I have a touchy screen running Linux. I only ever accidentally use it.

I carry both a macbook and an iPad. I use my ipad for one purpose and one purpose only: note taking. If my macbook could do that I would neither spend a few hundred dollars extra for an ipad, nor would I carry the extra weight around.

Usually apple is good at implementing good designs. Hopefully this will make my dream come true.

The first touchscreen laptop I owned was in 1995. Mac is a bit late to the party.

Good. I love my MacBook, but I wish the screen had more smudges all over it.

So... overpriced 10-year-old hardware "new" concept I'm assuming every fanboi will swoon over?

Isn't that the definition of apple?

As someone who owned the Surface Pro 1,2,3, Book, Book Performance Base, Book 2 and now has an Intel MacBook...I would love it if Apple did this.

Microsoft is utterly clueless with the Surface line. The Surfaces are all under-spec'd and over-priced and they've never bothered to advance their pen tech.

I bought an iPad Pro and the pencil is just great. It just works.

Give me a MacBook where I can rotate the screen like a Lenovo Yoga and turn it flat and use a pen and I'll pay whatever for it.

Not if you talk to an Apple fan

Someone will port that old school Microsoft Surface app that would let you touch the pond with fish in it. And they will all freak out

Bout. Damn. Time.

something something Android years ago.

I would buy an iMac with Apple Pencil support in a heartbeat ngl. If the prices were the same it would be a steal compared to other offerings

Just imagine the commercials

Touting it as the most advanced laptop ever when the Surface has been out for 5 years

Personally Id say one of the only things surface has done effectively is advance their pen tech, have you seen what they've done with the new all-in-one surface studio 2+? Overpriced by 3-4x but undeniably a pretty cool and decently high quality design device.

Apple, always one step behind.

Yeah that studio is awesome. If they'd released it five years ago.

It should be a monitor.

Oh yeah all the features that make it special are 100% in the screen, like I said it's crazy overpriced and not worth it, but I just think it has a couple neat things about it. I had heard that something with the screen had increased that they could do with the tilt angle of their styluses which I was interested to hear more about, that was the day they were announced though so I may be misremembering.

Amazing! The future is now! I just can't believe I'll be alive to see the day that apple invents an interactive screen. Maybe next they can invent the toaster

I remember when I was a student there was this company that took MacBook hardware and put it in a custom casing along with Wacom tech to make an ipad before it was ever a thing, crazy to think that it took 15+ years for it to become a legit product.

It's incredible and I know tons of people that would buy them if they were a monitor and not a $5k PC that will age.

I still use 30" monitors from 2008 that are not 4k but better than 1080p. A monitor should last a decade.

Gemini? They used to do that with iBooks and MacBooks later on.

I was thinking about the Modbook from Axiotron, I was able to find the name using your comment. The clamshell Gemini one seems to be even older, crazy design.

I had a touchscreen Windows 8 laptop for 8 years and almost never used the touchscreen. Waste of time.

My MacBook Pro spends a good 80% of the time plugged into an external monitor, with the lid closed. I assume this is a pretty common usage for them, compared to the smaller or lighter ones.

When the Touch Bar was released people pointed out how it would be a disjointed experience lifting your fingers from the keyboard to press it. A touch screen would be just as bad, in my opinion.

What do power users need with a touchscreen, especially now we’ve just recently got physical function keys back?

So, they found out about them then?

To be fair, it's always been possible to touch the screen...

Can't wait till apple makes this tech breakthrough for the whole world. Touch screens are such amazing science fiction. Please, apple, save me from this typewriter that I am writing this comment with.

So… basically the iPad Pro w/ keyboard that’s been out the past 5 years?? Lol

Psst… you can buy a touchscreen laptop and not use the touchscreen. Mind blowing, right?

(And before someone goes “why include a touchscreen then?”, it’s because consumers now have MORE options to interact with their laptop. You can choose to not use it, or you can use it if you think it helps.)

