Apple is taking its time releasing its first device with a foldable screen. They’re all over the Android phone market, and they’re good products, as long as you don’t mind the crease that appears in the middle of the screen where the screen folds. We’ve heard reports and patents about possible foldables from Apple, but they’re not as big as the one from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who reported a few months ago that Apple was developing an all-screen foldable MacBook.
On Wednesday, Kuo posted an update on X, saying that “mass production of the foldable MacBook has been significantly delayed.” Apparently, “technical challenges” have caused Apple to push the project back a year or two from its original 2026 timeline. Apple has also opted for an 18.8-inch design, ditching the larger 20.25-inch device.
Kuo also said that Apple considered making a foldable iPad, but that it had backed off because there is “no visibility” for such a device — meaning there is no demand for it. Kuo believes that a foldable MacBook would make a foldable iPad redundant.
The concept of a foldable MacBook is intriguing. Such a device wouldn’t have a hardware keyboard, but would instead rely on a software keyboard that appears on the screen (think of an iPhone’s super-sized software keyboard), and it would in turn require a touch-based user interface to compensate for the lack of a trackpad. Essentially, it would be a large foldable iPad, but running macOS.
Kuo relies on supply chain data to form his conclusions; he doesn’t have information about Apple’s software development. So one idea that can be gleaned from Kuo’s reports on the foldable MacBook is that Apple is working on a version of macOS with touch-enabled user interface elements.
The idea of a macOS with a touch-based user interface has been floated for a while, and Apple even obtained a patent earlier this year for a tablet-like device that runs an operating system that looks a lot like macOS. But Apple has never acknowledged that it’s working on such a project. If you put two and two together, it seems that it is.
What we do know (or at least we’re pretty sure we know) is that Apple is planning to release M4-based MacBook Pros that won’t have a full display but will still be foldable this fall. Learn more about Apple’s M4 Mac release cycle and check out the latest M4 MacBook Pro rumors.
