The touchscreen Mac Apple probably won’t make, and the one it will

I last year described the touchscreen Mac as “the idea that will not die.” No matter how many times Apple says it won’t make one, we see continued suggestions that it will, or should.

To be clear, Apple absolutely has made prototypes of touchscreen Macs. The first of these dates back to at least 2008, and probably earlier …

Apple’s testing of touchscreen Macs

We know this because Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said so in 2010, stating that the company had tested it “years ago” – and the minimum time period for years plural would be two. Steve said it was these tests that led the company to reject the idea.

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.

Jony Ive said the same thing back in 2016. Phil Schiller did too.

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.”

I can’t recall CEO Tim Cook specifically ruling it out, but he has on many occasions said the company won’t converge iPad and Mac.

My own touchscreen Mac tests

I actually got to test a touchscreen Mac a couple of times. Sadly these weren’t Apple prototypes, but rather third-party add-ons for Macs. These took the form of a monitor surround with infrared LEDs to detect the position and movement of a finger, and a utility to have the Mac see that as a mouse movement.

My first test was on a desktop Macintosh back in the 1980s, the second much later on a MacBook Air. The result was the same in both cases: Steve was absolutely right – my arm did indeed want to drop off.

The touchscreen Mac Apple (probably) won’t make

Despite the company’s statements, I don’t entirely rule out the idea of Apple making a touchscreen Mac along the lines of the many touchscreen PC laptops that currently exist.

As my colleague Ryan Christoffel noted yesterday, “history has proven Apple can deny something vehemently only to be secretly working on it behind the scenes.” Perhaps at some point the company will conclude that it’s leaving money on the table if it doesn’t do so.

I’ve said previously that I’m not absolutely opposed to this, but I did add two big provisos.

I’m not against touchscreen Macs as optional models. Anyone who wants one can pay the premium to buy one. But I am very much against adding touchscreen functionality by default. I don’t want to be forced to pay a premium for something I’d hardly ever use.

Even more importantly, I don’t want to see the kind of compromises that would be needed to make a Mac fully controllable by a touchscreen. Touch targets would have to be huge, the way they are on an iPad. All the finesse of macOS would be lost, and the impact on both aesthetics and usability would be horrendous. So sure, if people want to do some things on a Mac touchscreen, let ’em. But don’t, whatever you do, Apple, turn macOS into iPadOS.

The touchscreen Apple will (one day) make

As much as the company has denied plans for a conventional touchscreen laptop, there are plenty of indications that it has a very long-term goal to eliminate a physical keyboard, replacing it with a second touchscreen.

That’s a sentence likely to strike fear into the hearts of MacBook users. Present-day glass keyboards have three huge problems:

They hurt your fingers
Virtual keys give no feedback when you press them
You can’t touch-type because your fingers can’t locate virtual keys

But as we’ve noted before, Apple patents have described potential solutions for each of those problems:

A flexible, deformable keyboard that is comfortable for typing
Haptic feedback to simulate the movement of a real key
An electrostatic charge to enable us to feel the edges of virtual keys

That isn’t going to happen this year, next year, or anytime soon. My guess is we’re at least five years away from making this is a practical reality, and if I had to put money on it, I’d say more like ten years for creating something I’d consider an acceptable replacement for physical keys.

But I do think it will happen eventually, because the arguments in favor of it are too strong. They are, in fact, the very same arguments Steve made for a glass keyboard during the iPhone launch. You don’t always want a keyboard at all (picture opening out a clamshell MacBook into a single flat screen for viewing movies, for example), and you don’t always want the same keyboard (think things like keyboard overlays for Final Cut Pro).

As for this year, my money is on no hints at WWDC 2025. What about you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.