Edit: the sentiments in this thread reminds me of Steve “Who wants a touchscreen phone without a keyboard” Ballmer. Just because prior attempts were lacklustre doesn’t mean Apple can’t pull off a well-executed version, nor does it mean that touchscreen laptops are useless. The sales of iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard proves that touchscreen laptops are useful, as long as the software is designed for touch interaction

Main thing I could think of would be for art. I’d certainly consider one but after having a M1 MacBook and getting nothing but frustration from it (drivers don’t work for my admittedly older Wacom, or my mouse, and good luck running anything 32 bit and bye bye bootcamp and VMs I think I’ll pass. I will say I enjoy the touch features on my Steam Deck running Win 11 pro, but that’s mainly because the trackpads are so terrible to use without looking like someone with Parkinson’s. Bizarrely my Wacom and my mouse and Keyboard work fine on Steam Deck with a USB C dongle?

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11+ years

And all these reviews mentioning how a new random touchscreen / 2-in-1 laptop is a mac clone.

Lol, a good one. They'd be like - 'you could touch the screen for years but this year's Macbook Pro reacts to your touch! *Cue some intense graphical animation as if they cured cancer*

Bro I worked at HP (3rd party vendor) in 2011-2012 and the surface 1-2 was out

A truly revolutionary breakthrough

You could get a Z Fold 4 then.

If they clone a Surface Studio I'll totally switch back. Or a convertible similar or better than Surface Book / Studio or just an x360 2-in-1... or a bigger iPad like device with MacOS and that magic keyboard but with function keys row and bigger touchpad...

Their laptops would be far more capable than an ipad

Cool 🤷‍♂️?

Macbook Pro: "Touch me, master. You know you want to."

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That has to do with Wacom actually but they do work as for my Photoshop tutorials (PiXimperfect) but you’re right, mostly for Art.

What are you using, Asahi Linux? Pop!_OS? Manjaro?

Can’t wait to not be able to use the Apple Pencil 2 on the touchscreen mac

Yeah I know, but there seems to be no point for them and other hardware manufacturers to make new drivers. My M1 just sits there most of the time now.

Manjaro+KDE

Personally - would never use it. My parents would use it a lot however. They were confused that they couldnt do it when using my macbook a few months ago (finger marks tho).

Need recommendations for a Live OS that is not TailOS.

You just explained why apple hasn’t made a touchscreen Mac yet, if you could use the Mac for iPad reasons or visa versa there’s no reason to buy both

The first touchscreen laptop was HP-150 released in 1983. Do with that information what you will.

Thought they were, that’s sad.

I have never seen an apple fan who denied that apple is usally late to adopt stuff. In fact, their usual argument is “Apple lets everyone else beta test it and then release a superior product.

Windows fans, on the other hand, are usually like “hey apple the technology you are implementing was already implemented by this *points to random piece of crap from 1995! So suck on that”

I think it’s to dual boot into macos and iPadOS. This way you can have best of both worlds in one device.

Unfortunately I can’t go back to android. I promised myself it would be the last time I make that mistake the last time I decided to give android a chance.

I trust folding phones even less because their durability in the long term is still questionable.

That is 100% true. In fact that is why this headline came as a surprise to many.

Why are you wasting the second screen? Once you use a double (or triple) screen setup you’ll never go back. It is a huge productivity boost.

And yet not a single Windows manufacturer has perfected a trackpad. You need touchscreen when your trackpad /mouse sucks. But touch screen means moving your hands away from the keyboard. I use both Macs and a Surface Book and much prefer the Mac.

My main screen is a 38" UltraWide, so using the 16" one next to that would be a bit weird. I don't have a logical place on my desk to have it with the lid open, either. It sits underneath my screen with a single USB-C that does both power and display (I love that).

Inventing solutions to problems that don’t exist.

What's worse is they also make certain elements in the UI deliberately "touch friendly" that could impair a K+M experience.

Is it 2003 all over again?

I can't think of why i'd want a subpar desktop/laptop experience other than for the benefits I get from a tablet.

