'Ergonomically terrible': Steve Jobs said hands-off, Apple says hands-on with its first touchscreen laptops

Apple CEO John Ternus on Wednesday unveiled the company’s first touchscreen MacBooks, marking a shift from its long-standing resistance to the technology as it wraps up a series of product launches ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Ternus, a longtime Apple hardware executive and the company’s new chief executive, appeared at an event in Los Angeles as part of a media push showcasing the company’s latest products.

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He launched a folding iPhone, Duo, at Apple's Silicon Valley headquarters in September and a smart home hub in New York earlier this month. While those products will test new markets for Apple, the Los Angeles event could rekindle an old question: should Apple put the touchscreens that it made mainstream in iPhones and iPads in its oldest product line?

Steve Jobs’ resistance

Apple executives long resisted the idea, with Steve Jobs saying in 2010 that touchscreens on laptops were "ergonomically terrible" and then-CEO Tim Cook saying in 2012 that such devices would be as pleasing to users as converging a toaster and a refrigerator.

Before taking over as Apple CEO, Ternus had argued that the company already offered a touchscreen computer through its iPad range.

However, touchscreen technology has been a feature of Windows devices for more than a decade. With the iPhone approaching its 20th anniversary, a new generation of consumers has also grown accustomed to interacting with screens through touch.

"I believe they were always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in," said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, as per Reuters. "Some things are purely inevitable."

Will customers like it?

A key question for Apple is how customers will respond. The company has seen an uptick in Mac sales, but much of that growth has been among technology enthusiasts and businesses buying the machines to handle AI tasks on-device.

While Apple this week announced an upgraded base model of its MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip, Bloomberg News has reported that it plans to ship touchscreen models with its existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that already come in MacBook Pro models, meaning the new machines would not gain a significant performance boost over existing ones.

"The only thing people want is more memory and better processors for local models!" prominent tech commentator Jason Calacanis, the host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.

(With inputs from agencies)