Touchscreen Macs in 2025 - is it True?

Apple Is Working on Adding Touch Screens to Macs in Major Turnabout

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-11/apple-working-on-adding-touch-screens-to-macs-in-major-turnabout?sref=9hGJlFio&utm_source=sg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-9546&leadSource=uverify%20wall

Quite possible that Apple hasnā€™t even made a final decision about 2025 products yet.

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No one knows for sure what Apple is going to release until Apple releases it. Everything is a guess. Some outlets have a better track record than others, and German has one of the best, but all he can say is that they might. Apple may still scrap the entire idea right before releasing.

Apple researches and builds prototypes of all kinds of ideas. Very, very few of them see the light of day.

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Ergonomic nightmare. Touchscreen large displays are ideal for low contact Kiosk but for general computing theyā€™ve made little sense for the masses. Fatigue comes from having to raise the arm, engaging the deltoid muscles.

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Yes! I read this forum comfortably leaning back in my chair with a finger or two extended forward to the touch pad of my M1 MacBook Air.

It is another level of effort to sit up and place my hands onto the keyboard to reply.

It would be yet another level of effort to lean forward or reach out to touch my screen and try to make valid multi-finger and two handed gestures. (Which is something I found I did NOT enjoy when I tried it with an iPad propped in front of a keyboard!)

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Itā€™s easy enough for true believers to test out with an iPad and one of the many available keyboard accessories.

I donā€™t know about the rest of you, but I would love an iMac like this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-studio-2-plus/8vlfqc3597k4?activetab=pivot%3Aoverviewtab

Iā€™m not sure touchscreen MacBooks make sense, but an iMac that I could set at an angle and use as huge surface to draw on? Yes please.

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I would be very surprised if there were not touchscreen Macs somewhere in the depths of Appleā€™s development labs. Likewise for Macs running iOS, and iPads running macOS, and ā€¦ you get the idea.

As noted above, will any of these items make it out of the labs? I doubt even the folks at Apple know that just yet.

While I find the headlines interesting as to what may happen some day, I rarely click into any such pieces. The details are surely off the mark, and not worth my time. And if the headline starts with, ā€œWhat we know about Xā€, I start to avoid that publication, as they donā€™t respect me as a reader.

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Saw that today as well and its interesting at the very least. I find it funny that people who only got into ā€˜computersā€™ with iOS try to touch my MacBook screen to do things :joy:

My theory is that the first wave of touchscreen laptops were just a novelty on a traditional laptop. The next wave, foldable laptops, is actually useful, and an area where Apple can make something that looks and feels great, so theyā€™re going to participate.

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You can still use a mouse, trackpad, and physical keyboard on a touch screen computer. No one is forcing you use the touch screen exclusively. Having a touch screen Mac would be a nice option and Iā€™m sure Apple would do something Appley with it to make it an even better experience. I donā€™t understand all the negativity around having more options coughthirdpartyiosappstorecough.

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One thing holding back a touch screen on the Mac is that you would have to redesign the UI on the Mac to make good use of touch. Touch targets meant for a finger are quite different than those meant for a mouse, trackpad, and pointer.

The Mac is quite mature in its use of menus and also tooltips that appear when you hover the pointer over something. The user interface is much less discoverable on touch-enabled mobile devices. The ability to safely try something and then undo that action is much stronger on a Mac than on touch-enabled devices. I fear what we will lose if iOS overwhelms the Mac.

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I had a 27ā€™ā€™ TouchScreen Windows PC standing in the Kitchen during my DarkAges, and it just did not work out well.
The Idea was, to not need an keyboard there, and we ended up adding a keyboard, and moving the PC to an other place, to work with it, because there was a large lack in precision for the ā€œTouchā€, and also a lack of reaction.
I used an industry standard touchscreen with an prototype we operated a couple of month for a Central heating, and it was the same bad experience there.
I canā€™t imagine leaning across the desktop, to ouch something on my large screens right now in front of my iMac. Beside the finger print problematic, it is just uncomfortable, and with the iPad attached, unnecessary.

This :point_up:
So annoying that your finger is always in the way of what youā€™re trying to manipulate.
Then if you twitch when you remove your finger, you start over.

Hereā€™s Gurmanā€™s article for those who are interested.

Big Mac Pro cancelled, M2 Ultra Mac Pro may happen (but memory isnā€™t expandable, and no CUDA support, etc. so Intel / Nvidia will still reign supreme, like this $80,000 Supermicro workstation, or Nvidiaā€™s $100,000 workstation. ).
iMac Pro might happen.
etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-01-08/when-will-apple-launch-the-reality-pro-mixed-reality-headset-apple-2023-devices-lcnfzkc7

In my mind the idea wouldnā€™t be that weā€™d need to redesign the mac UI for touch, itā€™s that certain applications could take advantage of having a touch screen. In reference to the imaginary touch screen iMac, Iā€™d love to be able to run OmniGraffle on it to draw out my network and software diagrams with an Apple Pencil, then easily move back to the keyboard for writing documentation. Or whiteboarding with Freeform.

ā€œSo Apple wisely waited to see if the craze would stickā€

There, I fixed it for you :wink:

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Iā€™m regularly amazed how small the targets are that can be accurately touched on an iPad. Things less than 1/4th the width of my finger, easily tapped

Yeah, tapping isnā€™t so hard, itā€™s dragging around adjustment frames, etc. that is annoying.

I worked for a company that made ā€œbrain trainingā€ games for people with TBI, dementia, early onset Alzheimers. The units we deployed were custom made Ubuntu boxes with touch screens. The prototypes were modified iMacs with touch screens.

Touch screens work well for software designed for them, especially certain kinds of games.

Touch screens also work well, in large screen versions, for users with Macular degeneration and other kins of visual acuity impairment, because users donā€™t have to play Find The Cursor. For low acuity vision, even large custom cursors can be frustrating.

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I think Apple could do this well. Windows finally got it right with Windows 11 and so I can Apple. We shouldnā€™t be afraid of change.