In an interview with WIREDApple executives including CEO John Ternus, hardware chief Johny Srouji, and marketing chief Greg “Joz” Joswiak discussed the company’s decision to bring Touch to the Mac. Here are the details.
Apple executives discuss touch about-face
For years, online commentators have countered rumors of touchscreen Macs with quotes from Steve Jobs and other Apple executives, including Phil Schiller, arguing that touchscreens have no place on Macs.
Shortly after Apple announced the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with PROLED XDR displays, journalist Steven Levy published an interview with Apple executives in WIRED discussing the company’s decision to reverse its long-standing stance on touchscreen Macs.
I wonder if Apple is about to break a long-standing taboo and introduce a Macintosh with a touch screen.
Ternus beams. “Who knew?”
In the interview, Ternus points out that while indirect input via trackpad and keyboard remains central to the Mac experience, “there are times when it’s comfortable and practical to have touch.”
He also points out that Apple sees touch as an add-on, rather than a feature that would require compromises in the MacBook Pro’s design.
During the interview, much of Apple’s reasoning for finally bringing touch to the Mac revolves around the fact that it has reworked and developed several hardware and software components to make touch possible without compromising the Mac experience.
From WIRED:
“We had to get to a point where adding touch didn’t make the product smaller in any way. It didn’t make it heavier. It didn’t make it thicker. All of that combined with the OLED screen, the best display we’ve ever put in a Mac,” Ternus told me. “All these things and, oh yeah, they have touch too.”
As for Srouji, he argued that technological advances over the past decade have finally allowed Apple to meet its standards for a touchscreen Mac.
This included custom silicon, a redesigned thermal system to keep the display from getting hot to the touch, and a reworked hinge to minimize screen wobble when users interact with it.
“Ten years is a very, very long time,” says Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer. “A lot of things have changed, whether it’s display technology, custom silicon, etc.” In the end, he told me, the confluence of chips, display technology and software architecture “met our standards.” “I like my engineers to be guided by physics, not imagination or timing,” he says.
Joz, in turn, noted that part of Apple’s decision was driven by a new generation of touch-first users who expect to interact directly with their screens:
“Most professionals own an iPad, and almost all professionals own an iPhone,” Joswiak says. “So it’s something they’re natural with. There’s a generation of young creators and young people who use our MacBook Pros and expect to touch.”
He added that professional users, including “engineers, scientists, software developers and media creators,” have also asked Apple to bring touch to the Mac.
The full interview also touches on (no pun intended) how Apple has adapted macOS for touchscreen interactions, new gestures for Dynamic Island, and whether touch could eventually come to other Macs. You can read it in full here.
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