The touchscreen MacBook Apple said it wouldn't make

Steve Jobs once said touchscreen laptops were a terrible idea. Now Apple is shipping one. The Verge's Antonio Di Benedetto tells us all about the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR, how MacOS is changing for touch, why a laptop user might want a touchscreen, and whether MacBook and iPad are destined to become one. Further reading: Hands-on with Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator DoorDash is acquiring Instacart for $17 billion Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches Samsung’s expecting the RAM shortage to last until at least 2028. Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, a flagship podcast of Tandem OLEDs. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show, did Apple finally launch the touchscreen MacBook we've been waiting for? And should we have been waiting for a touchscreen MacBook in the first place? But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, October 29th, 2026. DoorDash is buying Instacart, a deal that combines two of the biggest names in food delivery. DoorDash says it's paying approximately $17 billion for the purchase, and says it doesn't plan to combine the brands. So Instacart will live on as a grocery delivery thing. Delivery is a tough, low-margin business, and there's actually a lot of tough competition. Amazon bought Whole Foods and integrated it into its systems. Walmart delivers groceries now. Uber is getting further into this.

• 0:46David Pierce?

  And this is just a hard nut to crack from the outside. DoorDash's idea seems to be to combine its delivery system with Instacart's ongoing integrations into grocery stores and inventory systems. But this is a really big bet on delivery grocery. We'll see. Meanwhile, Google is seeing big growth in search thanks to AI, although that might be terrible for business. CEO Sundar Pichai said as part of the company's earnings that "query growth rate is at its highest point in five years", and that AI investments are a big part of that. But then Chief Business Officer Philip Schindler said Google is seeing lower monetization from its AI mode ads so far. Google also said it's working on a better AI agent for consumers to take on Muse and Dots and the rest, because even Google appears to have forgotten that it already has one of those called Spark.

• 1:30David Pierce?

  And finally, I have some bad Ray McGett news. A Samsung executive said that they expect, quote, "tight supply conditions to last into 2028", and that its 2027 supply of HBM RAM is already sold out. It turns out, the ever-increasing price of everything does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. You can read more about all this at theverge.com. That is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, October 29th.

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• 3:34David Pierce?

  One of the most famous Steve Jobs-isms was that touchscreen laptops are a bad idea. He made the case that nobody wants to reach out and poke their vertical screen, that touch should be horizontal, and that actually a touchscreen laptop was a terrible idea, and if you want it, you're just a stupid person. I'm paraphrasing, but that's more or less what it was. And then, fast forward to this week, Apple launched a touchscreen MacBook. It's not called the touchscreen MacBook. It's called the MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR, but it is very much a touchscreen MacBook. Antonio de Benedetto on our team was there. He has seen it, he has touched it, he has used it. So I asked him to come here and explain what Apple's doing here, why it decided to make a touchscreen MacBook, and whether this is even a good idea in the first place. Let's get into it.

• 4:20David Pierce?

  Antonio de Benedetto, welcome back.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  Hey, glad to be here.

• 4:24David Pierce?

  Fresh off a plane, back from LA. You've had quite a 24 hours, I suspect.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's been a... I'm actually, like, literally on the dot two hours ago, walked in on my door.

• 4:34David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  It's, yeah.

• 4:35David Pierce?

  Well, I appreciate you being here. Um, I want to start just with you as a laptop reviewer. You use a lot of laptops. I think the idea of a touchscreen on a computer is not new to anyone who has used a Windows computer in the last, like, 10 years. So I'm curious, for you, just in your normal life as a person who uses a laptop and who uses lots of laptops, do you touch your computer a lot?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Not really, actually. Even though I use plenty of Windows laptops that have touchscreens, plenty that are clamshells, just like the MacBook Pro. I don't use a whole lot of touch functions, but I do find them useful just kind of once in a while when you do feel the need, or whatever, the urge to tap at it. But when it comes to like, two-in-ones and convertibles, and like, those different form factors, Surface Pros, those kinds of things, like, that's when, like, I'll use a little more. Like, obviously, like, a Surface Pro is really kind of geared towards touch. And then, when you use like a Lenovo Yoga or something like that that has a stylus, and I really like that those styluses can be used on the screen or on the trackpad, and that's pretty cool. That's when I'll use it a little more. Otherwise, like, your typical clamshell, it's like, once in a while, a little peck

• 5:47Speaker 04

  or a little scroll, and that's mostly it.

