If you have been sitting on an ageing MacBook Pro waiting for the touchscreen MacBook, this week made the wait harder to plan. 9to5Mac now reckons Apple's first touch-capable Mac is roughly two months out. MacRumors' own tracking still puts it somewhere between late 2026 and early 2027, with a memory shortage sitting squarely in the way.
Both cannot be right, and the gap is not academic. It is the difference between holding out for eight weeks and holding out for the better part of a year, on a machine you use every day.
So here is what is actually settled, what is still a rumour, and what I would do about it if I were buying a Mac in the UK this autumn. Every page I could find on this question was written in June, before the supply picture changed, and none of them quote a pound figure.
What the touchscreen MacBook actually is
The machine everyone has started calling the MacBook Ultra is a redesigned high-end MacBook Pro. Tandem OLED display, 14-inch and 16-inch, a thinner and lighter chassis, and the first touch-capable screen Apple has ever shipped on a Mac.
The notch is expected to become a Dynamic Island, smaller than the iPhone's and without Face ID behind it. There is also meant to be a reinforced hinge, which tells you Apple has thought about the obvious problem with poking a laptop screen.
The software side is the part I find more interesting. Bloomberg's reporting describes contextual menus that appear around your fingertip and enlarged menu bar controls sized for a thumb rather than a cursor. That is not macOS turning into iPadOS. It is macOS growing a second input method it can fall back on when your hand is already off the trackpad.
Apple has been laying the groundwork in public, too. Touch support in Sidecar and pull-to-refresh gestures have both surfaced in the macOS 27 betas, which is roughly what a year of quiet preparation looks like from the outside.
What touch will not do
Nobody is claiming this replaces the trackpad. The framing from every source I have read is touch-friendly rather than touch-first, which means a handful of things get easier and the other ninety per cent of your day is unchanged.
If you were hoping for pencil support or a Mac that folds flat like a Surface, that is not what is being reported. Set expectations at a screen you can occasionally reach up and tap, not a new category of machine.
Is the touchscreen MacBook really two months away?
The case for October is straightforward. Reputable sources have converged on a late-2026 launch, mass production is reportedly getting under way, and Apple has used an autumn Mac slot plenty of times before.
The counter-case is the one nobody wants to hear. Memory makers are prioritising AI data centre contracts over consumer devices, and Apple has already been scaling back its 2026 hardware plans as a result. Mac Studio, Mac mini and MacBook Air have all felt it.
A brand new flagship built on OLED panels and generous memory configurations is exactly the launch you would quietly slide into next year if your DRAM allocation came up short. That is not a prediction, it is just the shape of the risk.
I am not calling it either way, because Apple has said nothing and every date in circulation is a leak. What I will say is that October and early 2027 are both live, and treating October as a plan rather than a possibility is how you end up buying nothing for six months.
The chip question people keep getting wrong
There is a stubborn assumption that a touchscreen MacBook means an M6 inside. It does not. The reporting says the first models stick with M5 Pro and M5 Max, and that Apple is skipping the M6 Pro and Max entirely to reach the M7 series sooner.
So this is a chassis and display upgrade, not a silicon one. If your reason for waiting was raw performance, that reason does not survive contact with the reporting. I went through the same logic on the M6 MacBook Pro and landed in a similar place: the interesting Mac this autumn is not the fast one.
What a touchscreen MacBook will cost in the UK
Nobody has a UK price, because nobody has a US price Apple has confirmed either. The figures in circulation are $2,499 for the 14-inch and $2,999 for the 16-inch, and those happen to be the numbers the current MacBook Pro already carries after the June increase.
Here is my own arithmetic on what that would mean over here. Today the 14-inch M5 Pro starts at £2,199 and the 16-inch M5 Pro at £2,699. Hold the dollar figures steady and the UK equivalents land on roughly those same numbers, give or take a rounding.
But MacRumors expects the Ultra to sit above current MacBook Pro pricing, and the memory shortage pushes the same direction. My working assumption is £2,399 to £2,599 to get into the 14-inch. That is a guess built on today's exchange-adjusted pricing, not a leak, and I would not set a budget by it.
What is not a guess is the direction of travel. Apple already put Mac and iPad prices up in June, and memory is the input getting more expensive, not less. If you are waiting for this machine partly in the hope it undercuts something, that is the least likely outcome on the table.
Should you buy a MacBook Pro now or wait?
Split it by how long your current machine can realistically last, not by how much you want the new one.
Buy now if you need a Mac before Christmas
If your Mac is failing, or you are starting a job or a course that needs one, buy the M5 Pro and stop reading rumour timelines. It is a genuinely good machine, touch is an addition rather than a replacement, and the thing you are holding out for might not appear until spring.
There is a supply argument on top of that. The same shortage that could delay the Ultra is already making current Macs harder to buy at a sensible price. I went through this with the MacBook Air shortage, and the lesson has not changed: in a shortage, waiting is not free.
Wait if you can hold out to roughly December
If your current Mac is fine and you were upgrading mostly for the newness, wait. You lose nothing by holding on until Apple either ships the thing in October or visibly does not, and December is the natural checkpoint. By then you will know whether it slipped.
The one group I would tell to wait regardless is anyone whose work is drawing, annotating or scrubbing a timeline. If touch changes how you use a Mac at all, it changes it there. Buying a non-touch Pro eight weeks early would be a frustrating way to lock yourself out for the next four years.
Ignore it entirely if you use a MacBook Air
Nothing in this reporting touches the Air. Touch is coming to the high end first, and a trickle-down to the Air is a 2027 or 2028 conversation at the earliest. If the Air is your machine, buy on price and availability and let the Pro crowd argue about fingerprints.
My take
I think October is optimistic and I would plan for anywhere between November and January. I also think the touchscreen matters less than the OLED panel and the redesign, which are the parts you would actually notice every day for four years.
If I were buying today with a working Mac at home, I would wait until December and reassess. If my Mac had died this morning, I would buy the 14-inch M5 Pro without much agonising, because a machine you cannot use costs more than any feature you missed.
Touchscreen MacBook FAQ
When is the touchscreen MacBook coming out?
No date is confirmed. 9to5Mac points to roughly October 2026, while MacRumors' tracking allows for anything from late 2026 to early 2027. The memory shortage is the main reason for the spread, and Apple has not commented on either.
Will the touchscreen MacBook use the M6 chip?
Reportedly not. The first touchscreen models are expected to ship with M5 Pro and M5 Max, with Apple skipping the M6 Pro and Max variants to get to the M7 series sooner. A second generation on M7 Pro and Max is talked about for late 2027 or 2028.
How much will the touchscreen MacBook cost in the UK?
There is no official price. Leaked US figures of $2,499 and $2,999 would put UK versions near today's £2,199 and £2,699 MacBook Pro prices, though most reporting expects the new models to cost more than the current ones. Treat any UK figure, including my £2,399 to £2,599 estimate, as arithmetic rather than a leak.
Source: We're just two months away from the first touchscreen MacBook, 9to5Mac
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