Apple Reportedly Working on Touchscreen Macs, Including MacBook Pro

[SilverWalker]

The UltimateSyn Guarantee: they will absolutely NEVER just slap touchscreen support onto the traditional laptop form-factor. That would be asinine, and they know that. Hence why they haven’t done that in the last decade when they very well could have.

But what they have done in the meantime is to add lots of extra white space around everything to get us used to having lots of wasted space everywhere. When/if they move to touch screen, they may have to add even more whitespace around things to make them more easily touchable. The additional whitespace compared to now will be small, some people might not notice it. If they went from OSX from five years ago, the difference would be striking, and there would probably be a revolt.
Today, there is much wasted screen real-estate in Mac OS, and 'buttons' where you cannot see their edge.
I still dislike having to search for a sliver of Safari to be able to click and drag the window - yet the space used by the top of Safari is significant compared to years past. I miss the old days of OSX.

 

[Krypton Deer]

maybe adding Apple Pencil support to trackpad would bring more value? Can it be done?

I rarely use the touch screen on my work laptop - except for scrolling when its mediocre trackpad bothers me.

 

[coolfactor]

I've reached for my Mac screen and tried to touch it. Darn you, iPhone!

I agree with Apple not making a touchscreen Mac yet ... but they are slowly adjusting macOS to be more touch-friendly. Menus are now larger, ready for fingers. The traffic-light buttons in the window corner have more space around them. Everything is slowly being tweaked to be larger and more spacious, but they have a LONG way to go. And think of all of the 3rd-party applications that would be a nightmare to use.

I believe touch is coming, but only when the OS is ready.

 

[coolfactor]

What would be awesome is for touch to be supported when running iOS apps. That would make perfect sense! So the screen could only activate touch where an iOS app was visible. Touch outside that and the laptop would vibrate or issue a horrible "Sorry, that isn't gonna work!" sound. That would be a brilliant design.

 

[Jayayess1190]

I would buy a touchscreen Macbook Air.

 

[Avenged110]

So they'll have even more of an excuse to continue ruining the once-beautiful UX of macOS to make it even more inconvenient and dysfunctional (iOS-like)... I bet they wouldn't even offer equally-as-performant hardware without it just like in the dark touchbar days. Touchscreens on laptops are, and will always be, stupid.

 

[Tagbert]

Steve is right though, trying to use a touchscreen on a vertical screen is just uncomfortable. What would be the point in this if they aren’t going to allow you to fold back or remove the keyboard?

It’s only uncomfortable if you assume that the user is only using touch, but in reality people switch between touch, trackpad, and keyboard minute by minute as the actions change.

 

[Naiborg]

With all the things happening with Apple over the last years, with bloated product categories, phones that have turned into phablets, gestures that are fighting each other, gestures for core features that’s only for right-handed people (Control Center on iPhones with Face ID), the decision of making a half ipad and half mac wouldn’t surprise me if i’d come to fruition. However, it would be another desperately stupid move.

What used to be a product line of distinct products, tailored to specific use cases, has already been blurred by their phablets as soon as they stop producing sensible sized phones, and at that point I guess anything goes.

Apple is no longer guided by principles, but are rather more and more acting like a standard tech company that trows anything to the wall to see what sticks. A radical shift from the days of Steve Jobs, that’s for sure. A logistics guy taking over for a visionary wasn’t the best way forward for Apple.

 

[iZac]

I mean - I bought my mum (a seasoned iPad user) an M1 Macbook Air back in 2020 when they came out and the very first thing she tried to do was tap the dock to launch Safari.

So ... makes sense.

 

[Tagbert]

Pointless. Touchscreen laptops were the “new thing” some years ago, but thats mostly gone by the board. Hardly anyone asks for them now.

Most Windows laptops for sale now either include or have the option for a touch screen.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Each of you complaining about a feature you can disable is an absolute joke. Complain much? You know what? I don't care about USB ports, I like the touchbar, I buy it to do jack nothing with content creation, and I'm willing to bet I pay apple more than you do lol. Just bought 80 ipads a couple weeks ago. The sales pitch is the content creation and snowflake world but the reality is 90+% are people like me that want a daily driver and enjoy the functionality of things. I really love the "If i wanted a touch screen I'd buy an Ipad" dude. I'll give you the biggest blessing ever in letting you know you don't have to ever buy a single damn Apple product again and I'll be perfectly happy for it!

 

[Tagbert]

"Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo. But after a short period of time, you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible." -- Steve Jobs

That makes the naive assumption that if you have touch, then it is the only way you are interacting. If you actually watch people who use touch screens, they switch input methods based on context.

I do that now with an iPad in a keyboard stand with a pointing device. Sometimes I use the keyboard, sometimes I use the pointing device, and sometimes I use the touchscreen. The same pattern occurs when I have had to use a Windows laptop that happened to have a touchscreen. The touchscreen was one of the best parts of it.