• 5:48David Pierce?

  Yeah. So I'm of two minds about this new MacBook Pro. One is that, obviously, the fact that it has a touchscreen is really interesting. This is a thing people have been talking about, and ostensibly asking for it for a very long time. On the other hand, it seems to be maybe the least important or compelling new thing about this device, that in fact, they've made a bunch of other changes to this new MacBook Pro, all of which might matter more to someone's everyday computing experience than this. Is that fair? Like, am I right in feeling both of those things simultaneously?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  No, I think you're 100% right. It's like, the fact that it's lighter will affect people more every day than the fact that it has a touchscreen. Like, you will pick it up from the corner and be like, ah, this is like, much easier to pick up.

• 6:38David Pierce?

  The larger ones are like a full-pound lighter, right?

• 6:40Speaker 04

  I think it was a half-pound lighter for the 14-inch, and like, the better part of a pound. For, you know, it's significant.

• 6:47David Pierce?

  That's a big difference.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:48David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Uh, so like, it's all... That's gonna be like, probably the big... One of the biggest draws, that and the OLED, right? And then, like, and like, the lid logo is just like... The illuminated lid logo is just fun. Like, there's more whimsy and magic, like, in the lid logo than there is really in the touch functions. The touchscreen is just there. It's just nice to have.

• 7:08David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think it's very telling to me that this thing is called the MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR, not the MacBook Pro Touch. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's... This is not a thing Apple does unintentionally. And I think Apple obviously knows that if it's going to launch a touchscreen Mac, a lot of people are going to talk about it. And that's fine, and we're about to, at length. But it does seem to me like Apple is trying to communicate here that the job of this thing is not to have a touchscreen. The job of it is to do all of these other things, and also, somewhere deep down the spec list, is a touchscreen. Which, just to lay my own cards on the table, I think is the exact correct approach to adding a touchscreen to a Mac for reasons we will get into. But tell me about this thing.

• 7:51David Pierce?

  So obviously, you go to this event. As far as I can tell, they dragged a bunch of people out to LA to yammer at you for six minutes about a laptop, and then let you touch it. Is that more or less how it went? What was the actual event like?

• 8:04Speaker 04

  Jesus, was it actually six minutes?

• 8:06David Pierce?

  I don't know, it felt like six minutes.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  It felt... It was absolute chaos to try... You're trying to live blog it. Like, I was like, taking... I was literally like, taking pictures with my phone of Turnus onstage, and then like, squatting down to my laptop, which was on a seat, like, it's like, because there was... It was like, mostly standing room, and it was just... It was weird. Like, I don't... It's like, one of those things, like, why are we even doing the little presentation? Or why aren't we making it longer? Like, we don't need like... I don't need like, an hour and a half WWDC keynote, but like, maybe take a little more time. But I don't know, again, maybe there was just not enough to show, like, but they could have done more. They could have like, walked us through like, more of the macOS changes. I know there's not a ton, but like, they could have gone through a little more

• 8:52Speaker 04

  of the dynamic island stuff. It was, um... It was really all just a whirlwind. And then it was quickly the, you know, rush to the hands-on area.

• 9:00David Pierce?

  Did... John, so this moment, I would think, if I'm Apple, the reason to do this is, A, you want to make a big deal out of a new laptop, but this laptop is the sort of thing that Apple normally would just launch with a press release, right? Like, great new screen, it's even lighter. You don't need to fly out to LA to get this. So my assumption would be that Apple sees this as the moment to get up and sort of explain why they're doing a touchscreen Mac. And at least from what I can tell, and even what I've seen in follow-up coverage, there wasn't a lot of that. There's not a lot of, like, grand theories about touchscreen laptops coming out of Apple as part of this announcement.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  No, there's really not. Like, the best I can surmise why they had us come to LA was like, they did have like, a bunch of demos and like, in our briefings of like, all these different professionals that are using the touchscreen and using the new MacBook Pro. And, you know, they obviously geared towards professionals, and, you know, they had someone who was in fashion design. They had a photographer, they had video... I mean, they had people from ILM there, like, serious, like, serious pros who've been doing this stuff for like, 20, 30 years. And like, of course, it's always funny then, when you see like, they have them set up with like, an iPhone setup for... With some crazy lens on it. And I think that's like, Zeiss glass adapted to it. And it's just like, okay, like, you know, when they go back, that's not what they're using. But, um...

