Apple Ships a Touchscreen MacBook Pro After 15 Years of Saying No

Apple has ended more than 15 years of refusal and announced a touchscreen MacBook Pro, with prices starting at $2,899 — nearly $1,000 more than the regular MacBook Pro. "You've gotta touch it to believe it," Apple CEO John Ternus said at the announcement. The machine puts an OLED touch display into the MacBook Pro line and reverses a doctrine the company has defended since 2010.

Why the sudden reversal?

The resistance started with Steve Jobs. In 2010 he called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible," arguing that "touch surfaces don't want to be vertical" and that extended use makes "your arm want to fall off." He wasn't wrong about fatigue. He missed the hybrid opportunity Apple is now quietly exploring.

Tim Cook piled on in 2012, dismissing Microsoft's hybrid strategy as a compromise. "Anything can be forced to converge," Cook said then. "You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user." Software chief Craig Federighi kept the line going, describing the Mac as a "sit-down experience" to CNET in 2014 and saying the MacBook wasn't "the right interface" for touch. "We're not all that interested in building one." Four years later he doubled down: "lifting your arm up to poke a screen is a pretty fatiguing thing to do."

So what changed? In a Wired interview, marketing chief Greg Joswiak conceded touch was overdue on the Mac. "There's a generation of young creators and young people using our MacBook Pros that expect to touch," Joswiak said. That framing hints at more than one premium model: most young people can't buy Apple's most expensive MacBook Pro, and Joswiak's comment suggests touchscreens could spread across the MacBook lineup.

What did Apple actually build?

Apple followed its usual playbook: wait for hardware to mature, then ship the refined version. The company told Wired's Steven Levy it redesigned the screen hinge to stabilize it and prevent wobble. It looks reasonably sturdy. Demos show the wobble isn't gone completely.

The software work runs deeper:

• The menu bar has been redesigned for touch, expanding so items are easier to select.
• The traffic-light close and minimize buttons enlarge when you reach for them.
• Gestures mirror the trackpad: swiping between pages and spaces, Mission Control, app Exposé, and swiping into the notification center.
• The Dynamic Island, which debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro four years ago, arrives on macOS — tap it for quick controls, and brightness and volume changes appear there too.

Apple didn't reinvent the wheel. No Windows 8-style overhaul, no Yoga-style folding chassis. It added the touch support pro users have demanded for years, and touchscreens never revolutionized laptops the way people expected a decade ago anyway.

Porting the Dynamic Island makes strategic sense. Apple has spent recent years cautiously moving iPadOS features into macOS — Stage Manager, Control Center, and iPad app support among them — and it could open the door to deeper convergence of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

Will developers follow?

The Touch Bar is the cautionary tale. Apple called it "revolutionary" when it replaced the MacBook Pro's function keys in 2016. Inconsistent app support frustrated users, and Apple scrapped it in 2023, eight years later.

This time looks different. Developers have handled touch on Windows for more than a decade, and Apple has enabled basics like scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, so apps may need little extra work. Still, Apple will lean on developers to support touch in macOS apps — the very thing that sank the Touch Bar.

Who's smiling in Redmond?

Plenty of people inside Microsoft will feel vindicated. Cook's toaster-refrigerator jab stung the Windows and Surface teams; at the Surface Pro 4 launch in 2015, former Windows chief Terry Myerson surprised former Surface chief Panos Panay with a 3D render of a toaster and a refrigerator.

Microsoft earned the vindication the long way. Windows Vista got limited touch support 20 years ago, Windows 7 added full multi-touch, and Windows 8 overhauled the entire OS for touch and hybrids. Windows 8 went too far, but the Surface Pro proved touch could work on a PC and forced Apple to rethink its iPads.

Apple spent years insisting Mac and iPad are separate experiences. With touch finally on the MacBook, the open question is whether Apple pulls those platforms closer together — or keeps arguing they're better apart.