Rumors abound that Apple might be working on a dual touchscreen MacBook, but that doesn’t make sense knowing how the company works. A 2-in-1 touchscreen Mac would be nice, though.
The touchscreen Mac takes the best of the iPad, but is Apple overthinking it?
Apple has a habit of ridiculing features, and even entire product categories, right up until it makes one of its own. For example, back in 2010 Steve Jobs said that nobody was going to buy a big iPhone. One year later, the iPad arrived. Apple also has a habit of waiting until it can actually make something worthwhile, like the mouse/trackpad support on the iPad. And so it might be with the touchscreen Mac. Instead of just slapping a touchscreen onto a laptop, like every PC manufacturer, maybe Apple has finally found a better way?
“Rather than rushing to simply slap a touchscreen on standard Macs, Apple seems to prefer optimizing the user experience holistically. In my work developing green technology solutions, considering all factors—like how people naturally interact with devices—is important for success. A dual-screen MacBook could allow touch where it enhances workflow while keeping the laptop functionality many rely on,” Landis+Gy senior software engineer and artist Rinkesh Kukreja told Lifewire via email.
Foldable Mac
The design, according to multiple reliable rumor sources, is pretty out there. It’s an all-display MacBook, essentially one big folding screen that can show an iPad-style software keyboard on the bottom half while the top half takes care of showing the apps.
Or you can unfold the screen to make one huge display, which could then be paired with a keyboard and trackpad to make a rather excellent portable workstation.
The benefits are clear. Finally, a touchscreen Mac, for one, which is especially compelling because the Mac can already run iPad apps. It’s also handy to have such a large display, which could either become a giant iPad, a movie screen and so on. You could also choose different input methods instead of a keyboard on that lower screen or combine a partial display with the software keyboard in addition to the top screen.
Because this would presumably be sold as a Mac, it would also avoid one main downside of a foldable iPhone or iPad: that you have to open it up to use it. But you already have to open a MacBook, so no biggie there.
If this turns out to be true, it’s a nice example of Apple’s approach to design. Instead of just hopping on the latest industry trend, it works to its own schedule. When everybody said that Apple should make a netbook, it didn’t. It made the MacBook Air slimmer and slimmer instead, and now “ultrabooks” are their own PC category, too.
This dual-screen Mac is pretty neat, but to my eyes, it looks a bit more like it’s coming from the Vision Pro side of Apple in that it’s too fancy for its own good when what people really want is a regular Mac with a touchscreen.
Missed Opportunity
The iPad is an amazing device, and with the right accessories, it can become an artist’s tablet, a music studio, or a laptop. But it lags far behind the Mac in terms of software capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Mac can do almost anything the iPad can, with two key differences—you cannot remove the keyboard, and you cannot touch its screen. Well, you can, but all it does is leave greasy fingermarks.
Apple’s fancy (rumored) dual-screen Mac looks like fun and all, but PC makers have already solved this conundrum with 2-in-1 laptops, laptops with touchscreens, and 360-degree hinges that let you flip the keyboard around the back to use the whole thing in tablet mode.
“A foldable MacBook could let you touch when it enhances your workflow while keeping the laptop functionality that many rely on for their daily tasks,” says Kukreja.
It seems like such a missed opportunity for Apple. Imagine a MacBook Air with a fancier hinge and the iPad Pro’s touchscreen. In laptop mode, it’s a Mac. Flip the keyboard, and it’s an iPad. Job done. I would buy the heck out of that machine. Apple could even make it like Microsoft’s Surface Pro, where the keyboard can be removed—like an iPad that turns into a Mac when you connect the Magic Keyboard.