• 10:22Speaker 04

  But the interesting thing about those, some of those demos were like, the touchscreen was just like, it was as you would expect these pros to use it. It's like, oh, they occasionally are gonna tap on it. Like, you know, they were not really forcing like, oh, you gotta really, like, just show the, like, oh, this changes the way you use a laptop. It's now all about the touch. Like, no, it's just something you're gonna tap at or, you know, swipe at when it's convenient, when it makes sense in your workflow.

• 10:46David Pierce?

  Do you think that's the right answer? Like, again, this gets back to kind of my grand reaction to this whole thing, which is that I feel like there was certainly a world in which Apple launches this thing as sort of the grand conclusion of the iPad and the Mac running towards each other. And this is some huge new idea about computing.

• 11:07David Pierce?

  It doesn't feel like they did that at all. Instead, they're like, here's a couple of things that might work really well to do with touch. Swiping through timelines in video editing apps, pinching to zoom on large images. And that's it. And that's fine. And I think, to some extent, I think the reaction that I've seen is sort of disappointment that there isn't something bigger going on here. But even just back to the original question, like, I, nobody looks at Windows computers and is like, oh, it sucks that this thing has a touchscreen. They just don't mostly use it. And you use it when it's useful and you don't when it's not. That feels fine to me. And it seems like even the people who have already been using these things, even people who are being put out in front to show you how to use these things, are already embracing the idea that like, I might use this a couple of times a day for occasional things.

• 11:52David Pierce?

  This is not some reinvention of the MacBook in favor of touch.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's just, there's, there's really no fault to having this. Like, I saw, I saw like some commenters online that were like, just like, oh, terrible. I don't want, I don't want, it's like, I mean, okay, if you really hate it, you can go into the accessibility menu and turn it off.

• 12:10David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  But like, if you, but like, you know what? If you don't like the touchscreen, you just don't touch it. Like, it's, it's, it's far enough from your hands that you're, you're probably not going to accidentally touch it. You're not going to pick it up from the screen and be like, oh, no. So it's really not that big of a deal, but it's just one of those things like, it'd be nice to have when you occasionally want to use it or occasionally need it. I mean, they had like a music producer who was talking about, you know, he was doing some, some sequencer beat stuff that, you know, and made the example like, well, I'm in a hotel room, you know, like, and some of these people like, busy and on the go all the time. Like, it's just kind of nice to not have to go like plugging in other things. Like, if he, it's just working on something, but then occasionally it's like, you wouldn't really tap out a beat on a haptic trackpad, you know, and maybe even a keyboard key is maybe not ideal, you know?

• 12:56Speaker 04

  It's, a screen kind of works for that. So yeah, it's just kind of a nice to have. And I guess like, like, we were kind of expecting like, okay, like, but if they're finally doing this, like, how is, like, is Apple going to make it better? Are they going to like, add their magic to it? And it's just like, no, because there probably isn't really any magic to add. And there's really, I don't know, maybe in the future, we could see something new and better. I hope that an Apple pencil support will come eventually, or there will be a new pencil that's supported. I also would love to see like, you know, a different form factor or whatever, but it's like, I don't know, Apple usually takes the boring route for a while.

• 13:33David Pierce?

  I assume as you ask somebody why it doesn't do those things, every Apple executive will just say iPad to you over and over. Did you, did you get anyone to do this to you?

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, that exactly happened. So I ran into John Turnus at, at the event.

• 13:49David Pierce?

  As you do.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  As, you know, just, yeah. There was a flock of people following him that were lining up to take selfies and the line just kind of naturally formed in my direction. I'm like, well, I guess I'm now in line to talk to the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. So, yeah, I just said hi and talked to him. And when I mentioned like that, it seems very, he's like, what do you think? And I was like, seems, it's a laptop. And then, and it's like.

