Apple Now Working on a Touchscreen Mac with OLED, Says Report

Image: Apple

Apple for the longest time has resisted a touchscreen Mac, but that looks to be changing, according to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg.

According to unnamed sources, Gurman reported on Wednesday that Apple engineers are working on bringing a touch screen to the Mac lineup for the first time. No launch has been set in stone and plans can always change.

A touchscreen Mac would impact iPad sales, which is why Apple executives have long dismissed the form factor.

But now, Gurman says current internal discussions would result in a touchscreen Mac to launch in 2025, as part of an update to the MacBook Pro. A touchscreen MacBook Pro would look the same, but its screen would have a touch interface and support gestures, like other Apple products.

Apple is also working to bring a transition from LCD displays to OLED displays, matching existing iPhone and Apple Watch displays already using the latter tech, which offers better colour and brightness levels.

Gurman says an OLED display could also make its way to the iPad Pro by the first half of 2024.

Major PC manufacturers such as Microsoft and others have long had computers with touchscreens, but Apple has never jumped in to match its peers.

Back in 2020, Apple executives Craig Federighi, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, and John Ternus detailed how off-base a touchscreen Mac would be.

“I gotta tell you when we released Big Sur, and these articles started coming out saying, ‘Oh my God, look, Apple is preparing for touch’. I was thinking like, ‘Whoa, why?’”, said Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi. Apple “designed and evolved the look for macOS in a way that felt most comfortable and natural to us, not remotely considering something about touch,” said Federighi.