According to Bloomberg, Apple is actively working on a project to equip MacBooks with touchscreens, potentially moving away from its long-standing approach of developing traditional non-touchscreen devices.
Apple may release a MacBook with a touchscreen by 2025 as part of a new MacBook Pro lineup, Bloomberg reports. This update could also result in the company switching from LCD displays to OLED screens for the 14-inch and 16-inch Pro models.
Apple executives have long held the belief that MacBooks don’t need touchscreens, and the company has maintained that the iPad is the best “touchscreen computer.” However, Apple may need to gradually move away from this position if they plan to release MacBooks with touchscreens. Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors, including Microsoft, have already created a range of touchscreen laptops in various form factors.
Steve Jobs famously called laptop touchscreens “ergonomically terrible” back in 2010.
“We did a lot of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces are not meant to be used vertically. It’s great for demos, but after a short period, your arm starts to get tired, and after long-term use, your arm falls off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically awful,” he said. However, technology has evolved since then, and Apple has introduced products like the Apple Pencil, another device Jobs was not fond of.
Recently, Apple’s senior vice president, Craig Federighi, also called touchscreen PCs an “experiment” and stated that he “doesn’t like touchscreens.”
iOS apps on a MacBook could work better if Apple implements the touchscreen idea, but the company has made iPads powerful enough by incorporating desktop processors, adding decent external keyboards, and integrating desktop features into iPadOS. Thus, to sell both iPads and MacBooks with touchscreens, Apple will need to maintain enough differentiation between the two product lines.