• 14:13David Pierce?

  I can't tell if he would love or hate that characterization of it.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  I said, I really, what I really said is like, it seems, it seems very normal. And I meant that as like, just straight that, like, I, it was really my way of saying like, I'm very whelmed, you know, like, and, and yeah, probably wasn't thrilled. I don't know. But when I mentioned like, you know, pencil support would be nice, but you know, he's like, quickly, quickly got into this, the CEO talk of like, we've got the iPad and it's the best for, that's, I'm like, okay, all right. Fine, fine, fine. I'm like, like usual, when you talk to CEOs, like, ah, I regret saying anything. He was very nice. It was fine.

• 14:46David Pierce?

  I assume, I like, if I'm, if I'm a betting man, I would put $10 right now on the, the MacBook will eventually get Apple pencil support.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 14:57David Pierce?

  But for now, the answer is the iPad and that is, that's a fine answer as far as it goes.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  And it could, that could be the answer for years and, and like, who knows? And, but I would, I would love to, to have like, imagine like you hadn't, you had a MacBook that like, the Apple pencil could attach to the side and charge. And, you know, like, maybe the, the screen could come forward, so it could be at an angle, like when, like what Microsoft did years ago with the Surface Laptop Studio. But like, you know, I don't know, do it and make it work and continue selling it. Or a two in one or, or something like, there, there are downsides to all those. They're all kind of compromised form factors, but even if you just put an Apple pencil supported and like, just didn't change anything, but like, let me do like the Lenovo style, or at least I can use on the trackpad as well. So it's like, you have a Wacom tablet all the time. Like, again, those are all just kind of cool things and maybe they'll do that stuff eventually,

• 15:46Speaker 04

  but who knows how long it'll take. And, you know, the same with like, they're starting with these most expensive MacBook Pros, like, okay, how long are we going to wait? Is it just going to be the next generations of MacBook Air, MacBook Neo that, that get touchscreens? Are they going to make us wait even longer on that too? Who, who knows?

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• 17:39David Pierce?

  Is there anything in macOS changing because of touchscreens? Like, it seems like they, they came very close to just saying, nothing has changed. Here's a touchscreen. The touch acts like a trackpad. Go nuts. Have at it. They didn't, they didn't go all the way there. There are, there is something in macOS that changed because of touch, right? What, what is actually on the list?

• 18:00Speaker 04

  There's some, there's some little things, like, the big ones, like, when you go to tap, like, the, the traffic lights in the top left corner of a, of a, of a window for like minimize or, or close the window, like, they magnify as you go to tap them. And.

• 18:12David Pierce?

  Can I just say, I hate that. Like, I actually think it's, it's kind of the only thing to do for these apps. And I get why they did it. And I get why even on the iPad, it is, it is helpful to have that kind of consistency to know where to go to change and shape the window. It does not work well or seamlessly on the iPad. And based on the stuff that I've seen on the Mac, it's, it's going to be messy. I just don't think this is the thing anybody's going to do on a Mac. And that's fine.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, I think when I'm going to minimize something, I'm just going to probably still like, my, if my, unless for some reason my hand is not like, able to reach the trackpad or it's, or the screen is closer, like, but it's, it's fine. Like, the magnification is fine. Like, it's, it's nothing special. It's okay, like, you kind of, you did the bare minimum and that's okay. You know, other menus and stuff, like, it's just all the same thing. It's like, kind of magnifies a little bit. The, the, the touch gestures on the screen, like, I loaded up the, the system setting for the touch display and it's, it's all the same gestures that you have in the trackpad. Like, you can, you can do like multi-finger swipes to like swipe between desktops. You can, you know, do your show apps, show desktop, like all those swipes up, swipe down with, you know, three or four fingers or whatever.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  And it's like, that's exactly just from the trackpad, just you can do it on the screen. And I don't know who's going to do that, but it's there. You know, I guess if you're already tapping away on the screen, then it's, it'll handy to have those, you know, to move to the trackpad.

• 19:34David Pierce?

