Apple tells developers to get ready for Touch on Mac
Apple has opened a developer hub for Touch on Mac, signaling that touchscreen Macs are on the way. The page offers three tech talks on designing for touch, bringing touch to existing Mac apps, and adding Live Activities, plus online group labs with Apple engineers on November 18 and 19. Xcode 27.3 beta, documentation, and design resources are listed as coming soon.
Join Apple engineers and designers online to ask questions, get advice, and follow the discussion about creating and optimizing apps for Touch on Mac.
- hexapus
I can't think of a feature I care less about on a laptop. I have owned several laptops with touchscreens, and literally the only thing it's ever done is misclick something when I inadvertently touched my screen. I have a tablet and a phone if I want to tap a screen.
Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.
- AnonC
This is not for me, since I agree with Steve Jobs’s take that it will be painful to use a touchscreen laptop. But I do see it being useful for the touchscreen generation and for artists. The first thing I do on my company provided Windows laptop is to open Device Manager and disable the touchscreen because I don’t want to deal with accidental touch inputs.
Controversial and snarky take:
I think macOS is going to transform more and more into iOS, and not in a good way…losing all the advantages of a keyboard and mouse driven interface. The lowest common denominator with lesser Apple developer effort will win over.
The work on this machine also possibly explains why Apple has not spent any time improving its own Catalyst apps like Reminders, Notes and others on the Mac. These apps ported from iOS do not understand keyboard navigation and rely heavily on the trackpad or mouse. With the introduction of this machine, Apple has no (financial) reason to improve these apps anymore.
- illithid0
The M-series Macbooks have been some of the best machines I've ever used. Why do they seem so intent on ruining that streak?
- coldfloor
Lots of comments saying the target audience for this is kids and very casual "Insta and Email" users. But they're not releasing it on the Neo or Air. This is, for now, the "proLED" model only. The base model is $2800 and if you max out the options it goes up to $14,000 (though $7,000 of that is storage).
I really don't understand who they think is going to buy this.
- aspect0545
Explains why the UX got shittier over the past 1.5 years.