I highly doubt this.

iPad Pro with m2 and 16gb ram has entered the chat

Exactly. I have a MacBook Pro, that stays plugged in most of the time unless I need to edit video footage, or photos, or do any other task I would need my MacBook for. The other 90% of the time I have an m1 iPad Pro 12.9 with a magic keyboard that can accomplish most tasks. I actually prefer it this way.

Oh wow, just 10 years behind on that?

FUCKING.....FINALLY

Often you don't need a touchscreen, but once in a while I want to go touch something on the screen and guess what, I can't. It's usually easier to navigate maps using touch rather than gestures on the mousepad imo.

Yeah… idk what he’s talking about lol

Outside of MacOS proprietary software they’re literally the same thing

You don’t use Lumafusion?

I used a windows laptop that folded over for notes one year in college. Then I accidentally dropped that laptop out of a backpack and got an m1 MacBook for the battery life and iPad mibi for flight school. Sometimes I try to touch something on my MacBook screen and then I remember that I chose good battery life not consumer choice.

>TailOS

It's already a live distribution...

I'll buy your Model F.

For note taking, you can find e paper note takers cheaper than an ipad.

Apple to invent the touchscreen laptop.

I had a Dell XPS15 for work in 2015 back and that had a touch screen. I didn't use it all that much but it worked great. And no smudges

Dell has sold XPS laptops with touchscreens for nearly 10 years. I had an XPS 2015 and it worked great.

I don't want to pay for something I'm not going to use. Of course there are uses for touch screen on a laptop that people may have, but for most people, it's more effort to use a touch screen than a mouse or trackpad, etc.

Hackintosh is already capable of this so it should not be hard

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Ill take a MacBook and iPad any day no matter the cost. Hell, both will still probably be cheaper.

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My son is 9 years old, and currently uses my old XPS as his computer. He assumes every screen is a touchscreen - even my desktop monitor and large TVs. He would think a 2023 MacBook was something from before he was born.

I would much prefer an iPad that would run MacOS when docked.

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2014 Dell Inspiron with a touch is fun for scrolling long whatever pages. Imgur Reddit fb. Not much else. Just lots of scrolling. Maybe map stuff at times. Don’t regret it. Kids still use it for my “vintage” steam collection. Ssd and windows 10 it’s still decent.

It's a bad recommendation not meant for ordinary use and is why looking for alternatives (as already mentioned)~

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Time to be a macro king prince.

Christ everyone here is shitting on this like it's not a completely optional extra feature that you 100% do not need to use if you don't want it. Nobody is gonna make you touch your laptops screen but it's nice to have the option for those that want it.

Exactly, This^

Why even docked, just give us the macOS before started metamorphosing into iPadOS (Ventura) which always been a glorified version of iOS with wasted spaces~

Anything's possible in the Tim Cook era~

I used to be the biggest android fan boy when I was younger but every single fucking android smartphone I have ever owned would start shitting the bed shortly after the first big software update and then I would just have to suffer until I was due for my next upgrade.

I had an iPhone 6s up until six months ago and then it died when I dropped it in a fountain. I upgraded to an iPhone 8 and the thing works flawlessly. Maybe android flagships are better now but I’m not going to throw away $1000 on a Galaxy Ultra whose battery may or may not explode after a year when I can get an iPhone that’ll last me 5+ years.

Are you looking for an installable Linux distribution?

Nope.

I always used to laugh at my Macbook Pro using colleagues who'd go on about how awesome their Macbook was despite that Dell being more powerful, thinner, had a pretty good touch screen and also about a third cheaper.

Pop_os is the way to go.

Those saying “who needs a touch screen laptop” have never seen children immediately instinctively touch the screen if any computer they’re using because of iPad

Touch Bar on my 2017 MBP... :(

Touch Bars have existed for decades. However, I never saw one replace the F keys. And guess what? Half the time when I boot my Touch Bar doesn't. No amount of terminal wizardry fixes it, it simply refuses to start.

I'm totally with you about not wanting some stupid gimmick that we get charged for.

Apple is wasting R&D and engineering time on this.

