Mark Gurman of Bloomberg(Opens in a new window) says that the MacBook Pro will be released in 2025, and the company will probably add touch screens to other Macs “if all goes according to plan.”
According to Gurman, the majority of major computer manufacturers, including Microsoft, Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., Asus, and Dell, provide laptops with touch screens and have done so for a number of years.
According to Gurman, the move makes both logical and commercial sense given that two of Apple’s current objectives are to consolidate its share of the personal computer market and integrate software and services across all of its devices.
Currently, purchasing a Magic Keyboard, attaching it to an iPad, and using a trackpad or mouse—which the iPad has supported since 2020—is the closest Apple users can get to using a laptop with a touch screen.
While its rivals were introducing touch displays to their laptops and computers, Apple openly mocked the idea of including touch screens in computers in the past. The company argued that implementing touch screens would be “ergonomically terrible” and that the macOS would not provide a satisfactory touch experience.
Apple has played around with touch-screen support for Macs with the Touch Bar but has avoided fully implementing it. The thin OLED strip, which was made available on all new MacBook Pro models in 2016 and allowed users to adjust the volume and use touch to access tools and apps, was placed just above the keyboard. It was put on hold as a feature in 2021, but it came back last year.
