Ming-Ching Kuo today suggested that we can expect to see a touchscreen MacBook Pro in production in the second half of 2026. This is the latest flock of rumors that Apple is working on such devices.
The company has been testing prototypes since at least 2008, but has consistently dismissed the idea of launching one. But I tend to believe in the latest reports…
Apple touchscreen Mac rejection
Apple has consistently rejected the idea of touchscreen Macs for many years.
Steve Jobs in 2010:
You can see that it’s not going to work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It offers a great demo, but you start to get tired after a short period of time and want to lose your arm for a long period of time. It’s not going well. It’s ergonomically awful. I want the touch surface to be level.
Tim Cook in 2012:
(You’ll be asked about tablets and PCs that Microsoft Surface is converging) You can converge the toaster and fridge, but these things probably aren’t comfortable for the user.
Jony Ive in 2016:
When asked why touchscreen Macs are inappropriate, he said, “For real reasons. It’s difficult to talk without explaining the many details we’re starting to talk about what we’re working on (lol). I don’t want to talk about it any more.”
Phil Schiller also in 2016.
Apple came to this conclusion by testing whether the Touch screen makes sense on Mac. “Our instinct was that it wasn’t, but what’s wrong? Our team has been working on it many times over the years,” Schiller says. “We absolutely left the belief that it wasn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were right.”
Craig Ferderi in 2020:
When we released Big Sur, I have to tell you, and these articles came out saying, “Oh my god, Apple is getting ready for the touch.” I was wondering, “Why?” We designed and evolved the look of macO in a way that felt most comfortable and natural for us without considering anything about the touch.
But things have changed since then
The first thing to note is that both Jony Ive and Phil Schiller were talking in the context of trying to sell us on the company’s latest MacBook feature, The Touch Bar. They were trying to argue that the touchscreen wouldn’t work, but that innovative new addition to the MacBook has been made. We all know how it works…
We also recommend that the market is ongoing. Touchscreen PC laptops are commonplace, and young users are cultivating these as a completely normal part of a high-tech environment, including school Chromebooks. Seamless switching between the trackpad and touchscreen is a very routine activity for both PC and iPad users with a magic keyboard.
However, the biggest clue to changing my mindset is that the iPad 26 is only enough to converge the iPad functionality with the MacBook functionality. This shows, more than anything, the company’s thinking on this issue has changed quite a lot.
iPados 26 killed the contravariance argument. If that argument doesn’t make sense to the iPad, it doesn’t make sense to the Mac either.
To be clear, I have not been waiting for my touchscreen MacBook myself. In an age when iPads with magic keyboards were common, the only way to use touchscreens in that configuration was for the occasional scrolling. That’s not a strong argument enough for me to be personally waiting for.
However, as long as Apple can do that without significantly increasing costs, I don’t know why it won’t offer touchscreens to Mac users a year after the launch of the Ipados 26, a year after its launch.
That’s my opinion. What are you? Share your thoughts in the comments.
(TagStoTRASSLATE)
