And most of what you describe is even better with AVP tech.
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MacBook Ultra: 5 Features That Could Justify the Name
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Gotta love the persistent "tech demo" revisionist history posts! 😂😂😂
I really don't understand this bizarre dislike of touch on a laptop. Don't like it? Don't touch the screen. Easy. What you describe is the only way touch "would be of benefit" TO YOU. Millions and millions of people find benefit in touch-enabled laptops every day. Young people have all grown up with touch from day one and many find using a pointer more difficult. I think it's extremely likely that Apple will add touch to the MacBook line at some point.
The biggest issue with this theory is the fact that all of these rumored upgrades are also rumored to come to all of the other MacBook sooner than later.
An OLED touchscreen is rumor to come to the MacBook Air in 2028. That is no longer an ultra feature.
A touchscreen is rumored to come to the MacBook Neo within the next two years, and likely within the next 5 to 7 it will also get OLED.
The iMac is rumor to get an OLED (and likely touch capable) display in 2029.
That literally leaves the “Ultra” with no reason to exist. There is no higher endsilicon they can put in it, the current M5Max is already pushing against the form factor limits of the current MacBook Pro design.
The simplest answer is the most likely, Apple is going to do what they have done the last three times they have redesigned the MacBook Pro and introduce the new design at the high-end before moving it down to the entire MBP line.
Anyone remember when they updated the MacBook Pros, right before introducing the “Next Generation of MacBook Pro with retina display”? That’s obviously what these rumors are referring to.
Apple will give it its own little brand, they’ll call it the “MacBook Pro with OLED” this year, before it just becomes the “MacBook Pro” next year or the year after.
It'll only catch up if Apple makes the device a priority and that doesn't seem to be the case. I don't think AVP was a tech demo, however. An early adopter product, yes, but I fully believe that Apple expected to see interest grow, not fizzle out completely, once the faithful had all made their purchases. Let's be real too. Selling a few 100K of any product in today's tech world is pretty weak. It's certainly not enough to launch a whole new platform. Even if they sold 500K at $3500, I imagine that's still a fraction of the overall R&D dollars spent.
Software is the biggest problem, but it doesn't appear that anyone cares to solve it. Developers aren't interested because Apple has failed to create a market. Prohibitive price aside, Apple hasn't delivered a software experience that captivates the public's intertest. The public doesn't see any advantage to using AVP over their laptops. There's no doubt that a lot of the AVP tech will make its way into other products over time, but unless Apple comes up with a compelling reason for the "average" person to choose AVP, it feels like a dead product.
MareLuce
macrumors 65816
QuarterSwede
macrumors G4
If you’ve ever had to move a touchscreen laptop from office to office you’ll know why they suck. I kept accidentally closing windows I needed when picking it up to move it so I had IT disable the bloody thing. Now, I wouldn’t mind it if there was an option to turn it off. In the windows world that’s locked behind admin credentials stupidly.
While that does sound like a bad user experience, in fairness, your experience with a managed Windows laptop is pretty irrelevant. Just because Microsoft does something poorly (what a shock!), that isn't an indictment of the overall idea. I fully expect Apple to give us some control over touch, including the ability to turn it off. So much hand-wringing. Let's wait and see what they do they before we decide that the sky is falling.
alaadahmed
macrumors newbie
I don't know about you guys, but I am not that excited about touch screen for a laptop, I never liked windows laptop that have touch screens, after couple of minutes from touching the screen, get dirty and lots of finger prints and smudges 🙁
anthony13
macrumors 65816
I mean you're right and I agree. But Apple is sure to change that form factor at some point right? I think what I'm really responding to is this rumor of the M6 Ultra laptop has been odd since the very start.
It started as a laptop that was going to come out a mere half year after the M5 pro/max refresh which in and unto itself is kind of weird. Not that it hasn't been done before, but by releasing an M5 Max, you're essentially saying 'hey top buyers in our market, go buy this', and then half a year later saying to that same unique base 'hey wait look at this one'. I continue to remind the well informed macrumors base that we are spoiled with theories and rumors here on this site, but most of the general buying apple audience is not. They dont actually know about this rumor of an impending MB ultra, so they don't know to hold off on an M5 Max purchase.
Then there's the fact that despite the fact it's rumored to have a touchscreen, there have been virtually no software leaks on what MacOS might change to accommodate that. And with WWDC in 2 weeks that's odd to me. And then yeah, if there is a new M6 Ultra coming, what is the plan for the rest of the MBP lineup? presumably, the base M5 would be due to be refreshed the end of this year. It just seems like this rumor is only giving us a quarter of the over all picture. I'm like genuinely curious to see how it all shakes out. 🙃
OferJ
macrumors newbie
transpo1
macrumors 68000
I'm excited for an OLED machine but also hoping they don't make the MacBook Ultra so thin that it loses the airflow and heat dissipation qualities that make the current MBP so highly functional. Otherwise, it won't be a replacement for my 14" M3 Pro. Make it thinner but keep it practical as a Pro laptop.
