MacBook Pro Likely to Get OLED Display and Thinner Design in 2026

[seek3r]

Indeed. We saw OLED as an opportunity for better battery life, so we made it thinner for less battery life. Thinnovation!

The thing currently gets 24 hours of battery life, it’s not like if you lost an hour or two it’d be a disaster

That said I would expect they’d do this only if they were confident enough in either better efficiency or new battery chemistry so that a smaller battery would give the same battery life. Another possibility is that they’ve come up with ways to shrink other internals to fit the same battery in a thinner machine

either of those, much more likely than apple dropping battery life 2 years after they increased it, basically is a tradeoff of “same battery life in smaller machine” instead of “more battery life in the same size”, and very honestly I cant think of too many people who’d prefer a thicker machine and, say, 26 hours of battery life over a thinner machine and 24 hours. After you’ve hit the “you can keep it on battery for a whole day nonstop or 3xfull workdays” point I’m not sure people care too much about a couple extra hours, I know I dont

 

[paulvee]

Nothing is stagnant and “progress“ means different things to different people. Design involves trade-offs. And the last generalization I will bloviate on is that everybody has an opinion.

 

[JungleNYC]

I predict the touch bar is coming back for the 2027 model 🤣

I like the Touch Bar! 🫤

 

[Brien]

So we’re back to thinner? Yay. (sarcasm)

 

[FranApple]

So we’re back to thinner? Yay. (sarcasm)

Are you complaining? Because I’m not.

 

[seek3r]

So we’re back to thinner? Yay. (sarcasm)

Thinner as a goal is fine as long as it doesnt compromise function, the problem with the end of the ives era wasnt thinness, it was thinness at the expense of function

 

[buckwheet]

Can't wait for that butterfly keyboard to come back!

Nothing thinner than a sheet of air to type on while your MacBook is getting the entire top case replaced because of one sticky key.

Oh, wow... I hadn't thought of that PoS for a long time. I had one of those; 2015, I think. Absolute garbage. Two top-panels in the time I had it. Unbelievable.

Though I do recognize that the MBP is pretty thick, I'm definitely with those who prefer the functionality over thinness. Just checking on the side of my M1 Pro, which is connected to my monitor for HDMI, it doesn't seem like it could be that much thinner, really. Maybe a couple of millimetres, I guess. But losing HDMI would be very bad. I no longer have much widget/adapter pain—the occasional USB-A thing, but nothing huge—but removing HDMI would be super inconvenient in so many situations. It's just such a widely used port (even though I personally think it's a bit flaky and crap), particularly since it's kind of the standard "home electronics" port.

 

[gusping]

Burn in is going to be a huge issue, plus many people will suddenly realise they are PWM sensitive and not be able to upgrade for several years....

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

The thing currently gets 24 hours of battery life, it’s not like if you lost an hour or two it’d be a disaster

Not many subscribe to Apple TV+ nor plan to watch 24 hrs of it.

14" M4 MBP gets up-to 16 hrs wireless web.
14" M4 Pro MBP up-to 14 hrs wireless web.
14" M4 Max MBP up-to 13 hrs wireless web.
16" M4 Pro MBP up-to 17 hrs wireless web.
16" M4 Max MBP up-to 14 hrs wireless web.

 

[smirking]

Thinner as a goal is fine as long as it doesnt compromise function, the problem with the end of the ives era wasnt thinness, it was thinness at the expense of function

I wonder if Apple was initially expecting to have Silicon Macs ready a lot sooner than they did. It seems like they went thin prematurely. The 2016 redesign was way better suited for a Silicon based laptop than an Intel one.

When the tbMBPs were announced, Apple was getting roasted for taking forever to release MBP refreshes as if they were deliberately dragging their feet and wanted a Silicon chip in the 2016 MBP instead of an Intel chip.

I think a lot of the issues with the butterfly keyboards jamming was due to the heat affecting the butterfly mechanism.

 

[surfzen21]

I like the Touch Bar! 🫤

I am just old school.

I like my keyboard keys like I like my women, physical and not digital.

 

[Sowelu]

I would love an impossibly thin MacBook Air Max with an 18" OLED display, fanless, a massive battery, huge heat spreaders, two thunderbolt ports on each side, FaceID and enough room for an amazing, 4.1 speaker system. The ultimate multimedia MacBook marketed as the 'thinnest and lightest 18" laptop ever'.

Silly fantasy for sure, but since Apple thinks that high-end displays are only meant for 'pros' in thick and powerful MacBooks, perhaps an upmarket variant of the Air would make sense for those of us who don't need all the power, but want the best displays. I think there is a market for this.

 

[Jett0516]

Why this obsession with thinner above all? With as few ports etc as possible?
I don't know, it feels like there are deeper issues here which manifest as this push for more and more thin and less and less...functional? I don't know. It feels weird.

Less weight to travel with. I have the m1 MacBook pro and it feels like carrying bricks

 

[High IQ Person]

What about their own Tandem OLED screen in the iPad Pro M4? Surely thats what they are going to use right as its basically the most advanced display in the world right now.

You mean Samsung and LG’s Tandem OLED screen. Apple doesn’t design or create the display. They only list high-level specs such as size, shape, nits. The manufacturers design the technology and the fabrication process.

