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Apple expected to show first touchscreen laptops amid product blitz

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The Los Angeles launch represents a major corporate reversal after years of leadership, including former CEOs Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, dismissing touchscreen laptops on ergonomic and practical grounds. Current CEO John Ternus previously argued that the iPad already filled the niche for portable touch computing. Despite this philosophical turnaround, Bloomberg News reports the upcoming machines will feature M5 Pro and M5 Max chips instead of the newer M6. This internal configuration means the interactive displays will arrive without a notable performance bump for buyers focused on intensive on-device AI tasks.

Key points

  • Apple is reversing over a decade of executive opposition to match touch features standard…: Apple is reversing over a decade of executive opposition to match touch features standard on rival Windows machines.
  • The new laptops will arrive without a major performance boost because they rely on existi…: The new laptops will arrive without a major performance boost because they rely on existing M5 Pro and M5 Max hardware.
  • The company is targeting holiday shoppers with a packed launch slate that already include…: The company is targeting holiday shoppers with a packed launch slate that already includes a folding iPhone and home hub.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

LOS ANGELES, Oct 28 : Apple is expected to unveil its first touchscreen MacBooks on Wednesday, abandoning a long-held aversion to the technology as it caps a burst of product launches ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.

Apple is holding an event in Los Angeles after launching a folding iPhone, Duo, at its Silicon Valley headquarters in September and a smart home hub in New York earlier this month. While those products will test new markets for Apple, the Los Angeles event could rekindle an old question: should Apple put the touchscreens that it made mainstream in iPhones and iPads in its oldest product line?

Apple executives long resisted the idea, with Steve Jobs saying in 2010 that touchscreens on laptops were "ergonomically terrible" and then-CEO Tim Cook saying in 2012 that such devices would be as pleasing to users as converging a toaster and a refrigerator. Before becoming Apple's current CEO, John Ternus argued that Apple already made a touchscreen computer with its iPad lineup.

But touchscreens have been widely available for more than a decade on Windows devices, and with the iPhone nearing its two-decade anniversary, a new generation of buyers expects screens to respond to touch.

"I believe they were always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in," said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Some things are purely inevitable."

A key question for Apple is how customers will respond. The company has seen an uptick in Mac sales, but much of that growth has been among technology enthusiasts and businesses buying the machines to handle AI tasks on-device.

While Apple this week announced an upgraded base model of its MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip, Bloomberg News has reported that it plans to ship touchscreen models with its existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that already come in MacBook Pro models, meaning the new machines would not gain a significant performance boost over existing ones.

"The only thing people want is more memory and better processors for local models!" prominent tech commentator Jason Calacanis, the host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.

Original source: www.channelnewsasia.com

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