a MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED display, a touchscreen, and a body noticeably thinner than the current 14 inch machine, which measures 0.61 inches closed. The reported timing has moved. It was aimed at late 2026 and may slip to early 2027, with supply of memory named as the reason. Reporting also says Apple changed its silicon plan for that machine, using M5 Pro and M5 Max rather than M6 Pro and M6 Max, because it is not making M6 Pro and M6 Max chips at all and is moving development toward M7.

Separately, the entry level 14 inch MacBook Pro is reported to be getting an M6 chip before the end of 2026, without a redesign. A further redesigned model with M7 chips is reported for the first half of 2027.

Every sentence in this section is a report. None of it is Apple, none of it is dated by Apple, and the plans described have already changed once in public. It is here because a reader deciding whether to spend $2,199 today deserves to know that a visibly different machine is being reported, not because any of it is settled.

Where the MacBook Pro sits in Apple's laptop range

The MacBook Pro is not a faster MacBook Air. It is a machine built to hold speed rather than reach it.

It has a fan, so heavy work that runs for minutes does not slow down the way it does on an Air. It has a brighter screen with a variable refresh rate and an optional nano texture finish. It carries more ports, including HDMI and a card reader, and a far higher memory ceiling, which is the specification that actually decides whether large projects fit.

The tiers inside the line matter more than the sizes. The plain M5 in the 14 inch machine is close to an Air with cooling and a better screen. M5 Pro is the working middle. M5 Max exists for memory hungry work rather than for general speed, and most buyers who reach for it are buying the 128GB ceiling rather than the extra cores.

What to weigh against its nearest rival

The first comparison is the MacBook Air, and it is the one most people get wrong in the expensive direction. If your work does not hold the processor at full load for minutes at a time, and does not need more than the Air's memory, the Pro is buying you a better screen and more ports at a large premium. Those are real things to want. They are not speed.

Against Windows workstations, the arguments are narrower than they look. Battery life under load and quietness are where this machine is unusually strong. Raw graphics performance for gaming is not what it is built for. As with any platform move, the deciding question is usually whether your software runs on macOS at all, and that is worth answering before comparing anything else.

The last comparison is against a desk. If the machine rarely leaves one, a Mac mini or Mac Studio and a separate display often deliver more for the money, and the portability you are paying for here goes unused.

Who should buy something else

Anyone who does not run sustained heavy work should buy a MacBook Air. That is most people, including most people who consider themselves demanding users, and the price gap is large enough to be worth being honest about.

Anyone holding a MacBook Pro from the last two years should skip. The gains inside the M generation are incremental, and this is not a line where annual upgrades repay themselves.

Anyone who could reasonably wait, and who cares about the screen, should read the redesign reporting above before spending. A tandem OLED touchscreen machine, if it arrives as reported, is a bigger change than any chip step in this line for years, and buying weeks before it appears is the outcome to avoid. The catch is that the reported timing has already slipped once and could slip again, so waiting is a bet rather than a plan.

Anyone working mainly at a desk should price a Mac mini or Mac Studio with a display against a 16 inch Pro before buying either.

Anyone reaching for M5 Max on the assumption that it is simply the fast one should check whether their work is limited by memory or by cores. If the answer is neither, the money is better spent on storage or on nothing.

What would change this page

An Apple press release, or an Apple product page. Nothing short of either.

Not a Bloomberg report, however well sourced. Not a supply chain note, not a display analyst, not a leaked panel order. Until Apple publishes the machine, this page carries no chip, no display specification, no thickness, no price and no date for a next generation MacBook Pro.

This page was checked against Apple's own MacBook Pro pages and Apple Newsroom on 15 August 2026. If you are reading it well after that date, treat every dated statement here as needing a recheck, and treat the redesign section in particular as reporting that may have been overtaken by an announcement.