Next Wednesday, Apple is holding its "Pro and Tell" event. If the rumours are right, we're about to get something many of us never thought we'd see: a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen. It's reportedly an OLED model with a Dynamic Island where the notch used to be, and it would be the first Mac you can actually touch.
For a long time, that seemed impossible. Back in 2010, at the "Back to the Mac" event, Steve Jobs dismissed the idea in a way that has been quoted ever since:
"We've done tons of user tests on this, and 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."
For years, that was more or less Apple's position. The iPad was for touch and the Mac was for the keyboard and trackpad, and the two weren't supposed to meet. So what changed?
The evidence is already in macOS 27
This is probably the worst-kept secret Apple has had in a long time (up there with the Home View). Apart from the fact that it has been rumoured for months, the changes in recent versions of macOS make it pretty clear that Apple has a touchscreen in mind.
Sidecar got full touch support. Until now, using an iPad as a second display for your Mac meant the Apple Pencil and a few basic gestures. In macOS 27, you can use your fingers.
Pull to refresh arrived on the Mac. It's a small thing, but it's a touch gesture, and seems a bit redundant trackpad-only computer, although I use it all the time now, so maybe not!
The 27.2 betas have even more. Code in Photos, Notes, Safari and Quick Look references touch gesture recognisers, and the Dock now has a new long-press animation for icons.
The interface has been moving this way for a while. Liquid Glass, with its bigger, rounder, more spaced-out controls, makes a lot more sense once you picture a finger instead of a cursor. I wrote about Liquid Glass from a designer's perspective last year, and in hindsight, a lot of it looks like groundwork.
Apple doesn't usually rebuild parts of its operating system for no reason (I’ll resist the obvious Liquid Glass joke here). In a way, the evidence was hiding in plain sight. That, and the rumours, were pretty explicit.
What about the Apple Pencil?
This is the part I'm most curious about as a photographer and a designer. If Apple is putting a touchscreen on a MacBook Pro, Apple Pencil support doesn't seem like a huge leap. Sidecar already supports the Pencil, so the groundwork is there. There’s been no mention of this in the rumours, and it probably wouldn’t work too well, but it is possibly something that could happen.
For photo editing, it could be useful. Precise masking, retouching, dodging and burning: there are plenty of tasks where a pen would be better than a mouse or trackpad. Being able to reach up and paint in a mask in Lightroom or Photoshop without reaching for a separate tablet has some appeal.
That said, a laptop is definitely not the best form factor for this kind of thing. Drawing on a vertical screen has the same problem Jobs described. You can't rest your hand properly, and the screen wobbles every time you touch it, even with the best Apple-designed hinge. The iPad works for drawing because you can lay it flat or hold it like a piece of paper. Unless Apple has done something radical in mind (or a kickstand), I suspect Pencil support on a MacBook would be highly unlikely. But you never know. I’m just thinking out loud here! Of course, there’s always the possibility they allow it to flip over into a tablet mode, but that seems even more unlikely.
Was Jobs wrong, or has the world changed?
Steve Jobs wasn't wrong about the ergonomics. Holding your arm up to a laptop screen for long periods is still tiring, and I don't think anyone wants to do all their work by poking the display. Not to mention the inevitable fingerprint problem. Of course, that’s always a way to sell more of the infamous Apple polishing cloths. However, things have changed since Steve made those comments, and most people now spend so much time on phones and tablets that touching a screen is instinctive. I've caught myself doing it a few times after switching from my iPad on a project.
Having said that, I’ve been watching the commentary around this on social media, and according to many users who use touchscreen PCs, they hardly ever use the touch function. But then social media isn’t a reliable barometer of user experience, so who knows.
We'll find out next week how Apple has actually approached it. I'll have more thoughts once it's been announced.
The Tandem OLED upgrade may be far more interesting than a touch screen
The thing I’d be far more interested in is the potential of an OLED screen. This in itself could be a big upgrade over the already excellent screens on the MacBook Pro. Given the iPad Pro uses a Tandem OLED, I’d expect Apple to use the same tandem OLED technology. That stacks two OLED layers on top of each other, which roughly doubles the brightness. On the iPad Pro, Apple quotes 1,000 nits full-screen and 1,600 nits peak for HDR. For photographers, the big win isn’t really brightness, since the current mini-LED MacBook Pro already hits similar figures. It’s that every pixel produces its own light. That means true blacks and no “blooming” halos around bright objects on dark backgrounds, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes judging HDR edits difficult right now.
It’s worth remembering that OLED has a long history in the professional video world. Sony’s BVM-X300 OLED reference monitor was for years the standard for grading and mastering HDR content. I have seen one of these in action, and they’re amazing. Incredibly expensive, but amazing. I also have a friend who works as a professional colourist on feature films, and they recommend the iPad Pro with its OLED screen to clients for watching back edits, as it’s the most accurate screen compared to their studio monitors for the price. Having one of these in a MacBook would be amazing. This is probably more of a thing for video and film work, mind you, than photography, but still! It will be expensive, mind you.
Over to you
I've never used a touchscreen laptop for any length of time, so I'm curious: if you've used a touchscreen Windows PC or a 2-in-1, how did you find it? Did you actually use the touchscreen, or did you forget it was there after a while? What do you want to see in a high end MacBook Pro? Let me know in the comments.