In a report that could put Steve Jobs in his grave, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote on Wednesday that Apple is working on a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, an input method the company has long considered less than ideal.
According to unnamed sources, the first Mac to have a touchscreen could appear in 2025 as part of a larger MacBook Pro update. The laptop would still have a keyboard and trackpad, but the touchscreen would “support touch input and gestures, just like an iPhone or iPad.” Additionally, the touchscreens would use OLED technology, an upgrade from current LCDs.
A previous report from claimed that Apple’s first MacBooks with OLED screens could arrive as soon as next year.
Gurman’s report says macOS is “likely” to be used on these early touchscreen Macs and the company isn’t working on combining macOS and iPadOS. Gurman, however, doesn’t say whether macOS would be updated with more user-friendly UI elements. Gurman says the current ability to use iPhone apps on a Mac is “a frustrating experience” due to the lack of touch input, which gives the impression that the future touchscreen implementation may be aimed at be used with running iPhone and iPad applications. on Mac.
With the M1 System on a Chip and macOS Big Sur, Apple introduced the ability to run iOS/iPadOS apps on Mac, although the experience is more of a convenience than an everyday feature. Most people still use Mac apps for work, which are designed to work with a cursor and use familiar mouse and trackpad compatible elements.
PC makers have had touchscreen laptops for years, and releasing a touchscreen MacBook would be a significant philosophical shift for the company. The late Steve Jobs expressed his dislike of touch screens, and he once said that “your arm wants to fall off” after using one. Tim Cook carried that torch early in his tenure as CEO, saying on a 2012 earnings call: “You can make a toaster and a fridge converge, but those won’t please the user” , when asked if Apple had plans for a touchscreen laptop.
Times are changing, however, and Gurman points out that Apple’s Craig Federighi said, “Who says? when asked about a touchscreen Mac during a recent interview with Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal. (Although it should be pointed out that Federighi makes a schtick response to Stern’s quick questions in this part of the interview.)
