Apple already has a range of MacBooks – could Tim Cook and co add a touchscreen device?
Image: Getty/Bloomberg
Apple may finally deliver a MacBook with a touch display after years of avoiding the trend that’s popular with Windows laptops.
Bloomberg reports that Apple engineers are actively working on the touch MacBook Pro project and could introduce it as part of an upgrade from LCD to OLED.
Ever since the Apple iPad arrived in 2010, fans have wondered if Apple would create a touchscreen MacBook, but year after year the company’s top executives have shot down the idea.
Introducing the 2010 MacBook Air, Steve Jobs said that “sensitive surfaces don’t want to be vertical” because of the fatigue users quickly feel when stretching on the keyboard. He described it as “ergonomically awful”.
Still, some fans want a MacBook with a touchscreen, as ZDNet’s Jason Cipriani recently discovered after using the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio and enjoying the folding mechanism to move the screen from a laptop to a flat, tablet-like surface.
More on what professionals want from a touchscreen MacBook:
Apple may launch a touchscreen Mac in 2025, according to Bloomberg, with the laptop retaining the traditional trackpad and keyboard. Meanwhile, the switch to OLED will bring the MacBook in line with the iPhone and Apple Watch, while the iPad Pro could get OLED in the first half of 2024.
Apple is reportedly planning to use in-house custom displays for the Apple Watch as early as 2024 and later for the iPhone, but there’s no mention of building its own displays for MacBooks and Macs.
For the past decade, Apple executives have supported Jobs’ argument that the touchscreen wasn’t right for the Mac, even as Windows OEMs made progress converting touchscreen laptops into tablets. Apple chief Tim Cook in 2012 denounced Microsoft’s early efforts to implement touchscreens in Windows 8 laptops as a “compromise.”
Two years later, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, agreed, saying that “the Mac is kind of a sit-down experience” compared to the handheld iPad or iPhone experience. Federighi pointed out that Apple instead focused on creating the best touchpad for the MacBook.
But times have changed. Apple’s Control Center now looks and behaves more like iOS, and Apple has switched its Macs to its own silicon M1 and M2 chips, which in some cases are the same chips found in the new iPads. Additionally, iOS apps for iPhone and iPad now run on Apple silicon Macs, although users must follow Apple’s “touch alternatives” to interact with iOS apps. Then there are the quirks of Apple’s lineup. The iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard, for example, weighs more than a 2022 MacBook Air.
As Bloomberg notes, Apple may be forced to reevaluate its old position on the touchscreen MacBook for two main reasons: Apple’s Mac business has grown to become a bigger moneymaker than the iPad, though this crossover happened in 2015. But also because 10 years after the first clunky Windows 8 convertibles arrived, Apple’s competitors — including Microsoft, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Acer — are making much better touchscreen laptops.
The addition of touchscreens could also give MacBook sales a further boost amid an industry otherwise in decline after a pandemic-related sales spike in 2020. Last year, Macs were the only brand in the PC category whose shipments increased while the rest of the industry saw PC shipments steadily decline.
It should be noted that Apple reportedly does not want to merge the iPad and Mac operating systems.
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