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Apple Said to Be Ready to Launch Touchscreen MacBook Pro as macOS 27 Adds Touch Support

Reports suggest Apple will introduce a touchscreen MacBook Pro as soon as October, with macOS 27 already laying groundwork for direct touch input.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-05 20:25

The report recalls that both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook previously dismissed touchscreen Macs on ergonomic and design grounds. Jobs argued in 2010 that reaching forward to touch a vertical screen causes arm fatigue, known as the "gorilla arm" effect, while Cook compared a touchscreen laptop to combining a refrigerator and a toaster. Despite these public stances, Bloomberg and well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo have reported that Apple has been developing a high-end MacBook with a touchscreen OLED display, likely in 14- and 16-inch sizes. The device is expected to retain the traditional keyboard and trackpad as primary input methods, with touch serving as an additional way to interact.

The software side appears to be moving faster than hardware. In macOS 27, Apple has reportedly added a system-level interface to detect whether a display supports multitouch, placed directly under the NSScreen object. This means macOS now treats multitouch as a generic screen capability, applicable to linked iPads via Sidecar as well as potential native touchscreen Macs. The system is also said to distinguish "indirect touch" (trackpad gestures) from "direct touch" (finger on screen), and can dynamically enlarge menu items and icons when a finger approaches the display to reduce accidental taps. Native apps such as Safari, Mail, and Calendar have reportedly gained pull-to-refresh gestures designed for touch.

As for the hardware, the new MacBook Pro is rumored to feature an On-cell touch layer integrated into the OLED panel, supplied by Samsung Display, using the same tandem OLED technology found in the iPad Pro. The chassis and hinge would need to be redesigned to withstand the pressure of fingertip input without excessive wobble. Ming-Chi Kuo's latest outlook suggests the revamped device may rely on more mature M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, while a larger architectural overhaul with 2nm processors could be delayed to 2027. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously indicated Apple is preparing its first OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, and his latest PowerOn newsletter points to a possible October event where the touchscreen MacBook might debut alongside a new iPad mini.

The ifanr report notes that Apple has long forced users to choose between a touch-enabled iPad and a keyboard-and-trackpad Mac, but this shift would finally give users the option to touch a Mac's screen directly.