Steve Jobs: touchscreen Macs "ergonomically terrible"
The much-anticipated MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display arrived today with touch support, "a whole new way to interact with your work" according to Apple. Steve and Craig were somewhat less enthusiastic:
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"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work," Jobs said at the company's "Back to the Mac" event in 2010. "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off," Jobs continued. "It doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible."
iOS app porting won't make Mac feel like iPhone, Apple's Federighi says
After a very clear "no" delivered during the keynote, Federighi once again denied any plans to merge iOS and macOS, or develop a touchscreen-equipped Mac.
"We really feel that the ergonomics of using a Mac are that your hands are rested on a surface, and that lifting your arm up to poke a screen is a pretty fatiguing thing to do," he said. "I don't think we've looked at any of the other guys to date and said, how fast can we get there?"
[Emphases added.]
❧ 2026-10-28