MacBook With Foldable Display Will Actually Have 18.8-Inch Screen, Analyst Says

[cocky jeremy]

Gross. lol.

 

[truthsteve]

if apple releases this, people will complain about not having it on iPAd

then apple renames it to iPad without any changes and people will go crazy happy.

 

[CPx]

So a large folding tablet that runs MacOS? Interesting.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I'm sure a touchscreen keyboard could be made to work just as well as the current physical ones (if not better).

There definitely needs to be some tactile feedback... IDK that it has to feel mistakable for a real physical keyboard, but it definitely needs to convey how close you are to the edge of the key and which direction the center is in. And somehow it needs to be possible to identify two specific keys on home row (f and j for qwerty keyboards, IDK which keys are signified with bumps on other keyboard layouts.)

If they can pull it off, it'd be a huge breakthrough for all touch controls everywhere, not just the Mac. Maybe we'd finally get a decent replacement for joysticks on touchscreens, a decade after people stopped asking for it.

Edit: Honestly, maybe these are thoughts of just our generation. Younger and older generations never knew the joys of touch typing.

 

[lenningj]

Guaranteed to be extremely expensive and my guess less sales than the Vision Pro when released to stage 2/3 countries.

 

[entropi]

no way we're getting MacOS on this... (I'm not interested either way, foldable units is just asking for trouble...)

 

[Bobajobbob]

Why? What does this achieve?

 

[transpo1]

Just as suspected. They'll make a hybrid device that includes iOS/macOS. A very expensive device.

 

[jon9091]

Keyboard removed for the sake of thinness.

 

[RoadWarrior56]

I suspect most users would use an external Bluetooth keyboard, and use the computer as a single large screen, or 2 side-by-side smaller screens

 

[icymountain]

The touch bar was not quite a great success (to put things very mildly).

How about making the whole keyboard that way ?

 

[dannyyankou]

I still have a Touch Bar MBP and I'm trying to move away from touch based keyboard controls, but more power for those who are interested by this.

 

[jb310]

Typing on on-screen keyboards for extended periods of time is, uh... not a very comfortable experience, so I kind of doubt this.

 

[MacFan782040]

Big screen: yes.
Virtual keyboard: god please no.

Probably one of those who said that about the iPhone when it launched.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Will make you miss even the butterfly keyboard 😆

 

[incidentallycheckout]

Typing on on-screen keyboards for extended periods of time is, uh... not a very comfortable experience, so I kind of doubt this.

A Magic Keyboard accessory that snaps on like the Lenovo version of this is likely, for like 300-400 extra. Lenovo includes theirs.

 

[Digitalguy]

What is this?
A Macbook with touch? Doubt it..
A Macbook with pencil but no touch (à la Sidecar)? Possible...
A big foldable iPad? Strange...

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

I’m sure people will find a way to complain about this as well

A Mac with only a virtual keyboard is certainly something to complain about.

 

[incidentallycheckout]

A Mac with only a virtual keyboard is certainly something to complain about.

There is a 99.9% chance there would be an accessory physical keyboard that snaps onto the chassis on top of the bottom screen or below it. See Lenovo's similar product for examples.

 

[scrapesleon]

It will have the biggest touchbar ever

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Interesting...

I trust that Apple can find a way. Much in the same way that we all laughed when iPhone first came out with virtual keyboard. All the Blackberry owners said it would never work, and yet here we are in a world where almost no phones have a physical keyboard.

And... of course it will be expensive!

Phones don't have physical keyboards because pecking away at tiny keys is a worse experience than a virtual keyboard that has predictive software and autocorrect.

And in the 2 decades that we've had that, we've also determined that virtual keyboard will never be better than a full sized physical keyboard.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

There is a 99.9% chance there would be an accessory physical keyboard that snaps onto the chassis on top of the bottom screen or below it. See Lenovo's similar product for examples.

More like there is a 99% chance that this rumor and the underlying product are completely misunderstood.

 

[t0rqx]

Again forgetting what Pro users need.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

I was doing some quick maths in my head on the drive home just now - I reckon 18.8 inches is pretty much exactly what you'd expect if you take the current 13" iPad Pro dimensions and make it foldable (i.e. putting 2 iPad Pro's side by side) - you go from a 13 inch 4:3 screen when folded up, to an 18.8 inch 3:2 screen when unfolded. I really hope this runs the iPadOS UI when folded (with touch) and then switches to the MacOS UI unfolded. Would be amazing...

Careful don't unfold your device or it becomes a completely different machine running a completely different OS. Yeah, sounds really likely.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Again forgetting what Pro users need.

Pro users? Apple makes plenty of stuff for Pro users. But if Apple is going to do more than scrape by on bread crumbs, they need to make expensive products that appeal to more than just Pro users. Pro users are not going to keep the lights on at Apple, not these days.