 

[Apple_Gabe]

I'm not a fan of touchscreens on the MB. The screen becomes a fingerprint magnet and it puts a drain on the battery, even when the touchscreen is not of use, not to mention more expensive. I would want to see a non-touchscreen version released alongside the touch version.

 

[Pakaku]

I could see the idea of a reverse iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard working, except now all of the internals are in the base (and all of the weight, too), and just the touch screen by itself attached to a hinge. Now you can bring the screen forward to touch like an iPad on a MK stand, or push it back to type like a Macbook.

 

[JimmerJabber]

I'm willing to bet I pay apple more than you do lol. Just bought 80 ipads a couple weeks ago.

You personally paid for the 80 iPads? Or your business, or a business you work for, did?

For those that personally pay for our Apple devices, we would rather not pay for a feature we don't/won't use, rather than paying for it and disabling it.

 

[germinator]

Terrible idea. Don't want to pay for a feature I will never use. But a secondary issue to that of non-upgradable RAM and storage, which make Mac hardware no longer viable for me.

 

[MichaelAdam]

If that was the case, Apple would completely revise the design and ergonomy of the machine but it would cannibalise the iPad market. Let’s see what it can be called « Macpad » ?

 

[techfreak23]

How about going the other way and allowing certain macOS apps to run on the M series iPads when connected to a keyboard and trackpad? I have never thought that I needed a touchscreen on a laptop, but it would be nice for iPads to have the ability to run full desktop apps. Not saying bring full macOS to the iPad, but have Catalyst make apps compatible with iPadOS.

 

[Apleeseed84]

So, iPad Pros? Just give us Mac OS and it’s a done deal, we already pay more than a MacBook Air at this rate if you get the magic keyboard

 

[MLMcMillion]

You clearly have not held for any given period of time a 13” tablet, it’s uncomfortable and heavy.

I don’t intend to. That’s not the use case.

Having something I could do development work on AND take notes or diagram/draw on would be game-changing.

 

[koelsh]

You personally paid for the 80 iPads? Or your business, or a business you work for, did?

For those that personally pay for our Apple devices, we would rather not pay for a feature we don't/won't use, rather than paying for it and disabling it.

Ok, let's go down the list. Do you personally use the escape key or right command and option keys? Do you personally use Bluetooth 1.0 through Bluetooth 4.0 devices? Do you personally use every single port on your Mac? If not then disable them and demand Apple not include them.

Nobody personally uses every single feature on their devices and if we catered to sell each group only exactly what they will use we'd have hundreds of SKUs, I mean why would someone make 124 different SKUs of phon... wait....

 

[vegetassj4]

Gorillas everywhere rejoice in that they are finally included in the target market for MBP.

Why 'Gorilla Arm Syndrome' Rules Out Multitouch Notebook Displays

Apple’s new MacBook Air borrows a lot of things from the iPad, including hyperportability and instant-on flash storage. But the Air won’t use an iPad-like touchscreen. Neither will any of Apple’s laptops. That’s because of what designers call “gorilla arm.” And while Apple points to its own...

www.wired.com

 

[LeadingHeat]

iPhone and iPad apps are available on Macs with Apple silicon chips, though, unless a developer opts out.

I don’t know if we can even claim this anymore. There are so so so many developers who have “opted out” of letting their apps be available on the Mac. My theory: why let a user pay for it on the iPhone and not pay me again for the same app on the Mac? They’re just greedy.

 

[JimmerJabber]

Do you personally use the escape key or right command and option keys?

Yes, yes and yes.

Do you personally use Bluetooth 1.0 through Bluetooth 4.0 devices?

The single Bluetooth controller is backwards compatible with the previous versions of Bluetooth, by default. Your question is therefore irrelevant. But yes, I use Bluetooth devices.

Do you personally use every single port on your Mac?

Yes.

Regardless - you are talking about existing functionality. The comments on this thread are focused on the possible introduction of a new feature. And unlike the existing functions you referred to, this particular new feature will be a very significant cost and change to the hardware and software of Apple laptops.

It is completely acceptable for people to have differing views, and I understand where both sides are coming from.
The earlier poster whose comment I quoted, was implying that because they had purchased 80 iPads that their opinion therefore outweighed everyone else's opinion. My comment was simply to ask whether they had personally paid for those 80 iPads, or if it was their or someone else's business.

Cheers

 

[BipedalOS]

I use the touch feature on my Dell Precision as it comes in handy at times but not enough to justify the cost difference.

Common uses were signing forms, highlighting things on the page to review, etc… all things I could use my trackpad for but the touch screen just seemed like a good option for.

Touch is much easier/common on a tablet vs a folding device like a laptop.