Apple Working on a Touch Screen Mac, Release as Fast as 2025?
Apple Fanboy’s desire to get a Mac with a touch screen seems to be coming true. According to recent reports, the Cupertino-based company is currently working on touchscreen Mac technology, and we could see its first devices in the next few years.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple engineers were “actively involved” in the development of the touchscreen Mac, and that one of the first touchscreen Macs will likely be the OLED version of the MacBook Pro.
The first touchscreen Macs are expected to stick with the traditional laptop design, complete with a trackpad and keyboard. The difference is that the machine will display a screen that supports touch input like the iPhone or iPad.
Still according to Gurman, as reported by Macrumors on Saturday (11/3/2023), the first touchscreen Mac will likely use the operating system that has been running on Macs, namely macOS.
Apple is unlikely to want to merge iPadOS and macOS at this time, although the line between the operating systems and the launch of Apple silicon Macs has been blurred.
iPhone and iPad apps can already run on Macs with Apple silicon chips, unless developers opt out of cross-platform functionality.
Speaking of touch screen Macs, Apple executives have actually repeatedly said that Apple has no plans to release a touch screen Mac. In 2021, for example, Apple’s head of hardware engineering John Ternus said the best touch computer would be the iPad, with Macs “fully optimized for indirect input” rather than touch.
“We haven’t really felt a reason to change it,” he said at the time.
Head of software engineering Craig Federighi disclosed a similar reason. In 2020, he said that Apple believes that the ergonomics of the Mac require placing the hand on a surface, claiming that “getting your arm up to poke the screen” is “tiring”.
Currently, almost all PC manufacturers make some sort of touch-based tablet/laptop hybrid device, and not a few of them are positioned as all-in-one or convertible machines.
Big names like HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Microsoft, Google, and Samsung all have touch-screen notebook options. Well, will Apple enter into the competition?
Even if this does happen, the first touchscreen Mac will probably be out as early as 2025.