 

[High IQ Person]

The thing currently gets 24 hours of battery life, it’s not like if you lost an hour or two it’d be a disaster

That said I would expect they’d do this only if they were confident enough in either better efficiency or new battery chemistry so that a smaller battery would give the same battery life. Another possibility is that they’ve come up with ways to shrink other internals to fit the same battery in a thinner machine

either of those, much more likely than apple dropping battery life 2 years after they increased it, basically is a tradeoff of “same battery life in smaller machine” instead of “more battery life in the same size”, and very honestly I cant think of too many people who’d prefer a thicker machine and, say, 26 hours of battery life over a thinner machine and 24 hours. After you’ve hit the “you can keep it on battery for a whole day nonstop or 3xfull workdays” point I’m not sure people care too much about a couple extra hours, I know I dont

24 hours when you watch videos at low brightness. It’s more like 6-8 hours if you use it for anything else like web-browsing.

 

[Dr McKay]

I don’t get why people are complaining if it gets thinner and lighter without impacting performance or battery life.

The pro weighs a friggin tonne it could do with shaving off some weight.

Batteries are probably the heaviest thing in it aside from the metal chassis. Making it a few mm thinner is barely going to affect the weight since realistically its going to be the weight of a tiny ring of metal.

 

[Burnt Toast]

I just don't get it. I see the value in a MacBook Air. But I don't even WANT a thinner MacBook Pro, even with all else equal. But given its a tradeoff, I'd much prefer more battery, more ports, better cooling, and more solidity/strength. Does anyone really want a thinner Pro?

The Airs are tippy and move around when you plug stuff inm. They feel... flimsy. Ugh.

Totally agree. To me, solidity/strengh is a feature not a bug

 

[smirking]

24 hours when you watch videos at low brightness. It’s more like 6-8 hours if you use it for anything else like web-browsing.

I’m able to edit RAW photos for 5-6 hours on an M1 Pro. If you only get 6 hours browsing the Web, something is wrong.

 

[Kulfon]

Where is the monitor???

 

[neuropsychguy]

24 hours when you watch videos at low brightness. It’s more like 6-8 hours if you use it for anything else like web-browsing.

Are the newer MBPs less efficient? I easily get 12+ hours of use from my M1 Pro if I’m using the web, listening to music, using Word, running RStudio, and more.

If I do some heavy CPU and GPU things I can run through a battery in about 2 hours, but typical use is easily double what I’ve ever got from other laptops, including pre-Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[High IQ Person]

I’m able to edit RAW photos for 5-6 hours on an M1 Pro. If you only get 6 hours browsing the Web, something is wrong.

Most Apple users overestimate their battery life due to deceptive algorithms Apple uses in their battery benchmarks. One of the ways they deceive customers is by slowing % decreases at higher %s and accelerating them at lower %s. Most people probably don't use their laptops for longer than 2-3 hours a day, so when they see that their battery life is at 90% after 2 hours of use, they wrongly assume their battery life is 20 hours (2 X 10). In reality, it's 2 hours for the first 10% and then 4-6 hours for the remaining 90%.

 

[High IQ Person]

Are the newer MBPs less efficient? I easily get 12+ hours of use from my M1 Pro if I’m using the web, listening to music, using Word, running RStudio, and more.

If I do some heavy CPU and GPU things I can run through a battery in about 2 hours, but typical use is easily double what I’ve ever got from other laptops, including pre-Apple Silicon Macs.

I have the M3 Air. I think you're overestimating how long you use your device. It's probably closer to 6-8 hours.

 

[giebe]

Just remove all connections from the sides and only add 6-8 Thunderbolt 5/6 Ports + SD card. Also FaceID would be nice.

 

[heretiq]

I just don't get it. I see the value in a MacBook Air. But I don't even WANT a thinner MacBook Pro, even with all else equal. But given its a tradeoff, I'd much prefer more battery, more ports, better cooling, and more solidity/strength. Does anyone really want a thinner Pro?

The Airs are tippy and move around when you plug stuff inm. They feel... flimsy. Ugh.

As someone who uses, loves and hauls around a 16”, 32GB, 1TB, M1 Max MacBook Pro every day, I welcome and would immediately switch to a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro.

My core use cases include agent-based and discrete event simulations and software development.

The M1 Max handles these with ease and can run a 3 year simulation and accelerated time visualization of a 6 team customer service department (1 second transaction granularity, with each team member, process, task, cost, shift individually modeled, and displaying cumulative station statistics while showing every transaction from entry into the department to queueing, routing, processing and egress) in 30 minutes — quick but with sufficient time to observe the system and discuss observations with colleagues and clients before viewing overall statistics. So I personally don’t need any more power.

What I notice most on this beloved beast of a machine is the bulkiness and weight when I pack it up and sling it over my shoulder. The weight and bulkiness ironically causes flashbacks to the event that caused me to switch from PC to Mac two decades ago: A bulky, heavy PC that I have to haul around every day.

A lighter, thinner MacBook Pro is what I want most for my next Mac so I’m holding off an upgrade. If Apple doesn’t provide that I’m trading down to a lighter, thinner and less expensive MacBook Air that comes close to matching the ample and sufficient power of my M1 Max MacBook Pro. I don’t think I’m alone so I believe this represents potentially material lost upgrade revenue for Apple — and if the rumor is true, Apple recognizes this too.

The recent M4 Pro 20 core GPU SOC benchmarks finally match the Geekbench Metal score of the M1 Max 32 core GPU SOC — so the opportunity for an equivalently powerful but lower-power consumption, thinner and lighter alternative seems close. Whether that’s a MacBook Air or Pro remains to be seen.

 

[Derek Denton]

Forget a 32" iMac, it's time for the all-new 32" MacBook Pro Max!

With still no touchscreen!