  I'm torn on that one, actually, and I'm, I'm curious how you think about it because there is a, there's something about that that makes sense to me in the sense that most people don't know those gestures, right? Most people don't know what to use three fingers or what to use four fingers and how to go up and how to go down. And that's just a piece of the macOS experience that is just lost on most people. And there's something about doing it with touch that I think is a little more knowable and understandable, just because it's more direct. And I, I think, I saw a bunch of videos of people sort of flicking apps to the sides in order to tile them, right? And like, native Windows resizing on Mac is a disaster. If you just want to put two apps side by side, it is very bad and you essentially can't. And so the idea of just being able to do it with my finger actually makes quite a

• 20:19David Pierce?

  lot of sense to me. But it doesn't, it doesn't feel like Apple took the next turn about how do we actually make some of this stuff more discoverable? Like, the fact that you still have to remember to spread your fingers to do something is, it's, it's better on a touchscreen than it is on a trackpad because it's at least more direct input and feedback, but it's not quite the, we can make this as discoverable with touch as we could on an iPad or an iPhone. I don't know, it just seems like maybe this is something Apple still has some work to do on, but I wanted that to be a more useful new feature on the touchscreen than I think it is so far.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's definitely room to do to do more. I do use those gestures like all the time on a trackpad. So like maybe I'm in like the slight minority of that, but it's like, I'm used to them. And yeah, I, yeah, the windowing still, it's like install, you know, a third party app. Like it's just so much faster, like the, it was, I was, I was, I dragged the window to the side. And like, I did the same thing that happens when you use the native windowing in in macOS and you don't use third party. It's like, you know, it brought me to the next desktop and like, no, stop. Like, I hate that what happens with a trackpad. Nevermind touchscreen and I'm still holding it on the screen. Like this is, I hate being stuck here and have to go all the way to the left.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  But yeah, there's, there's plenty, plenty more to do. And I don't know, it's like, maybe one day get there and really revitalize the OS for it. Or not, I don't know, I could, I could see it where maybe like that, that stuff maybe comes when like all the MacBooks have touchscreens. I don't know.

• 21:59David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah, that, that is a challenge here. And actually, to that point, Apple talked about some of its apps being, you know, optimized for touch and that other apps are coming along that are also optimized for touch. What does being optimized for touch even mean at this point?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  I think it really, I mean, it's basically just like, okay, they showed like, like, I think DaVinci Resolve, like someone was doing some color, some, some, you know, some coloring. And they had a film clip like shot in log, a log profile. And it's like, okay, let's, let's, let's do the, let's do the coloring. And it's like, they just showed how like, you know, when you have your, you know, your, your color wheels. And it's like, okay, when you use a mouse, it's like this and you know, it's like, and then when you just tapped it on the screen, how it like, it expanded a little bit and like, gave you more room to work it. And you know, so that way your finger is not blocking it. That's probably enough to say it's touch optimized. Like that's, that is, I can't argue with that.

• 22:55David Pierce?

  And that's all very iPad-y, right? The idea that if I press and hold on something, it sort of expands to fill more space. Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 04

  Exactly. And, and then, um, you know, like another, another good example where like an app developer, and there's actually a lot of cool things too, like, you know, kind of separate, but like iPhone mirroring, you can just use the mirror iPhone, like an iPhone on the screen. And that was kind of cool. And like, it's just like, that's like, they showed it and it's like, that's so obvious. Like, I'm almost like facepalming, like duh, like, but it's like, yeah, that works. That's good. And that makes iPhone mirroring better. It actually, it does. Like I've tried iPhone mirroring, it's like, just to go home is a pain in the ass, you know? Like, yeah. So it's like, okay, cool. And then like a developer developing for the iPhone. Now, this is something I could, like, I could see developers really latching on to is like you, you know,

• 23:44Speaker 04

  could be playing, like you could be testing something, testing your app. And like, then you can, you have the iPhone display right there, like in the test. And then you're just like tapping on it and doing it right there. It's like, ah, okay. Also, very cool example. Not the things that people, the most people are going to do, but you know, useful.

• 24:02David Pierce?

