After using Nvidia RTX Spark for a week, Apple's new MacBook 'PROLED' has my attention

I've used a fair few high-end laptops in the last few months – it's been a busy time in the PC laptop market, and now Apple has added to things by launching its most significant MacBook Pro revision in a while.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display and Touch is quite the name, but in fairness to Apple, it does describe exactly what's new about the laptop. It's the MacBook Pro, but with some telling upgrades, in the form of a gorgeous new OLED display, Dynamic Island and a touch screen for the first time on any Mac.

Crucially, it also starts from £2,899 or $2,899, making it the sort of laptop that most people probably can't really countenance picking up. That pricing isn't really a surprise, given the weeks of leaks and rumours, but it makes for an interesting comparison to the PC market right now.

Apple has always had the advantage of clarity compared to Windows laptops, where there are dozens of big brands making laptops, all of them with one of dozens of different chips from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and now Nvidia. The RTX Spark just launched, bringing a new wave of expensive laptops that run Nvidia's first laptop chip, muddying the waters even further.

I spent a week using the gorgeous Asus ProArt P14 with the RTX Spark powering it, and while I came away with the impression that Nvidia's new hardware is a serious factor for the laptop market moving forward, its pricing still didn't really wash out for me.

That laptop starts at £2,699.99 or $2,599.99, actually making it a little cheaper than Apple's new machine, which is quite a surprise in isolation. It really calls into question, for me, who these machines are for.

I say "calls into question", but I actually think most tech enthusiasts will know the answer. These laptops are for developers and those with creative processes that really need the best and most powerful processors, along with the most accurate screens and controls.

The simple fact is that easily 95% of people looking for a new laptop would be better off plumping for the latest MacBook Air, saving more than £1,000 or $1,000 compared to these high-end options. The Air will do everything you want from it, unless what you want is non-stop 4K video processing and deeply complex AI pipeline work.

Perhaps you had already intuited that answer just from watching the way Apple launched its new MacBook Pro – with an in-person event and some teasers on social media, but nothing globally live to rival the way it debuted the iPhone Duo. That's because the Duo, despite its own chunky price, will actually be a mainstream product.

The new MacBook Pro will not, in my view; it'll be for those who need the latest and greatest, but its innovations will now trickle down to more reasonably-priced Apple laptops over the next couple of years. A great example is that Dynamic Island – there's no way it remains exclusive to this machine for long.

Still, I can't help but feel that we're in a period where tech launches can involve a little bit of misdirection. Apple knows full well that this laptop isn't for the masses, but the price hikes that have hit across the board mean that it's increasingly hard to work out what laptop is for normal people.

It's easy to make marketing spiels about touch screens and OLED panels, but as long as they're this expensive, they're likely to continue being side notes for normal customers. It turns out that goes for Apple just as much as it does for Nvidia.