I too got matte screen on my MBP, and with brightness on full it's almost blinding, so what do you enhance it for?
I think the MacBook with OLED screen should be called the MacBook Olé! Who's with me?
MartiNZ
macrumors 65816
Yeah indeed, touch laptops can be great. Microsoft did an amazing job with the early Surface devices and Windows 8. Made it so natural with the touch gestures and controls, and made it a convertible tablet so that you held it in a sensible way for a touch device. Then they made them bigger and that was a worse experience. Then they backed away completely from wanting us to touch things with Windows 10 and 11, but for some use cases it still works really well.
I've kept my Surface Book 3 as my main daily PC and hate that they have discontinued that awesome design. I have a laptop on a stand with the screen flipped to face me nice and close, and I can reach out and touch things where it makes sense. I recently found that Warlords 3 is now on Steam and have had a great time playing that. It runs at 1024 x 768 and has an annoying issue with the cursor being a bit offset from where you're clicking, but kind of amazingly for a 1998 title, it works really well with touch! Or course we know from 18 years of smartphone games that that is where touch really shines.
The downsides of the Surface Book design are there, for sure, like the thick ass display because it is also a tablet, and -that- does not work at 15" lol, plus the fact that they never fixed it completely losing track of the dedicated GPU, but it also innovated my ass and it really sucks that Microsoft just abandons their ideas instead of fixing things. Like with Windows Phone, and that was already really good ><.
I hope Apple -does- bring interesting features to such a MacBook. Maybe a good time with new leadership, to overhaul the hardware, and then make the software great again, and better for touch!
I want permanent HDR brightness. Seriously, I just realised at some point that I like it very bright. I also only use light mode. Basically I want the active window to be like white paper, plus I use an app to dim all non-front windows with a dark grey layer.
Well, what I mean is that it won't necessarily be a "workhorse" type of machine, but rather a pretty but powerful one. The main thing I see this concerning is sacrificing ports (and possibly battery) for thinness. Hence my "fancy MacBook Air" angle.
When I initially heard rumours of the new model's specs several months ago, I was excited by the prospect of a case redesign and the M6 2nm chip. But with the "Ultra" moniker getting attached to it, and the apparent move to keep the Pro, I'm thinking this is going to be a kind of status machine. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't be out of character for Apple, imho. They could give C-suite types the bragging rights of a top-of-the-line machine, without the pesky complaints of Video/Audio professionals, in particular, when they cut ports for thinness. It is kind of a best-of-both-worlds solution, in a way... Pros will get the M6 anyway, just a little down the road, but they can sell Ultras to folks who don't have to worry about the price.
I'd be happy to be wrong about this, btw, but if we're paying a huge premium for things like touchscreen on their only top-end "pro" machine, that would be very disappointing. As long as the MBP sticks around, I'm not too concerned. But having been through the 2015 fiasco, I know they can really botch things when thinness becomes a priority.
Black_Mage
macrumors 6502a
OLED Display: I hope it's Tandem OLED.
Touch Screen: This is one of those things you think want. You don't want it.
Thinner Design: Why? The MacBook Pro doesn't need to be thinner. If it can be thinner, that means the extra space can be used for something like bigger battery or just more space for air cooling.
Dynamic Island: Oh no. That's fine for the iPhone, but I really don't want this on a laptop. I prefer the do nothing notch because I can easily ignore it with a free app.
M6 Processor Architecture: Expected.
The more I hear rumors about this so-called Ultra MacBook, the more I am convinced I made the right decision to buy a M5 Pro MacBook Pro. The Ultra is shaping up to be a MacBook that is too expensive with features I don't want.
Touch Screen: This is one of those things you think want. You don't want it.
Thinner Design: Why? The MacBook Pro doesn't need to be thinner. If it can be thinner, that means the extra space can be used for something like bigger battery or just more space for air cooling.
Dynamic Island: Oh no. That's fine for the iPhone, but I really don't want this on a laptop. I prefer the do nothing notch because I can easily ignore it with a free app.
M6 Processor Architecture: Expected.
The more I hear rumors about this so-called Ultra MacBook, the more I am convinced I made the right decision to buy a M5 Pro MacBook Pro. The Ultra is shaping up to be a MacBook that is too expensive with features I don't want.