The fabled OLED MacBook may still greet us in the year 2026. It just may not be the uber-powerful laptop rumors initially promised it would be. For the supposed next-gen “MacBook Ultra”—or whatever it’s called—you may have to sit on your hands for a full year and change.
Rumors initially suggested Apple’s first OLED MacBook with its supposedly vibrant, contrast-filled touch display would make use of high-end M6 chips. These were initially supposed to be the sequel processors to the M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max. Bloomberg’s Apple leaker-in-chief, Mark Gurman, sounded the horn on Thursday to temper your expectations, proclaiming that Apple would only launch an M6 without any more powerful variants like the M6 Pro or M6 Max. Gurman finally offered an idea of what this meant for the OLED touchscreen MacBook on Friday. These high-powered 14-inch and 16-inch OLED models would make use of either the M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. Bloomberg claims, based on anonymous sources with knowledge of Apple’s plans, that Apple will hold off until 2027 and only then release an M7 Pro and M7 Max chip built for both MacBook Pro models and these OLED Macs as well. Bloomberg claims Apple is designing these M7 chips with a much beefier GPU. While it will be handy for rendering, it mainly implies the ability to run heavy-duty AI workloads—whether that’s AI coding or running agentic programs like OpenClaw. That AI push seems to be reaching across all of Apple’s high-end computing stack. Gurman even suggested that a supposed M7 Ultra is slated for a refreshed Mac Studio desktop that’s also expected in 2027.
