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Apple Silicon Mac Will Have Touch Screens

Posted by Matt Birchler
β€” 1 min read

Quinn Nelson put out a video yesterday about "Big Sur's Big Secret"

I should have shared this thought earlier, but from the moment this year's WWDC keynote ended, I was convinced every Mac made with Apple Silicon is going to have a touch screen. The UI changes in this fall's macOS release indicate this, the "larger" option for all UI elements implies UI will be boosted a bit more when a touch screen is active, and Apple very cleary talked about new form factors they would be able to make with control over the processing power in their upcoming Macs.

We're all expecting the first consumer Macs using Apple Silicon will be MacBooks. I have 3 predictions, ranked from most likely to least likely:

  1. These laptops will have touch screens
  2. The product name will not be "MacBook Air/Pro" It will either be "Mac", "MacBook X", or something totally different.
  3. The screen will be detatchable, offering a 100% touch-based input mode for the first time on a Mac. Look out for data miners to find references to some sort of digital keeyboard if this one is going to come to pass.

macOS will always work with a mouse and keyboard, so Mac Mini and Mac Pro will still work that way, but if you buy yourself a touch display, you can bet it will work with macOS very nicely as well.

Oh, and while I'm on it, how much do you want to be Apple's oft-rumored return to the display market will be a touch-based Cinema Display released just in time for those new Apple Silicon desktops?