That’s Apple’s premium in 2026, where Macs now cost about what I paid for a used car about a year ago.
Of course, you know where this money goes. Apple’s latest 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,899, with the optional 16-inch model where premium perks In fact start: starts at $3,399. Load up your MacBook Pro with 128GB of memory and you’ve just committed to a $7,399 laptop, at or above the top levels of the Surface Laptop Ultra and competing RTX Spark machines. As it is, I reviewed a “low-end” 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra (base price $2,599) and the review price of $3,699 would be on the high end or higher than laptops from a few years earlier.
It’s when you add storage that MacBook Pro PROLED prices really skyrocket: 2TB of storage is included in the base 16-inch laptop, but a 16TB SSD costs an additional $7,000. Just for the ability to download and store additional AI models (because let’s face it, everything is AI these days). And it doesn’t even run an M6 chip, just an M5 Max or Ultra.
In true Apple fashion, Apple doesn’t even give a reason for including a touchscreen. Like royalty, Apple is never early or late; always arrives on time. There’s nothing particularly amazing about this touchscreen, although you can tap, swipe, rotate, etc. TikTok may be full of influencers explaining how this new way of interacting with your laptop is both cool, revolutionary, and a dynamic improvement over the status quo. It’s just as likely, however, that the touchscreen will end up being as interesting as the illuminated Apple logo on the back of the device.
Who is the new MacBook Pro for? I don’t
In 2020, PC users might have had real debates about what the incremental value of a laptop meant and what premium users could expect to pay for features like a 1200p display, faster processor, 32GB of memory vs 16GB, etc. Since the average consumer could afford such upgrades, even if it meant stretching their budget a bit, those conversations were worth having.
But increasingly, the price of computing is out of reach for a broader segment of the population. In 2025, according to the government, the median family income was $87,460. Divided by 12, that’s $7,288 per month, which seems like a lot. But if we add rent, healthcare, food, gas and car payments, it all adds up.
