I doubt they will do that as the new design will be predicted on using the thinner OLED panel.
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MacBook Pro Likely to Get OLED Display and Thinner Design in 2026
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Sadly the Age of LCD & LED is coming to a end OLED is the future of displays with the exit of Micro LED its not looking good.
Why can’t we get this in 2025. iPads got oled in early 2024, does it really take almost 3 years to just add it to Mac’s?
MBPs have never been about "obsession with thinner above all" and I strongly doubt that Apple will go there with coming MBPs. Thinner, yes; and thinner/lighter is a good thing as long as performance, speakers, display, etc. are not degraded. Evolution of the M-series clearly suggests that Apple should be able to do it all and also make MBPs thinner/lighter.
No! Thinner does not mean poorer display, less RAM, less good speakers, no Max chip, etc. The MBA can still hold the low end.
I can't take it anymore... who keeps pushing this level of thinness at Apple?? Enough already, I don't give two SH!TS about thinness anymore. We've hit a great point, I don't need my device, which costs $2,000 to be so damn fragile. My god, I'm just done with Apple and this quest for everything to be as thin as a sheet of paper.
Oh Lordy, I hope not. It was almost as bad as losing ports.
I'm not following this "thinner" line of thinking. MacBooks are already super thin for what they offer. Are people buying the Pro when all they really need is the Air, and then proceeding to want thinner and lighter anyway? Hello? The Air is your choice then. 🤗
Does the notch interfere with your usage of the display, or do you just find it annoying because it's a notch?
If OLED really is superior, it's surprising to me why it's taking Apple so long? If material cost is a factor, then adopting it will help to drive the cost down across the industry due to increased volume sales.
Maybe they were hoping to go from mini-LED to micro-LED, and that's failed to pan out?
pretty sure they might go for tandem oled and thats why its taking a bit longer
Fully agree! However Apple is not acting in a vacuum. They have to consider the market trends, available materials and suppliers as well as the competition. The deeper you go into that "luxury niche", the smaller your target market. And reliance on an increasingly smaller number of potential customers can become dangerous.
So even the luxury feeling of Apple products is (and has to be) limited, which means that some compromises are inevitable.
I can only compare a late 2013 15" MBP and an M3 Pro 16". If anything, the M3 seems a tad more solid than the old one. Especially the keyboard seems to contribute to that impression. I liked the tapered design especially on the old MBA's, but I understand that it brings some additional effort (cost!), when you e.g. have to place terraced batteries inside.
As written above - Apple needs to stay connected to some standards, suppliers and materials for various reasons. They are not set up to produce tiny numbers of products manufacture-style, where you can mostly ignore costs, while serving a (super) luxury niche.
So far the reduction in weight and thickness because of using OLED panels is a rumor. If weight and thickness are reduced without affecting the structural integrity, I think most would accept and welcome that.
However, while pursuing that path, errors happen - even with Apple. Remember e.g. the iPhone "bendgates". But because of the latter, I would expect Apple having learned about that and designing a thinner lid or device in a way that structural integrity stays the same - or maybe even improves, if the changes allow for a general redesign.
If you want to change existing products, you are facing costs for re-tooling, tests etc. But if you go for a new product anyway, there is little _added_ cost for a structural redesign, as it's part of the routine anyway.
As for OLED screens: Yes, the danger of burn-in is real. I think that Apple's engineers are aware of that. So imho either they do know of technological advances in (OLED) screen technology that would reduce / minimize that risk even for mostly static content (as it's usual for a computer screen). Or they are faced with external constraints, pushing them towards OLED:
For example, the luxury feel you mentioned. This leads to Apple customers expecting high end tech from Apple. How often are the forums filled with complaints that competitor X has introduced a technology Y and Apple did not. They would be accused of dragging their feet, while still charging premium prices.
OLED seems to be the new fad in display technology. Well, maybe not even a fad - its advantages are for real and clearly visible. When I compare my OLED TV with the Mini-LED screen on my iPad, the iPad clearly loses. The difference is so obvious, it's not even funny anymore.
Thus going OLED in a future MBP is required, as Apple promotes the MBP as video machine more than anything else. And the research on Micro LED did not progress as Apple had expected. Therefore they now need to embrace OLED - despite all of its shortcoming - until something better is available.
Well - see my satirical post higher above. Even pro users welcome improvements in terms of e.g. weight. I still remember the outcry when Apple introduced the Unibody design, because they left out the Ethernet port. But the advantages of the Unibody case were tangible in comparison to the older gen MBP's / Powerbooks.
Material savings and less packaging volume and weight due to an even thinner MBP should lead to cost savings for Apple, which might be required to counter the increased cost for going OLED.
As written above, Apple is not acting in a vacuum, so maybe there are forced to go OLED and now have to find ways to make the best of the situation and try to keep impact on cost and customers as low as possible.
Guess it wouldn't be too far-fetched to consider the coming OLED generation of MBP's like a typical first gen Apple product, which still has some kinks that need ironing out in further revisions.
If the Air would offer a similar quality of display and speaker, I would happily go that route. Unfortunately that isn't the case.
There are studies on this. Just about everyone prefers more solid feeling objects. People associate weight with quality regardless of if the weight is doing anything or not.
That heuristic often works. Objects with less heft tend to be less durable, but it's also too easy to make the mistake of assuming that light always means lower quality.
I thought the original 13" M1 MBP was an amazing laptop despite its thinness. It made me wonder if the original plan was to have Silicon chips in the 2016 tbMBP re-design, but they just couldn't pull it off and settled for Plan B with burning hot Intel chips that overpowered the thermal capacity of the laptops and may have affected the mechanics of the butterfly keyboards.