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MacBook Pro With Touch Screen and New Mac Studio Likely 'Postponed'

MayaUser said:
no one asked for cars....until we got them and used them and so on...
people also bought touchbar macs...so those voted for touch macs, also those who bought windows touchscreens laptops...
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Where is the Touch Bar now? Where are butterfly keyboards now? The biggest Apple problem is that they don’t want to admit their mistakes.

“An OLED touchscreen is coming, please inform shareholders”. Apple has the best touchpad on the market; it makes no sense to do that now. They are basically postponing it because Apple needs more time to adapt macOS for touchscreen use. And once again, this will hurt regular users of MacBooks, Mac mini, and iMacs.

Time will tell how smart this move really is.

My bet: 2-3 years, selling will decrease and Apple will magically forget about that again, as they did previously
 
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spac3duck said:
Why stop at iPad... I'd rather an iPhone that runs iOS when mobile and then macOS when docked via USB-C to a Display (with Bluetooth KB/M). It would be charged all day, theoretically be used as a trackpad in landscape mode, and then be ready to continue use on the way home from work/school etc as a mobile device.

The MacBook Neo is proof that macOS can run perfectly fine on a mobile chip. It's time to bring the Dex experience fully to the Apple ecosystem and for Apple to claim it as their own.
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I started touting the idea of a "pocket puck" back in the late 90s or early 2000s on forums. Basically a small puck that was the computer and it docked with a mobile display, a tablet display, a laptop dock (i.e. clamshell with keyboard and display) or a desktop dock, depending on what you were doing, and in pure puck mode with voice recognition and voice synthesis.

Asus tried it in the early 2010s, with a dockable phone and DeX and the Windows Phone equivalent have also tried it, but the power has never been there, in such a small form factor. Although the Neo shows it is now possible, at least for moderate use, with the A18 Pro chip.

Maybe we will see something along those lines come to fruition, or we will do away with personal devices completely and there will be compute in the cloud and you interact with the nearest interface device, a speaker, a pin, a pair of glasses, a desktop unit etc. It would be interesting and very flexible, but probably a privacy nightmare.
 
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That’s right, folks, just as Apple was putting the finishing touches on mass production, Apple discovered these ALL NEW devices just weren’t quite ready to take the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio to a whole new level with a game-changing touchscreen at ultra-fast RAM. So, at the very last minute, literally as they were about to start final assembly, they had to pull these back. Remember, Apple is a tiny startup with very limited resources and this sudden AI explosion came out of nowhere. Believe you me, nobody is more surprised by this than Apple. Not to worry, though, because Apple has discovered the secret and these ALL NEW devices are right back in the greatest, strongest pipeline ever. Apple can’t wait to see the incredible things customers are able to do. Apple thinks you’re gonna love them!

But seriously, this is nothing more than Apple’s usual astroturf PR “leaks” to seem bleeding edge. Apple, led by the master of logistics, doesn’t just suddenly “postpone” or pull products. This is all planned and locked-in at least a year in advance.
 
SpotOnT said:
So disappointing to see Apple embrace the touchscreen laptop. Kind of feels like Apple is just trying random things to see what sticks, with no real thought as to what makes a good product.
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The touchscreen is hardly going to add $$$$ to the price and isn't going to be the most interesting feature of a tandem OLED Mac. If you get fingerprint anxiety, don't touch it.

If nothing else, it will help people developing and testing iOS Apps.

If they're going to build an OLED display they might as well add a touchscreen as a tick-list feature for PC switchers - many laptop PCs bundle the touchscreen feature with the retina-class display option.
 
CATiNTHESTORE said:
Where is the Touch Bar now? Where are butterfly keyboards now? The biggest Apple problem is that they don’t want to admit their mistakes.
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The butterfly keyboard was stupid because it was the only keyboard you could get on a MacBook Pro, and even when it worked it was an extreme short-travel keyboard and far too "love/hate" to be the only choice. The faults were the icing on the cake.

The Touch Bar was stupid, not because it was bad in any way, but because it replaced the physical function keys (and, initially, the escape key) which were central to some people's workflow.

Putting a touch screen on a MacBook won't take anything away & I can think of a few areas where - even on a clamshell laptop - it could be useful. (Running or developing/testing for iOS, testing cross-platform web apps for touchscreen compatibility, multi-touch with onscreen mixers & virtual instruments/effects in Logic Pro...). If you don't like it, you'll be able to ignore it.
 
