Apple's touchscreen MacBooks are coming: What to know
Customers queue inside an Apple store beneath an illuminated Apple logo to collect preordered products, mainly iPhone 18 Pro smartphones, on October 17, 2026 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES - Apple is expected to unveil its first touchscreen MacBooks on Wednesday, ending its long-standing resistance to the technology as the company wraps up a wave of product launches ahead of the critical holiday shopping season.
Dig deeper:
The event will take place in Los Angeles, following Apple’s September launch of the folding iPhone Duo at its Silicon Valley headquarters and the introduction of a smart home hub in New York earlier this month. Those products mark efforts to enter new markets, while the Los Angeles event could revive a familiar debate: whether Apple should bring the touchscreen technology it popularized on iPhones and iPads to its oldest product line.
RELATED: iPhone Duo users report screen problems, Apple offers replacements
The backstory:
Apple executives have resisted touchscreen laptops for years. In 2010, Steve Jobs called laptop touchscreens "ergonomically terrible." Two years later, then-CEO Tim Cook compared combining a laptop and tablet to making a device as appealing as converging a toaster and a refrigerator. Before becoming Apple’s current CEO, John Ternus argued that the company already offered a touchscreen computer through its iPad lineup.
Touchscreens have been common on Windows laptops for more than a decade. And as the iPhone approaches its 20th anniversary, a new generation of consumers may increasingly expect computers to respond to touch.
RELATED: Apple cuts iPhone 18 Pro orders over weak sales: report
Apple iPhone 18 officially goes on sale
Apple's iPhone 18 officially hit stores nationwide. Matt Swider with The Shortcut joins LiveNOW's Anna Marsick with what you need to know.
What they're saying:
"I believe they were always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in," said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Some things are purely inevitable."
Why you should care:
The main question for Apple is how customers will react. Mac sales have increased, but much of that growth has come from technology enthusiasts and businesses purchasing computers capable of handling artificial intelligence tasks locally.
Apple announced an upgraded entry-level MacBook Pro this week with its new M6 chip. However, Bloomberg News has reported that the planned touchscreen models will use the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips already available in MacBook Pro models. That means the new laptops may not offer a major performance improvement over current versions.
"The only thing people want is more memory and better processors for local models!" prominent technology commentator Jason Calacanis, host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.
The Source: Reuters contributed to this report. The story is based on reporting about Apple’s expected launch of its first touchscreen MacBooks, including Bloomberg News reports about the devices’ planned chips. This story was reported from Los Angeles.