// THE VERGE — MOBILE & WEB
Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator
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Apple spent more than 15 years resisting a touchscreen MacBook, until now.
Apple spent more than 15 years resisting a touchscreen MacBook, until now.
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For more than 15 years, Apple has had a pretty simple answer to the idea of a touchscreen MacBook: no. Yesterday, Apple finally decided to think different and announce one anyway. “You’ve gotta touch it to believe it,” says Apple CEO John Ternus. He might be right: I haven’t yet touched it, and I still can’t quite believe it.
Steve Jobs first called touchscreen laptops “ergonomically terrible” in 2010, arguing that “touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical” and that using one for an extended period of time makes “your arm want to fall off.” He wasn’t wrong about the fatigue aspect of using a touchscreen laptop for long periods of time, but he missed the hybrid laptop opportunity Apple is now exploring.
Apple’s resistance to touchscreen Macs has been surprisingly consistent ever since Jobs’ comments. Tim Cook famously called Microsoft’s idea of hybrid laptops and tablets a compromise. “Anything can be forced to converge,” Cook said in 2012. “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”