Just pick whatever Ubuntu flavour has your favourite DE

Microsoft nailed exactly that concept with the surface pro. I almost got one when they came out.

I had numerous students who loved theirs and would switch back and forth from popping the screen off for in-class note taking and design drawing to then using it like a regular laptop.

My 2005 HP Pavillion would disagree with that. It had a pretty phenomenal track pad. It wasn't until the 20teens that I realized I could turn on further functionality on it.

Apples trackpad was built with a good basis and better touch tool really tapped into its full potential.

If someone wants a touchscreen laptop made by Apple then they can just buy an iPad. We don’t need a touchscreen on Mac. Touchscreens on devices not designed for a touchscreen only makes the user experience worse.

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Bro my 500 dollar Lenovo yoga from years ago has a touchscreen. Its like what 50 dollars more for the company in parts. Honestly apple is moving us backwards

Think you’re describing Windows. Like I said, there’s nothing preventing Apple from designing it well and seamlessly blending touch interfaces with regular mouse & keyboard. In fact, Apple is probably the only manufacturer in the world that I would trust 100% to deliver technology in a meaningful and useful manner (butterfly keyboard & touchbar notwithstanding)

It’s just that the people that use MacBook Pros are not the people that want gimics like touchscreens (remember the touchbar?). Touchscreen laptops are hard to use for an extended period of time because your shoulders get tired. Steve Jobs said that years ago and everyone here knows it.

The touchbar was bad because it was replacing physical keys with something worse. Adding touchscreen doesn’t replace anything nor does it remove functionality, it simply adds a new feature.

And I’m sure there’ll still be traditional non-touch optimised UI as well, to cater to existing Macs without touchscreens (and the Mac Mini/Studio/Pro who will probably never have touchscreens) . It’s not like an Intel to Apple Silicon transition where Intel is getting totally abandoned and obsoleted

Sweet. Welcome to 2015

Thanks I hate it

Steve Jobs also said that the iPhone 4 was the perfect size and that nobody would buy a larger phone. Guess we all know how that played out

I'm not so sure that theyll have separate UIs.

Apple's MacBook pros and iOS devices have been converging, and MacOS dock is pretty clearly designed for touch screens. I almost never use it to access apps since spotlight is way quicker and more convenient. Same goes for my iPhone - I no longer look for the app icon, I just search and open it from there.

As far as touch screen or no touch screen, I don't care as long as they're still producing high quality computers connected to their ecosystem, but they really could put engineering effort more useful places - such as improving testing and quality of their operating systems, making more robust hardware (they've been getting there with their phones, to the point where they literally advertised the iPhone 13 as able to handle a fall from a table), and countless other things.

Honestly, apple needs to be leading the way with conversion from electronics to optics. I led some of that research in the 20-teens and we have long been at a point where we could be replacing plenty of "bulkier" electrical components with optical ones.

That would be a way better use of their brain capital and workforce than adding a touch screen.

Yeah maybe it’s time to consider using something more ergonomic and less controversial. I think it’s called a pen and paper. Millions and millions of people have used this method in the past and it proved to work efficiently and it perfectly executes the same job as note taking on an IPad. it also weighs half the weight of an iPad.

I dont know how to tell you this pops but ipads are not as controversial as you think. We don’t think technology is the work of the devil anymore.

Just in case

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>Im actually 29 without any kids so I don’t think that I qualify as a “pop.”

"Pops" is more of a state of mind. Some people die in their twenties but aren’t buried until they are 60.

>It clearly is the work of the devil because you’re complaining about it.

I complain about my legs as well. Sometimes my legs hurt. Doesn't mean it is the work of the devil and I won't to have it chopped off.

>The only reason why you need to have an iPad and MacBook pro is because you are materialistic and need to show it off. There are hundreds of different options out there for viable note taking. You don’t think it looks ridiculous when you take out a laptop AND an iPad in class? You don’t think others look at you and judge you and think why does this person need both? She can take notes on a laptop. She’s doing this to show off her Apple gear in class. This person has issues.

