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Apple Planning 'MacBook Ultra' With Touchscreen and Higher Price

Madonepro said:
Three types of ‘Pro’s’ that use Apple devices; Videographers, Photographers/Graphic Designers, and Coders/Developers.
I know a few in the first two categories, and many in the latter category, and none think a touch screen has a use case in their workflow, and as an aside, they all hated the Touch Bar.
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Anecdotal remarks mean nothing from a global scale. Creative professionals are not a monolith and the notable use of touch on iPad Pros annually immediately puts into question what you're claiming.

Creatives have wanted laptop-class software paired with such touch functionality on Macs for quite some time.

PC laptops with touch that have longstanding support such as Asus's Zenbook Pro duo as well put into doubt your anecdotal remark.

3D artists (and engineers) and so on absolutely leverage such features which are helpful alternatives and complimentary to float mouses.
 
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I remember when there were rumors about a touch iMac and Apple's men, Ive and maybe Shiller, said that they explored the possibility but ended up that touchscreens may have sense only on a tablet as your arms are more relaxed. Raising an arm to touch a vertical screen is unergonomic and soon after a while it cause arm fatigue easily. So why should we have now a laptop with touch screen? When I see some colleagues' touch pc laptop it seems so useless. Most of the time you point at something and unintentionally move or change something. It's really useless. The only intelligent application that I saw was a laptop, can't remember the brand, that made the laptop screen that flip 360 and transform the laptop in a tablet.
 
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What makes them think the people who want touch screens are the same people who'll pay through the nose for the top of the line model?

This reminds me of the iPhone Mini – they implement it in a bad way, and then when it doesn't sell they say "see, we were right before, we told you people didn't want that".
 
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Sporks make sense on paper or in special cases like prepackaged utensils/napkins at a truckstop or walking the Appalachian trail but there’s a reason we still have spoons and forks at home.

It will be very interesting to see how/if this concept comes off. I was proven wrong about AirPods, I first thought they were a dorky gimmick but oh how wrong I was. On the other hand my work laptop with Windows 11 has a touchscreen and I haven’t used the touchscreen function in over five years that I’ve had it. If anything, it gets in the way when I accidentally touch the screen.
 
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the current m5 max top end model is way expensive already, m6 max with more unproductive bells and whistle will be much more expensive.
 
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I just want a MacBook Air with a ProMotion OLED display and a 3rd USB-C port. You can drop the MagSafe. Thanks Apple!
 
macOS touch but only on laptops costing $2000 or more?

Sounds like Apple is going all in on the Vision Pro strategy here (new interface on a device that 95% can't or won't afford).

Good luck getting developers to support it.
 
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At work I use a PC with touch screen (and mouse also) every day, for many tasks the touch screen is actually faster and the one I use, but I'd never want one at home.

But, then I see my little daughter trying to zoom in on my desktop monitor and, well, the coming generation will expect a touch screen.
 
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bigglow said:
People bought into the Intel MBP 16" because they needed the extra grunt.

People who buy into the Pro & Studio Ultras want it.
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And they can still buy the Studio which stays quiet under load due to its massive fan and heavy heat sink. The same chip in a laptop, even a big laptop, would throttle before reaching the same performance so it would be wasted money and all of the negatives associated with the IntelBooks.

No one who wants an actual gaming laptop is considering a Mac regardless of what chip is in it.
 
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lilkwarrior said:
Anecdotal remarks mean nothing from a global scale. Creative professionals are not a monolith and the notable use of touch on iPad Pros annually immediately puts into question what you're claiming.

Creatives have wanted laptop-class software paired with such touch functionality on Macs for quite some time.

PC laptops with touch that have longstanding support such as Asus's Zenbook Pro duo as well put into doubt your anecdotal remark.

3D artists (and engineers) and so on absolutely leverage such features which are helpful alternatives and complimentary to float mouses.
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You remark that my anecdotal suggestions are irrelevant, so in the spirt of consistency, I challenge you to prove your dogma?
 
Well, I wouldn’t care really. XDR for Air’s please. The M5 MB Air is plenty of fast for everyday work, Lightroom and some FCP. But the screen isn’t up to - why you still would need to go far a „Pro“.
 
All those anti-touch folks don't seem to understand that there are a wide variety of users of tech. Each use devices in different ways for different purposes. It's not to say that their use case isn't valid.... of course it is. They don't want a touch screen and won't use it. That's fine. But don't dismiss or say those who want it are dumb or non existent.

People who think a touch screen MacBook is sacrilege don't realize that a real user base exists that want it. Apple knows this and that's why they have expended significant time and resources to bring it to market.
 
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I hope that they don’t call it MacBook Ultra as there is already a chip called ultra. MacBook Touch would make more sense.
 
In order for touch to work in a significant way the chassis would have to fold over so you could use it like a tablet. Otherwise it will just be a laptop with some touch capability and not worth the price hike. OLED is nice but for me personally I’m usually connected to an external display anyway.
 
My fear is that the UI on MacOS gets worse in order to support a touch UI. I do not want iOS UI on a Mac that supports touch better.

Liquid glass and the crazy rounded corners with its romper room/fisher price look and feel was enough, to make me walk if there was ANY good Windows laptops.

The latest version with reduced transparency makes it tolerable for the most part.
 
JohnC1959 said:
I guess it depends what the incremental cost is and what percentage of the total price it is. My car came with a radio that I never use but I don't mind.
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To each their own. But I will wager that many more Neo and Air users would care about a touch enabled screen than would Pro users. To me that means it is adding expense for the most expensive machines for little to no reason.
 
So, just to be clear... is Ultra the 'de facto' name or is this speculative? If it is Ultra, is it going to have an M5 Ultra chip? That strikes me as somewhat overkill for a laptop.
 
Totally useless feature IMO. Especially in a work settings with external monitor(s). Unless you go and purchase an external monitor with touch screen capabilities you then have two different UI approaches for the different displays.

I'm sure there will be a very small niche of people who are cool with that but for me it's completely useless. My work laptop has touch and it's no use to me whatsoever.
 
Could this be the slow birth of macOS on the iPad? They said “no” before, but then again, they released Safari for Windows at one point too.
 
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