After spending years with touchscreen Windows laptops, I’ve become rather accustomed to reaching out and tapping the screen if I just want to interact with something quickly. It’s a small convenience, one that feels natural as soon as you get used to it. But whenever I use a MacBook for a bit, I inevitably find myself reaching for the screen before realizing that Apple has never offered this feature for its notebooks.
Apple has resisted touchscreen Macs for years, but that might finally change. The company is reportedly preparing to introduce its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, complete with an OLED display and a redesigned interface that accommodates touch input. Not to be confused with the new $2,000 M6 MacBook Pro, which just launched with minimal updates over its predecessor.
So I’m actually looking forward to a high-end MacBook Pro with touch support. Having reviewed everything from Dell’s XPS 14 to ASUS’ wonderfully unconventional Zenbook Duo, I know how useful a touchscreen can be on a laptop. However, there’s one thing I hope Apple understands. It’s MacBook with touchscreen still needs to work brilliantly as a regular laptop. Nobody wants to see an oversized iPad.
Windows laptops show why touch is great
To be clear, I don’t believe that touchscreen is absolutely necessary on a laptop. Both Windows and MacOS weren’t designed with touch in mind. But Windows has come a long way since with various handy input interactions. Sure, I wouldn’t want to spend an entire workday reaching across my keyboard to interact with a display, but that doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate having that option.
Sometimes, reaching out to scroll through a webpage, select an image, or tap a button is simply more convenient than moving the cursor around. It’s an additional way to interact with your computer, and having that option is liberating.
Take the Dell XPS 14 I reviewed earlier this year. Its gorgeous 2.8K OLED touchscreen was one of my favorite aspects of the laptop. The display was sharp, responsive, and wonderfully smooth, while the excellent haptic touchpad remained my primary way of navigating Windows.
The Asus Zenbook Duo, on the other hand, is an excellent case of a purpose-built laptop. Its two 14-inch touchscreen OLED displays and included stylus opened up entirely different workflows. I could work in Adobe Animate or Photoshop while keeping drawing controls, reference material, or ASUS’ Dial and Control Panel interface on the second screen.
The stylus was responsive, and the flexibility of having multiple input methods made it quite versatile. I found myself arranging my workflow around its dual displays, something I rarely do with conventional laptops. All of this just convinced me that touch does have a proper place in laptops in general. The only challenge is making it feel natural and intuitive.
Please don’t turn macOS into an oversized iPad
The temptation might be to make everything bigger and more touch-friendly. I’d rather see Apple preserve the precision that makes macOS so useful for serious work, then intelligently adapt individual controls when my fingers enter the picture.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that’s broadly what Apple is planning. The rumored touchscreen MacBook could feature menus that expand when tapped, along with a Dock and menu bar designed to accommodate fingers. It’s an encouraging direction, provided those changes remain subtle and work consistently across apps.
Still, reaching across a keyboard all day gets uncomfortable quickly. I don’t want to keep my arm raised to manage windows, edit documents, or navigate complex menus. The trackpad should still be the natural choice for those tasks, with touch available whenever it’s quicker.
We’ve already seen a hint of Apple’s thinking in macOS 27 Golden Gate. Its improved Sidecar functionality lets an iPad’s touchscreen control macOS, including tapping, scrolling, and dragging. So the groundwork is promising, even if it doesn’t tell us how Apple’s actual touchscreen hardware will behave. If Apple gets it right, I’ll happily welcome its long-overdue arrival.
