If the rumors are true, next week could mark the introduction of the first-ever touchscreen MacBooks. That's a Mac laptop with a touchscreen. People will probably embrace them and, no, I don't think their arms will fall off.
Steve Jobs famously hated the concept of a touchscreen MacBook. During an October 2010 product launch, he famously dismantled the notion:
"You know, the first thing you think about is this [he gestured toward the image of someone reading out to touch a MacBook screen]. Right, we thought about this years ago. We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives a great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time your arm wants to fall off; it doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence touchpads for a notebook. That's why we've perfected our multi-touch trackpads over the years."
In short:
- It doesn't work
- Touch demands horizontal screens
- Your arm gets tired
- Your arm falls off
Jobs' comments came just 10 months after he unveiled the original iPad, which did have a sort of oddball keyboard accessory that put your hands way too close to the display, and two years before Microsoft introduced its first Surface Pro computers, which were basically tablets with kickstands and detachable keyboards.
Still, Jobs drew a line in the sand, and for more than a decade, Apple toed that line. Even when Apple seemed to split the difference with the Touch Bar on the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple executives insisted a touchscreen was not the right move for Apple's popular line of MacBooks.
As former Global Head of Marketing Phil Schiller told Steve Levy back then,
"Our instincts were that it didn’t [make sense to do a touchscreen], but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years. We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”
But unless the rumor mill is very, very wrong, Apple is set to prove Jobs and the rest of the old guard wrong and introduce its first touch-screen MacBook Pro next week in Los Angeles.
It will be, perhaps, a recognition that all those Windows OEMs who build 2-in-1 convertibles where the screen can fold all the way onto the bottom of the laptop or even detach to become a stand-alone tablet aren't wrong. There is a market for touchscreen computers.
What would Steve say?
What, though, would Steve Jobs make of this? The iconoclastic tech maverick, who died in 2011, would surely be appalled. Apple devotees might claim, "This never would've happened on his watch." Maybe they'll unfairly blame new CEO John Ternus, an actual engineer and 25-year company veteran who must've had a hand in the development of the new, alleged, touchscreen MacBook Pro. Surely Ternus was somehow involved over what was likely a 2-to-5-year development process, but the credit or blame should lie with now Executive Chairman Tim Cook, who probably greenlit the project.
If Steve Jobs were alive today, what might he say to Cook and Ternus about this? "Well, you better sell a line of arm sling accessories for all those aching muscles!"
No. In fact, I'm certain Steve Jobs would applaud the innovation. You see, Jobs was often adamant about something until he was not. He would insist Apple had no interest in making a phone, until the company delivered the iPhone.
There was a thing called the Steve Jobs "reality distortion field" for a reason. Steve Jobs didn't think an App Store and third-party apps were needed (or at least he claimed as much) before the App Store was unveiled. Video on the iPod was a bad idea until there was the technology to support it. Then it was a great one.
Steve Jobs believed in changing his mind. In an interview Jobs gave to Playboy as he turned 30, he said, "If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away."
Jobs was more a marketer than engineer and, perhaps, more artist than tactician. In order for him to change his mind, the technology had to inspire him, or in order for him to be satisfied, he'd change the technology and specs (see the last-minute swap of the original iPhone's plastic screen cover to glass) until he was satisfied.
Sure, Jobs could say one thing on stage, and the company leadership would parrot it for years until, like Jobs, the innovation met the moment. And then, as Jobs was wont to do, change their minds.
So, if we do see our first touchscreen MacBook Pro next week, don't shed tears for Steve Jobs' discarded design principles. I'm sure he would say that this is as it should be and that a touchscreen MacBook Pro is, in fact, "magical."