MacBook Pro OLED Arrives With M5 Chips, Skipping M6 Entirely

Apple’s OLED touchscreen MacBook, widely expected to carry the “Ultra” branding, will launch with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than waiting for next-generation silicon. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman places the launch window “between late this year and early next year,” making it one of the more unusual chip pairings in recent Mac history: a new form factor built on processors that will already be a generation old by the time most buyers get their hands on it.

The reason for that gap sits in Apple’s chip roadmap. Gurman separately reported that Apple is skipping the M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely, jumping straight to M7 variants focused on AI workloads, with upgraded neural accelerators, graphics enhancements, and increased memory bandwidth. Those chips aren’t expected until 2027, which would push the OLED MacBook’s launch out far enough that Apple apparently decided against waiting.

A New Design, Old Chips

The device will come in 14- and 16-inch sizes, code-named “K114” and “K116,” and will include a Dynamic Island borrowed from the iPhone lineup alongside a new overall design. It will cost more than the current M5 Pro MacBook Pro, which already starts at $1,999 following Apple’s recent price increases.

The macOS interface adjustments needed to support touch input represent a meaningful shift for the platform, one Apple has resisted for years while competitors shipped touchscreen laptops across every price tier. Bringing Dynamic Island to the Mac suggests the hardware changes run deeper than just the display panel.

Apple is already planning the follow-up. A successor model carrying M7 Pro and M7 Max chips is reportedly targeted for late 2027, with a Mac Studio refresh using M7 Max and M7 Ultra chips slated for 2028. The first OLED MacBook, then, lands as something closer to a platform introduction than a finished product, with the more capable version arriving roughly a year behind it.