  I do think the world in which Apple wants to bring more of the iPhone and the iPad, particularly the apps to Macs, is a world in which touchscreens become more useful and more important. Right? Like Apple really wants you to be able to run iPad apps on your Mac and to be able to run widgets and to be able to do the same kind of interactive stuff. And I think as we've all experienced, that stuff just doesn't work as well on a laptop in part because it doesn't have a touchscreen. There, there's just some things, like you said, I was going to bring up the going home gesture. Because it's so annoying. It's such a basic thing to do with a touchscreen that is essentially impossible on a laptop with a, with a keyboard and trackpad.

• 24:45David Pierce?

  And so having this thing that, again, I cannot emphasize the fact that that means you will use it three times a day for a grand total of two seconds. Right? But it's, but it is useful. And I think about this in, it's such just another speck of the laptop. It is not a big new idea about how things work. Maybe it should be. I think that there are a lot of things I'm curious to see about this thing, about the, the sort of backing and forthing from screen to trackpad. Cause I think what I find even when I'm using an iPad with a magic keyboard and trackpad is that I tend to get in one zone or another, right? That either I'm kind of hands on the device, doing a lot of touch things in a row, or I'm mostly living in keyboard and trackpad land.

• 25:29David Pierce?

  And actually what's annoying is the backing and forthing. This is why people who use mice learn keyboard shortcuts, right? Like moving your hands is bad, but in general, when you're using a computer, the more you can have your hands in the same place, the more productive and efficient you can be. And so I think for Apple to look at this and say, okay, this is a thing you're going to do very occasionally in very small amounts is all fine and good. And then I look at like the demo of the person playing the piano on a MacBook. And I'm just like, well, A, no one's ever going to do this. This is nothing. This demo is nothing. The person who needs this, and there are people who need it, 100% guaranteed already owns an iPad. This is, this is not a use case that exists for somebody who doesn't already own an iPad.

• 26:12David Pierce?

  And so that's the part where it's like, maybe this is just Apple feeling like it has to explain the sort of nth degree of what this could be. But it sounds like even the stuff that's being optimized is basically like really tiny visual changes and accept multiple inputs at a time. So you can use 10 fingers instead of one cursor. That might be as far as this ever needs to go in order to be useful. And actually going further might be worse. We might end up in some weird uncanny valley where it's trying to be both things to everyone all the time. And I actually think that might be the worst place for this to land.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I mean, it's possible and it would, I think it would make sense then as to like, why Apple's so like stringent about like, if you want a pencil, that you buy an iPad. You know, it's like, it's, it goes back to like the whole, like, you know, buy your mom an iPhone thing, right? The way, the way that they try to like separate everything. And yeah, it's to get you to buy more stuff and all that stuff too. But like, I understand why, like they, they want to keep things separate and to prevent that like mishmashy middle, where it's like, everything just gets kind of, you kind of muddy the waters. But I don't know. Yeah, I think like I've, I've been thinking about like, okay, where, where went, what are my workflows? Like when I, where will I touch the screen more frequently? And like, I was thinking like, cause I feel like as we were, you know, doing all our run and gun

• 27:29Speaker 04

  coverage and editing photos, I'm like, you know, I did the hands on area and I do my usual thing where I like, I just go to the side of the room and plop my laptop down on like my backpack and like kneel until someone yells at me to move. And I'm like quickly editing photos and I'm thinking of my culling process and stuff. And like, in those situations, actually, maybe I would start tapping the screen. And that might actually speed me up in some ways because I know my Lightroom classic, like, you know, keyboard shortcuts and stuff. And it's like where I'm making my picks and I'm, I'm double checking focus. And it's like, actually, maybe some of that where I would just, if I would just double tap the screen to zoom into a specific spot, um, you know, it's like, I could maybe I keep one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the screen and maybe that'll work. And I mean, I'll have to see, I'll have to test that myself and see.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  But it's like, but the thing is then of course, like when I'm back at home and I'm on a monitor, it's like, well, now I don't have any of that. So it's like, it's like, it's, I think it's going to be, it's just like that, that music producer in the hotel room example, like it's just, again, it's going to be these part-time little things that you do, maybe for convenience, maybe because in some cases it's faster. But it's going to be this very part-time thing. And like, I mean, like another example, like a thing where it's like, where touch gets, it might get weird and there'll be questions. So what becomes like, always like this or like, so you can swipe down from the top to like, bring it, like call it like Siri AI or like, that's also basically spotlight. And I was told like that if you like, it's, it's still spotlight.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  So it's like, if you do the command space shortcut, it also comes up at the top. Move it and it'll remember where you were. Okay. So it'll stay there. But then I, I didn't get a chance to test this, but it's like, well then what happens if you swipe down from the top? Does it just like dart back to where it was or just come back from the top? And then you have to move it again. It's like, it's always going to be like that thing of like, people are going to have to maybe relearn, like get the quirks down. And obviously we'll have to do that when we test and review it.

