Sunday Reboot: Touch MacBook Pro's nice, but I want macOS on iPad

In this week's Sunday Reboot, the touch-enabled MacBook Pro looms, but the Mac-iPad divide still exists for some reason.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.

Touch-enabled MacBook? Nice...

In what is definitely not a bid to drive Apple-beat journalists, bloggers, and YouTube people nuts, Apple is apparently planning two events for October. Not happy with a typical one-month gap between fall presentations, Apple has shortened it to half a month.

First, we're getting smart home stuff, then at the end of October, another that will introduce some new Mac and iPad hardware.

To be frank, we should've been warned of schedule shenanigans even before the new iPhones were introduced. That end-of-August Mac mini and Mac Studio refresh was unexpected, and put everyone on the back foot.

The new tacked-on end-of-October event is pretty much going to be dominated by two things. One will be the OLED iPad mini, but the other will be the long-awaited OLED MacBook Pro.

Sure, the long-awaited could apply to the OLED bit, but really people will go nuts over the rumored inclusion of touchscreen support.

The tech industry has expected Apple to do the touch-enabled thing for years. I remember from years ago, people converting MacBooks into what were effectively touch-enabled iPad-like slates, because people wanted it.

Indeed, you can try out something similar if you have an iPad and a Mac running macOS Golden Gate. Sidecar for macOS 27 and iPadOS 27 supports touch input, meaning you can control your Mac with your finger, if you're viewing said Mac through your iPad.

This is a pretty great hint of what to expect from the MacBook Pro gaining such voodoo powers. But still, it does make me wonder if it stands up properly.

I mean that in a very literal sense.

Touch-enabled notebooks have been around for a while, but there's always the danger of a person tapping the screen with their finger and sending their precariously-balanced notebook tilting backwards.

Apple can't add a Surface-style kickstand, as that'll spoil how the MacBook Pro looks. Apple also isn't going to try and add weight to a MacBook Pro's base to counter it, since it's apparently in the business of making everything lighter.

It may end up being a minimal or non-issue for users who will end up paying the inevitable nose-bleed sums for the first OLED and touch-enabled MacBook Pro.

Touchy-feely magic

Adding touch to a MacBook Pro is a big deal, but it also means that anyone wanting to touch their data can do so without buying an iPad anymore.

However, to me, the iPad is already pretty much what I want a touch-enabled Mac to be. Heck, with the various productivity changes in recent years, it's almost at the same level.

There's a menu bar, for Pete's sake.

For a while now, I have been using an M2 11-inch iPad Pro and a Magic Keyboard as a form of notebook.

The two are rarely separated, except in those unusual situations when I want to cramp my hands by hand-writing notes, or prove my creative failings by drawing stick figures.

The Magic Keyboard also solves the whole balancing/leaning display problem of touching the screen by shifting the weight of the iPad towards the user, but I digress.

We are at a point where we have a lot of macOS in our iPadOS, and bits of iPadOS in our macOS. Since it's already most of the way there, surely Apple could take the final few steps and make it an official thing.

Of course, it won't.

In June 2025, software chief Craig Federighi underlined that iPadOS and macOS are kept as separate platforms because they are the best in what they do.

"The iPad is the best touch computer. And the Mac is the best keyboard and mouse computer," Federighi insisted at the time. Hardware convergence doesn't mean the software should be the same, and that the iPad should not be fully copying the desktop model.

And yet, we have desktop edging more towards the iPad model.

Of course, it's been a year and a half since Federighi said all that. Opinions could've changed in that time, into something that's a bit more accepting of platforms cross-pollinating ideas.

The iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard combined is essentially close enough to the Mac experience for me, aside from being able to run all of my Mac apps or compiling code in Xcode.

A touchscreen MacBook Pro may convince Apple to go the distance and actually get macOS onto the iPad. Or at least close the gap when it comes to some of the very Mac-specific functions that could really be used by iPad power users.

I will continue to hope that a sea change in the John Ternus era will finally allow Apple to give up the pretense that they need to be separate platforms with separate operating systems.

It's a foolish thing to hope for, but I can dream.

Last week's Sunday Reboot discussed Apple Music reaching Albania and Apple Pay in India. Launches that arrived in the countries many years after their initial launches.