macOS Touch
Second only in speculation to the folding iPhone might be the reported MacBook Pro that will be Apple’s first Mac with a touchscreen.
[…]
A preponderance of drawing related features are specifically making their way to the Mac, including both in Notes and in Freeform. Those features have existed on Apple’s touch-first platforms for some time, but this is their first jump to the Mac. While nominally this will work with your trackpad or even using an iPad as input, it’s not hard to imagine a future where you might be able to draw right on your Mac’s screen.
“MacBook Ultra” is the rumored name for a new high-end model above the MacBook Pro. The laptop is rumored to feature an OLED display, touch-screen capabilities, a Dynamic Island, a thinner design, and M6 Pro and M6 Max chips.
macOS 27 includes a trio of hints about touch-screen support and a Dynamic Island in particular.
macOS 27 Golden Gate adds pull-to-refresh support to the Mac, adopting one of iPhone and iPad's most familiar gestures for the first time.
Apple has added direct touch input to Sidecar with macOS 27 Golden Gate and iPadOS 27, allowing users to tap and interact with macOS interface elements using a finger on their iPad for the first time.
Unsurprisingly, UIKit-based iOS and Catalyst apps seem to handle touchscreen macOS better than AppKit apps, with all the little touches like swipe-to-go-back that you might expect.
In a post to Weibo on Thursday, the leaker known as Instant Digital made a characteristically terse comment on the upcoming product. “It’s 100% confirmed that the MacBook screen will be touch-enabled,” they wrote (translated from the original Chinese using Google Translate).
A touchscreen MacBook Ultra would face a similar challenge [as the Touch Bar]. It would launch as a niche, expensive device in a sea of non-touchscreen Macs. Developers would need to bet Apple was committed to rapidly rolling touchscreens out across its entire laptop line to justify their investment.
I don’t expect a touch screen to need as much developer buy-in as the Touch Bar.
The only way a MacBook Ultra makes sense to me is if it zips past that period of compromise. Which means a screen that detaches and effectively becomes an iPad, so you get a great laptop and a great touchscreen device. That sounds a lot like an iPad running macOS or, for that matter, a Microsoft Surface or any number of Windows hybrid laptops.
NSMenuUseGlassWindowStyle
NSMenuEnableGestureTrackingmacOS and iPadOS are moving closer together every day 🙃 Presume this will be enabled for the upcoming touchscreen MacBooks
Previously:
- AppKit in macOS 27
- WWDC 2026 Links
- The Problem With the Touch Bar
- An Ultralight MacBook and Other Apple Silicon Roads Not Taken
- “No” Part 2
- MacPad: Hybrid Mac-iPad Laptop and Tablet
- The Negative Impact of Mobile-First Web Design on Desktop
- macOS Isn’t As Small As You Think
- Touchability, Productivity, and Portability — Pick Two
- Mac and iPad Aren’t Meeting in the Middle Yet
- Big Sur Not “Preparing” for Touch Macs
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The Dynamic Island is a kludge. No one who actually wants a Mac that can accept drawing input (you know, by having an iPad Pro screen) wants dynamic islands, notches, or any of this stupid breaking-the-unbroken-rectangle nonsense.
Bezels are necessary to rest your hand against, and that's where webcams belong.
"That sounds a lot like an iPad running macOS or, for that matter, a Microsoft Surface or any number of Windows hybrid laptops."
That seems like a great direction, because these devices are awesome. Except that I have lost all trust in Apple's design abilities, so I expect this to accelerate the enshittifcation of MacOS with mobile UI design.
> "...Presume this will be enabled for the upcoming touchscreen MacBooks..."
Speaking personally, I have no need for a laptop with a touch screen. But bias aside, let's consider both form factor and cost. Or better yet, targeted users.
(1) Cost. Apple's hardware (despite upper-level and rising) profit margins will be going up this calendar year. Forget about the reasons - just consider how much this touch-screen laptop will be. Vision Pro, anybody? This is all I wish to say about cost.
(2) Form factor. Why a laptop? If it's portability, Apple already makes it. Just make iPadOS behave like macOS. If you wish to use current hardware (macOS) hardware offerings have a touchscreen monitor, why not do just that - make an external monitor with touchscreen capability driven by the OS?
(3) Target users. Apple missed it with Vision Pro. To use a phrase from a former CEO at Apple, where is the puck headed? AI, CPUs, tariffs, data centers. Focusing on CPUs, it's not like the price of oil, where demand is fairly static, but 2026 saw a tightening of supply. No, for CPUs, you have data centers that have seen a spike in demand for CPUs. I would say if your basic iPad Air and MacBoon Neo are US$599, and your 14 inch MacBook Pro is US$1699, a better fit is not something small and portable, but something larger targeting "corporate" users with the money to buy it. Remember, they already portability in an iPad - if only it ran macOS. :-)
I don't know how Apple usually handle new hardware, but wouldn't they have talked about this, and their foldable phone at WWDC?
Don't they want developers to be involved ahead of launch?
> but wouldn't they have talked about this, and their foldable phone at WWDC
They did talk about it, just not in those words.
