Maybe a new Apple Polishing Cloth. Or they’ll repackage WHOOSH and sell it for $50/bottle.
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Apple Planning 'MacBook Ultra' With Touchscreen and Higher Price
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loby
macrumors 68020
Understand..but if it is just something you can ignore and "don't have to use" and go on with your regular OS usage as if the touch option is not there.. then that might be ok.
But..Knowing Apple and having to modify the OS to accommodate touch screen, there will be issues (buggy) and the constant "hey, try touching it instead" options coming up to try to move the user to use it. "If" they have a switch to "turn it off", then it is ok, but I have not seen Apple have a "go back to the old way" switch before (might be wrong - I don't remember any in the past).
I use LG and don't mine it, but many want a switch to turn it off, but Apple can't because they modified the OS to accommodate the new options, so I would expect the same "if" touch screen options are across the board as the norm option.
I can't speak for others, but I wasn't complaining that there are "too many updates". I was commenting on the likelihood of a certain product release schedule. An M6 MacBook Pro with a touchscreen has been rumored for a while now, but it seemed unlikely to me that the MacBook Pro would be updated a little more than half a year after the previous update. This latest rumor indicating that the rumored M6 Mac is actually a new product category puts the original rumor in a context that makes more sense based on Apple's history of updates.
If this rumor is true, then the choice in the fall will be between a more premium model with a touchscreen and a "normal" MacBook Pro. I think that's a better selection, especially if we won't be able to choose on the touchscreen model whether we actually want the touchscreen or not.
Supposedly they are making a specific point of NOT altering the OS one bit if you don't use the touch screen. For example, the menu bar will look the same BUT if you touch a menu the pull down menu will appear larger but only if you touch it.
BGPL
macrumors 65816
I've had several PC laptops with touch screens, I didn't use them. Even the one with the stylus, never touched it.
Somewhere along the way laptops stopped being polite office machines and became portable power plants. High-end gaming laptops now run Intel Core i9-14900HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU that pulls 200 W+, fans screaming & battery dead in under an hour. People buy them anyway because raw power sells.
So what if a 16" MacBook Pro ran an Ultra chip? Desktop Ultras in Mac Studio hit 200–300 W & too hot for a laptop as-is. But Apple could use a binned Ultra: fewer cores, lower clocks, ~150–180 W, keeping most performance but manageable thermals.
Cooling would be loud. Fans would spin aggressively, vents bigger, battery life short under heavy load. Intel-era 16" MacBook Pros did this before of hot, loud, but fast. Apple Silicon favors quiet efficiency so an Ultra laptop would be a big shift.
I think the main barrier isn’t tech but it’s product segmentation. A laptop Ultra would eat into Mac Studio’s territory. Still with binning and smaller process nodes a portable Ultra is technically possible... a MacBook that’s quiet most of the day then a mini-Mac Studio when plugged in.
Would people want it or is Apple’s current efficiency-first approach enough?
Astuces iOS
macrumors 68030
The Studio Ultra’s heatsink weighs two pounds more than the Studio Max’s. It also has a massive fan. It’s not going in a MacBook.
jdawgnoonan
macrumors 65816
I still think touch screen laptops targeting users of the most powerful “Pro” level machines does not make sense. Pro users are not the target for touch screen laptops. They are the users least likely to appreciate smudged screens. I don’t even like smudges on my iPad screens.
I want a thinner and light design, if they could put a pro chip in a 15" air I would be happy.
Why would their screens be smudged if they don't touch it? And IF they touch it then they wanted/needed to enough to accept some smiudges.
Or they can go the gaming PC laptop route. Slightly thicker, very loud and very short battery life.
There are users willing to put up with this as proven by gaming laptops and workstation laptops.
No they don't need it, but those white keys are going to look skanky after a couple of years.
zakarhino
Contributor
Sounds like the MacBook Pro will be behind. So October this year we get the M6 Max MacBook Ultra, Q1 2027 the Pro gets the M6 Pro/Max chip, Q4 2027 Ultra gets the M7 Pro/Max chip, and so on.
And nothing said about running iPad apps on this new laptop? It’s already possible to run iPad apps on an Apple silicon Mac if the developer approves it but this thing might really cannibalize the iPad Pro.
Why when they can give you a usb c port instead which can support whatever you want?
Le0M
macrumors 65816
So you really think Apple will just use macOS without making any adjustment to the UI for this new device?
The rumors are saying that MacOS will support touch but in such a way that you won't see the changes unless you actually touch it. For example the top menu bar will look the same but if you touch instead of click a menu it will appear larger. Apparently Apple knows users don't want to see the normal UI interactions change for those not touching the screen.
Le0M
macrumors 65816
I read the rumors.
I still think Apple will adapt the OS to this new device in a major way than expected.
Neo's price point should point to it being the newest bare basic model.
It's like airline passenger tiers
- 1st class
- business class
- premium economy/comfort class
- economy class
IIRC the 1st laptop with a backlight was the 2003 PowerBoo 17". That feature slowly trickledown to other models and brands.
Are $499-599 Windows/Chrome laptops having these backlit keyboards? I'd be surprised if >20% of them do so.
Forum users liek MR will avoid laptops at that price points because they can afford it and want the latest & grreatest.
But for 1st time Mac buyers, students, people who have a hard budget of under $600 the Neo is a solid bargain.
If you watched the MKHD YOuTube video about it he excplictly stated that his YouTube subscribers are not the target market of the Neo.
This applies to Mac Rumors users as well.
Odds are if you're buying a device for your student you'll hand down your current gadget to them and buy yourself somethring better.
The hand me down is likely better than the Neo.
I'm an employer of personnel in non-tech industries and the $499 Neo's a dream that I see it useable for at most 9+ years.
Use case is
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Browing
- Viber
- Canva
Do those apps really need 16/512?
Being in an echo chamber of MR, r/Apple, r/Hardware, Ars, Dave2D, etc makes it appear that the Neo, Chromebook and sub-$600 Windows laptops are trash.
They arent! They cater to a very specific use case worldwide. They likely have a larger user base than the whole iPhone active user base combined.
For my use case and because I'm the business owner the 2026 MBP 16" M5 Pro 24GB 1TB is my jam. Just wish it was 36GB given the money being asked.
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