Apple reportedly working on MacBooks with touchscreens • TechCrunch

After years of denial and loathing, Apple may finally be able to bring touchscreens to MacBooks. According to Bloomberg, Apple is actively working on this project and could break away from its longstanding approach of designing a traditional desktop system without a touchscreen.

Apple could launch MacBooks with touchscreens by 2025 as part of a new MacBook Pro line, the Bloomberg report adds. This lineup revamp could also see the company switch from LCDs to OLED displays for the 14-inch and 16-inch Pro models.

Earlier this week, another report from Bloomberg indicated that Apple was aiming to manufacture its own displays for the Apple Watch and iPhone. However, there was no mention of the company building displays for its Mac line.

Apple executives have long maintained the position that MacBooks don’t need to have a touchscreen. Instead, for years they’ve been urging people to try an iPad if they want a large computing device with a touchscreen. Apple has come the closest to adding a touchscreen to a Mac by adding the TouchBar on the keyboard – which is being phased out – on MacBook Pros.

Apple has long argued that the iPad is the best touchscreen “computer.” The company may have to slowly move away from that narrative if it plans to launch MacBooks with a touchscreen. Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors, including Microsoft, have built a long line of touchscreen laptops with different form factors.

Steve Jobs called touchscreens on laptops “ergonomically terrible” in 2010.

“We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives a great demonstration, but after a short time you start to tire, and after a long time your arm wants to drop. It does not work; it’s terrible from an ergonomic point of view,” he said. But technology has evolved since then, and Apple has also introduced things like the Apple Pencil, another product idea that Jobs hated.

More recently, Apple’s senior vice president Craig Federighi also called touchscreen PCs “experiments” and said he “doesn’t like touchscreens.”

On the plus side, iOS apps on MacBook might work better if Apple decides to go ahead with this plan. The company first introduced Project Catalyst in 2020 to bring iOS apps to desktop systems.

The iPhone maker is walking a convoluted line. For one thing, it’s made its iPads more powerful in recent years, giving them desktop-class processors, decent add-on keyboards, and adding a number of desktop features to iPadOS. So to sell both iPads and MacBooks with touchscreens, Apple will need to maintain sufficient differentiation between the two lines.