Three Challenges Apple Must Face To Deliver A Foldable MacBook Pro

Apple CEO Tim Cook stands in front of a MacBook (Photo by Stephen Lam/Getty Images)

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The Apple community expects a foldable MacBook Pro to arrive over the next two years, but Tim Cook and his team have several challenges to address before a radical change to the macOS laptop can be made. Will the hardware be up to the job? Can touch be added comfortably to macOS? And who will buy this incredibly expensive computer?

The first is the hardware. While foldable phones have been around for some time—Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, arguably the first commercial success of a foldable device, was launched in 2019—the hardware is far more complicated than your slab candybar phone. Moving parts create weak points, cables need to flex and accommodate the movement, and the screens have yet to unfold to perfectly flat displays. The crease remains a point where users can feel and see a difference.

Apple typically adopts new technology late but doesn’t necessarily learn the lessons of its competitors. Wireless charging arrived on the iPhone many years after both Android and Windows Phone adopted the technology. Apple offered basic support for the standard but promoted its proprietary charging technology and faster peripherals… which were quietly dropped more than a year later without ever reaching the public.

There’s no guarantee that Apple arriving late with any foldable device will offer it any design advantage.

TWO

Then, you have the user interface. The current thinking is that Apple is looking at a device with a display of around 19 inches when unfolded. The display would likely open similarly to a current laptop, replacing the physical keys and trackpad with a touch-enabled display and presumably a pop-up keyboard for input and touch to replace the trackpad.

All of this requires something that macOS lacks: a touch interface. Apple has been obstinate in refusing to add touch to the Mac family, even as Windows and Linux laptops push forward. The focus on pushing the iPad as a portable computer platform must have some bearing on this. Still, the artificial line between iPadOS and macOS will need to be weakened if Apple moves to a foldable Mac.

Reviewers continue to highlight the iPad user interface as one of the platform’s weak points, even after 14 years of tablet computing from Cupertino. The precedent for a touch-based macOS UI is not stellar.

THREE

Finally, there’s the matter of who is going to buy it. Foldable displays are expensive enough at the nine-inch mark; Apple going to a nineteen-inch display quadruples the surface area on offer, meaning the hinge will need to be stronger and more durable to hold the larger mass in place and meet Apple’s quality control levels. The display price will be prohibitive, and that’s on top of the base MacBook Pro price. We could be looking at a laptop priced alongside the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro.

Yet this MacBook Pro may be an easier sell than Apple’s redefinition of AR into “Spatial Computing.” The benefits of increased real estate on a computer and the resulting productivity improvement are not in doubt. A folding nineteen-inch MacBook Pro is as good as carrying an extra monitor to plug into one of the current 13—or 14-inch models. There will be questions about the UI, especially for heavy-duty text entry and development, but there is already a roaring trade in Bluetooth keyboards for this very purpose.

The benefits of a folding MacBook, at least for end users, are clear. The question is whether Apple is ready to trigger a Mac revolution and deliver on user needs. And if it accepts this challenge, can it deliver what it promises?

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