Sure pops. Now let's get you to bed.

they can't even blame hardware difference when they have the M2 processor in them now on the Pros!

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I forget whether it was Steve Jobs or Tim Cook, but I remember one of them said that the reason Macs didn't have touchscreens was because "your arm would fall off" after using it all day.

About damn time.

My company did a study on phone durability and cost. The iPhone was like 30% cheaper based on failures alone. This, despite a higher up front cost.

Apple is walking on a tightrope for cannibalization of its own lineup. There is a reason they are ~10 years late on this.

Everyone wants an iPad with MacOS but their laptop sales would immediately tank if they did that. Their iPad lineup is extremely bloated with 6 current gen models. Apple has to keep iPad prices high enough that people will buy laptops because of a small price differential between classes higher tier iPads and laptops. It is a really delicate system that works against everyone unfortunately

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I feel like they are going to implement it in an amazing way BUT I remember how touch bar was such a disaster and I'm not sure how they'll work it out

Why? I know a lot of people with touchscreen laptops and the one unifying factor is they never touch the screen on purpose.

Maybe apple can integrate some new functionality… but these have always seemed like a gimik to me.

Do any of you actually use yours?

Uh so like most of them?

How about Fedora or Ubuntu for a start. Work great live with or without persistence.

Oh my God, that is soooo innovative !

A touchscreen is the only think I miss from my switch to MacOS for my personal laptop. Hopefully this is true.

as an artist this was my only reason not to buy a macbook ever, i went for an ipad and its great BUT most of the software i use is not made for ipads, if this touchscreen can be used with the apple pencil im down to get one tbh. plus im in the minority that has carpal tunnel issues so touch is something i always use when available

I love my MacBook but I would prefer my iPad Pro being able to run full macos. All I need is that and from what I understand the iPad Pro is more than capable.

Oh, it sure is capable. Pros have the same SoCs as in laptops - M1/M2.

I have Thinkpad, Dell, and Mac laptops. Nothing compares to the Mac trackpad.

Unless you’re drawing I don’t see the appeal. Plus my OCD always kicks in when I accidentally use it on my Surface.

I hope not. Most people don't use their touchscreen on their window devices, why they would use them here.

I see this as an excuse to increase the base price $200

Trying to squeeze water out of a rock I see

It’s amazing how many smudges already are on my macbook without a touch screen

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Least surprising news ever

Apple is always 10yrs behind in ppduct features

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Apple can't keep their screens working now. The coating has delaminated off on every Mac I've ever owned. Can't wait to see what their touch screens are like 😏

Well it’s about tricking time. Stop trying to make iPads a thing and just give us a touchscreen Mac. My god.

So many times it's just easier to tap the thing on the screen rather than awkwardly get to it with the touchpad. It's also great for things like pinch to zoom and other gesture-based interactions which just feel more I tuituve on a touchscreen than a touchpad.

Just allow the installation of MacOS on the iPad. It's really not difficult.

Meanwhile, I loved mine. It has its uses.

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You probably used the same synaptics trackpad as everybody else back then. You could turn on some other stuff, but there’s no comparison to what apple did in 2008 when they came out with the unibody glass trackpad. It’s still king to this day.

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I feel like this "cannibalization" argument that always comes up, fails to take into account, that it' not about cannibalizing iPad vs. MacOS. I think it would be more about unifying the MacOS and iOS userbase, making it an even bigger total market for app (and games) developers to target. Also, don't forget, that expansion could also come in the shape of PC users choosing Mac instead, if a real (and good) alternative existed to touch-based PC's, such as the Surface Pro that I'm typing this os.

I wish that Apple would release an apple pencil compatible display. Wonder what that would do to Wacom's business.

I know plenty of people that only use their ipad pro or macbook and refuse to carry buy and carry two devices, or are like me and won't buy any apple computing device until it satisfies my needs. It's not a given that everyone out there is just going to buy both devices or can even afford that. You could be spot on for the reasons this doesn't exist right now, but Apple is for sure missing out on new sales by not offering something like this. Hard to tell how the numbers would actually play out unless they actually released something.