A touchscreen MacBook with a glowing Apple logo is a lot to take in at once. My first reaction is excitement, followed pretty quickly by a question: who is this actually for?
After using it, I think the answer is more specific than simply anyone who wants a new MacBook.
The Display Gets My Attention
The display is beautiful. Before I even decide how much I care about touching it, the screen itself is the part that makes me stop and look.
This is the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. Apple confirms that it uses tandem OLED with a touch display, so this is a different screen from the Liquid Retina XDR models.
Touch Makes More Sense When I Am Building Something
The touchscreen is, well, a touchscreen. It does not make every ordinary laptop task feel completely different.
For development, though, I have found a real use for it. We are working on an app, and interacting with it directly on the display has been useful. That is a much stronger reason to want touch than having another way to click around a browser.
That is where this MacBook starts to make sense to me. It fits a particular workflow rather than automatically becoming the one everyone should buy.
Final Thoughts
For the average person, I do not think the extra money is worth it just for touch. I would want the purchase to solve something I actually do, rather than hope I find a reason to use it later. Would this screen change your work enough to justify paying more, or would the excitement wear off?
See you in the next article!
