Despite years of resistance, Apple is now working to add touchscreens to MacBook Pros, according to a report released today by famed Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman.
According to unnamed sources, Gurman reported that Apple engineers are working on the introduction of a touchscreen in the MacBook Pro line for the first time. No launch has been set in stone and plans can always change, but everything suggests that the first models equipped with touch screens will arrive in 2025.
The purported touchscreen MacBook Pro would “probably” still run macOS and include a standard trackpad and keyboard. However, like laptops and 2-in-1s on Windows, it would incorporate shortcuts in the form of taps and gestures.
The first tactile MacBook Pro will also be OLED
According to Gurman, these touchscreens will also be the first OLED on MacBooks. Currently, Apple equips its MacBook Pro with LCD screens, but the company is gradually moving to OLED technology. iPhones and Apple Watches already come with OLED displays, and the first iPad Pro with an OLED display is expected to launch in 2024.
The arrival of touch screens on MacBooks would be against Apple’s fundamental principles, since the company said touchscreens were better suited to tabletslike the iPad, and Steve Jobs once called touchscreen laptops a ” terrible ergonomics “. Indeed, the former CEO of Apple thought that ” touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical” due to arm fatigue associated with reaching a finger towards the screen.
In 2021, Apple’s head of hardware engineering John Ternus said the Mac was ” fully optimized for indirect input and that the company saw no valid reason to change that at the time. Adding touch should therefore represent a considerable amount of work for Apple’s engineers, because macOS will need to be revamped and redesigned to accommodate handheld use. Apple already allows developers to put iPhone and iPad applications on Mac, which should already allow them to prepare for this transition to touch screens.
The report also indicates that Apple may extend touch input to other Mac models over time, butit does not currently plan to combine macOS and iPadOS.
