Here we go again. I said I wouldn’t do this, but a WhatsApp message from Ivan has egged me on, so I will. After the torrent of mediocre product announcements and their generally lukewarm reception, Apple has felt the need to throw yet another abomination into the fray: a touchscreen MacBook. I have some thoughts.
Given the reports of self-destructing iPhone Duos, I will at least say that I find it very brave of them to launch another foldable touchscreen device. Only this one is huge, unwieldy, and —as many have already pointed out— goes against Apple’s previous promise to never make a touchscreen laptop. Holding your arm in midair to do things you can easily do from the comfort of your touchpad is just silly. But now that we’re in the performative era, this foolish waving around of one’s arm is only one step down from filming a TikTok dance in the street. Really, it’s a small price to pay to boast of your touchscreen MacBook, much to the chagrin of the rest of the world with their perfectly serviceable laptops.
What isn’t a small price to pay is the MacBook itself.
This is where I admit that I haven’t even opened the Apple website to read anything about it. The aforementioned WhatsApp message contained a photo of the device with two hands touching its screen, and I immediately knew what was going on. They’ll have taken the most expensive MacBook Pro, added a feature that no professional or power user has been asking for, and will have ramped up the price even further.
They’ll do this because this model of MacBook Pro will be a misnomer. It’s not for pro users, it’s for showoffs. It’s for people who do not need it but want to feel they do. It’s for people with a social superiority complex or a talent inferiority complex. Throw some money at it and poof! Problem solved.
No, you don’t need a touchscreen MacBook. You need therapy.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’ll rein it in. There’s plenty of benefits to this new thing. You won’t be angry about your friend’s kid getting their sticky fingerprints all over the thing, because you’ll have already done that yourself. Never again will you be riled up by your clueless manager tapping on your screen, because your fancy new MacBook will now include the exact same technology as his 10-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad.
It feels like the poor folks at Apple are being held at knifepoint and forced to enter new product categories every other week until the year ends. With innovation dead and buried, all that’s left is to create monstrous hybrids of existing products and regurgitate existing ideas. It’s the physical version of AI slop.
So, as they scramble to churn out this crap and shoehorn touchscreens into every single one as if it was 2008 all over again, I ask myself many questions.
Why this? Why now? And would I take one off my boss’ hands if he offers me one?
Abso-fucking-lutely.