Virinprew said:
Sure you do 😄.
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Do you think that's a lot of money? I used to own VFX for TV and film, but that's a hard industry with a race to the bottom, unfortunately. So I started a company that makes internal custom use 3d visualisation software for Car companies. Currently 7 car companies use it. Apple vision implementation is new this year. We were on Meta but recent VisionOS changes ( and the M5 Chip ) means we can use Apple Vision. Licences (3 years) have been £250K just for Vision addon, the whole product is $18m over the past 4 years.

A colleague has made a BIM application for architects and builders for Apple Vision - He's hitting $120m... and it's him a small coding team in India. The key at the moment is custom workflows / solutions for clients, not low price high volume.
 
theluggage said:
The butterfly keyboard was stupid because it was the only keyboard you could get on a MacBook Pro, and even when it worked it was an extreme short-travel keyboard and far too "love/hate" to be the only choice. The faults were the icing on the cake.

The Touch Bar was stupid, not because it was bad in any way, but because it replaced the physical function keys (and, initially, the escape key) which were central to some people's workflow.

Putting a touch screen on a MacBook won't take anything away & I can think of a few areas where - even on a clamshell laptop - it could be useful. (Running or developing/testing for iOS, testing cross-platform web apps for touchscreen compatibility, multi-touch with onscreen mixers & virtual instruments/effects in Logic Pro...). If you don't like it, you'll be able to ignore it.
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macOS already has significant modifications for touchscreen, which is not ideal from a UI/UX perspective right now.

For best practices: development builds should be tested on real devices with a wide range of supported models. Respectful companies always procure the requested devices. You might ask why-because application behavior can be completely different on the Xcode emulator compared to a real device running the same iOS version.

Touchscreen will be a niche product that will be forgotten in 3 years.
But there will be a ridiculous MacOS sharpened under the touchscreen, which will then need to be fixed back.

Apple now has a dilemma, to go completely to the touchscreen on MacBooks or to leave users the right to choose the configuration of the MacBook (touchscreen or not) but at the same time in the development of the operating system to prioritize the touchscreen that in the final end It will bring a large number of problems for an ordinary user (not a touchscreen) from the point of view of UIX.

There are very few specific scenarios for using the touchscreen on Macs and this is a very small pull.

This decision is dictated mainly by stock owners boomers with a large wallet in order to make more products and, accordingly, more profits, but at the same time Apple loses its face of the uniqueness of devices and stable OS.
 
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Rychiar said:
That’s beyond ridiculous. We need a Mac Studio NOW! Why do they have no problems filling the laptop orders?
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It really is frustrating for me as well.. I ended up buying an M3 Macbook Pro with a dock back in the day because of the delay in getting a new M3 based studio.. and here we go again.. I'm not going to fall for it this time. Apple will just have to wait as long as I do for my money.
 
How this works. “Apple’s going to make a…”
Internet: Engages massively by posting and reposting everywhere.
“Actually, Apple’s NOT going to make a…”
Internet: Engages massively by posting and reposting everywhere.
 
JohnC1959 said:
This RAM shortage is starting to get annoying. They either need to stop trying to build so many AI data centers or build more RAM factories.
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Are you kidding? The RAM manufacturers love this; they’re making an absolute fortune. It would cost them to build more factories and they’re making more profit than they have ever made before… why would they shoot themselves in the foot?

You’ll have to wait until the AI companies get better at optimizing their models to require less RAM. There’s some progress towards that but it’s still a while away.
 
CATiNTHESTORE said:
For best practices: development builds should be tested on real devices with a wide range of supported models.
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Of course. But it helps if you get it right first time because your development machine had a touchscreen.

CATiNTHESTORE said:
macOS already has significant modifications for touchscreen, which is not ideal from a UI/UX perspective right now.
Click to expand...

More a case of some apps and system tools have been ported across from iPad/iOS with minimum effort. That's not going to stop happening.
 
Rychiar said:
That’s beyond ridiculous. We need a Mac Studio NOW! Why do they have no problems filling the laptop orders?
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Because laptops are 95% of their Mac business. Simple supply chain logic says you make sure the biggest pipeline stays flowing no matter what. They’d rob iPad production if they need to to make sure laptop orders roll.
 
Yr Blues said:
People that use the iPad as a laptop, how do you like interacting with the screen?
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I've used my 12.9 iPad Pro as a hybrid for the last 5 years. I find that I use it as either a laptop or a tablet, but not usually both at the same time. When I use it as a laptop (with keyboard and mouse) I don't like having to reach to interact with the screen and then go back to find the mouse. I honestly can't say how often this occurs, but its not too often for my workflow.
I love using the iPad as a laptop to get work done and I love using it as a tablet, but it feels clunky to try and mix those - which seems to be what the MacBook with a touchscreen will be. That's my 2 cents.
 
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