‘It doesn’t work’: Steve Jobs explains why there was never a MacBook with a touchscreen and why I think you’d love what’s coming next
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If the rumors are true, next week could mark the introduction of the first touchscreen MacBooks. It is a Mac laptop with a touch screen. People will probably hug them and, no, I don’t think their arms will fall off.
Steve Jobs hated the concept of a touchscreen MacBook. During a product launch in October 2010, he 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]. Well, 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 do not want to be vertical. It gives a great demonstration, but after a short period of time you start to get fatigued and after a long period of time your arm wants to fall off; not working. It’s ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence the touch panels for a laptop. That’s why we’ve perfected our multi-touch trackpads over the years.”
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In brief:
- not working
- Touch requires horizontal screens
- Your arm gets tired
- your arm falls off
Jobs’ comments came just 10 months after he introduced the original iPad, which had some kind of weird keyboard accessory that put your hands too close to the screen, and two years before Microsoft introduced its first Surface Pro computers, which were basically tablets with detachable stands and keyboards.
Still, Jobs drew a line in the sand, and for more than a decade, Apple followed that line. Even as Apple seemed to split the difference with the Touch Bar on the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple executives insisted that a touchscreen wasn’t the right decision for Apple’s popular line of MacBooks.
As former global chief marketing officer Phil Schiller told Steve Levy back then:
“Our instincts told us not to [make sense to do a touchscreen]but what the heck, we could be wrong, so our teams worked on it several times over the years. We have absolutely come away with the belief that it is not the right thing to do. “Our instincts were right.”
But unless the rumors are very, very wrong, Apple is ready to prove Jobs and the rest of the old guard wrong and will unveil its first touchscreen MacBook Pro next week in Los Angeles.
Perhaps it’s an acknowledgment that all those Windows OEMs building 2-in-1 convertibles where the screen can be folded to the bottom of the laptop or even detached to become a standalone tablet aren’t wrong. There is a market for touchscreen computers.
What would Steve say?
But what would Steve Jobs think of this? The iconoclastic tech maverick, who died in 2011, would surely be dismayed. Apple devotees might claim, “This would never have happened on your watch.” Perhaps they unfairly blame new CEO John Ternus, an actual engineer and 25-year veteran of the company who must have been involved in the development of the alleged new touchscreen MacBook Pro. Surely Ternus was somehow involved in what was probably a 2-5 year development process, but credit or blame should go to now CEO Tim Cook, who likely greenlit the project.
If Steve Jobs were alive today, what would he say to Cook and Ternus about this? “Well, you better sell a line of sling accessories for all those sore muscles!”
No. In fact, I’m sure Steve Jobs would applaud innovation. You see, Jobs was often adamant about something until he wasn’t. He would insist that Apple had no interest in making a phone until the company delivered the iPhone.
There was something called Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” for a reason. Steve Jobs didn’t believe there was a need for an App Store and third-party apps (or at least he claimed so) before the App Store was introduced. Video on the iPod was a bad idea until the technology existed to support it. So it was great.
Steve Jobs believed in changing your mind. In an interview Jobs gave to Playboy on his 30th birthday, he said, “If you want to live your life creatively, as an artist, you don’t have to look back too much. You have to be willing to take everything you’ve ever done and whoever you’ve been and throw it away.”
Jobs was more of a marketer than an engineer, and perhaps more of an artist than a tactician. For him to change his mind, the technology had to inspire him, or for him to be satisfied, he would change the technology and specifications (see the last-minute switch from the original iPhone’s plastic screen cover to glass) until he was satisfied.
Sure, Jobs could say one thing on stage, and company management would parrot it for years until, like Jobs, the breakthrough came. And then, as Jobs often did, change his mind.
So if we see our first touchscreen MacBook Pro next week, don’t shed tears over Steve Jobs’ discarded design principles. I’m sure you’d say that’s how it should be and that a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen is, in fact, “magical.”
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