Ming-Ching Kuo today suggested that we can expect a touchscreen MacBook Pro to go into production in late 2026. This is the latest in a years-long string of rumors that Apple is working on such a device.
The company has been testing prototypes since at least 2008, but has consistently dismissed the idea of launching one. However, I do tend to believe the latest report …
Apple’s rejection of touchscreen Macs
Apple has consistently rejected the idea of a touchscreen Mac over a great many years.
Steve Jobs in 2010:
It turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal.
Tim Cook in 2012:
[Asked about the Microsoft Surface converging tablet and PC] You can converge a toaster and refrigerator, but these things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.
Jony Ive in 2016:
Asked why a touchscreen Mac would be inappropriate, Ive said: “For a bunch of practical reasons. It’s difficult to talk [laughs] without going into a lot of details that puts me starting to talk about things that we are working on. I don’t really want to talk much more about it.”
Phil Schiller also in 2016.
Apple came to this conclusion by testing if touch screens made sense on the Mac. “Our instincts were that it didn’t, but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years,” says Schiller. “We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”
Craig Federighi in 2020:
I gotta tell you when we released Big Sur, and these articles started coming out saying, ‘Oh my God, look, Apple is preparing for touch’. I was thinking like, ‘Whoa, why?’ We had designed and evolved the look for macOS in a way that felt most comfortable and natural to us, not remotely considering something about touch.
But things have changed since then
The first thing to note is that both Jony Ive and Phil Schiller were speaking in the context of trying to sell us on the company’s latest MacBook feature, the Touch Bar. They were trying to argue that a touchscreen doesn’t work, but that innovative new addition to the MacBook did. We all know how that worked out …
I’d also suggest that the market has moved on. Touchscreen PC laptops are now commonplace, and younger users have grown up with these as a perfectly normal part of the tech landscape – including Chromebooks in schools. Switching seamlessly back and forth between a trackpad and a touchscreen is a very routine activity for both PC users and iPad users with a Magic Keyboard.
But the biggest clue by far to changed thinking is the extent to which iPadOS 26 absolutely does converge iPad functionality with that of the MacBook in a way the company has previously suggested would never happen. This, more than anything, tells us that the company’s thinking on this issue has changed very substantially.
iPadOS 26 killed the anti-convergence argument. If that argument no longer makes sense for the iPad then it also no longer makes sense for the Mac.
To be clear, I’m not eagerly awaiting a touchscreen MacBook myself. Back in the days when I commonly used an iPad with a Magic Keyboard, the only time I would use the touchscreen in that configuration was for an occasional bit of scrolling. That’s not a strong enough argument for me to be waiting for one personally.
But so long as Apple can do it without significantly increasing the cost, I can’t see any reason not to give a touchscreen to those Mac users who would like one – and one year after the launch of iPadOS 26 seems like credible timing to me.
That’s my take; what’s yours? Please share your thoughts in the comments.