• 29:22David Pierce?

  That one, that's a really interesting example. I would also put that on the list of doesn't matter, no one's ever going to do it. It's just the idea that somebody who is a sophisticated enough computer user to use spotlight is going to think that the best thing for them to do is take their hands off the keyboard, reach up and just pull down from the top. Never going to happen. Never going to happen. It's fun. Just enjoy, enjoy your keyboard shortcuts and live your life. It's going to be fine.

• 29:47David Pierce?

  I, I do think, I think it's going to be fascinating to see how this changes the prices of devices as it comes to the rest of the lineup. Like presuming that over the next couple of years, this thing will work its way across the rest of the MacBook lineup. If it, if, if touchscreen is all the things we've been talking about and nothing else, and changes the price of the MacBooks by $0.00, I think this is a smashing success. It solves all the problems it needs to solve and no more and causes no other problems. If this is now a thing that becomes a sort of base feature that makes every MacBook $100 or $200 more expensive, I think our, our expectations for it will go up and should. And it'll be really interesting to see if Apple can reach those.

• 30:29David Pierce?

  Like, my assumption is that Apple picked a wholly new device with other changes to launch this on so that people didn't just say, oh, and the touchscreen costs X number of extra dollars in order to avoid that discussion. Because the question of do I want a touchscreen for a hundred more dollars? What does it actually do for me? Looks very different for Apple than look at this remarkable new device with an amazing new display that's, you know, lighter and thinner, but also.

• 30:57David Pierce?

  Down the line has a touchscreen. So I think my, our questions about what does this thing need to do to be a success for Apple? Feels like they're going to get much higher stakes as this thing works its way around the rest of the Mac lineup.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. There's a, there's a lot of questions to be, like, it's, it's kind of weird. Like, if you think about how like, this is like, this, these are existing chips, right? We, they launched these, the M5 Pro and the M5 Max chips earlier this year. So it's like, what, and now we have both? Like, we have both the current laptops and the, and the, these new ones. And it's like, a little weird. So like, at what point do these merge back?

• 31:33David Pierce?

  I'll be honest, Antonio, I gave up four years ago trying to figure out why Apple puts chips into laptops. There's just, none of it makes, you could have been like, it has an M2 Pro Ultra. And I'd be like, sick, I bet it's really fast. I, I have so, I'm so, it is so impossible to figure out what chips live where and why. But the good news is that they all seem to be very fast. And that's about as far, that's about as far as I've gotten.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Dude, when they, when they started, when there was a rumor for like a hot minute that they were going to call it the MacBook Studio. I'm like, fucking don't go, don't do that. No, like, just like, not yet. Like, I don't know, I'm just not ready for that. Because like, like, look, I know this is like, too much like writer's brain, but like, when you have to write around, having to write like, M5 Pro, MacBook Pro, like, it's just, it's just terrible and the names are bad. Like, sorry, and the, and the, don't get me started on ProLED, XDR, god damn. But, you know, like, I don't know what the plan is. Like, in terms of like, like, like, they've got now like a split of these MacBook Pros at the high end. And yeah, like, if, like, you're getting a bunch for $400, at least. You're getting the OLED, which is like, that's a big deal. And you're getting a much lighter laptop, also a big deal. Okay, so what happens with the next rev?

• 32:41Speaker 04

  Like, what do these Mac, okay, so do we, they didn't just drop that and this becomes the, but then is it going to stay at that price? Like, that sucks. Like, these things are really, like, they just got more expensive earlier this year because of Rami Getten. And now it's more expensive. So like, I don't know. And there's a lot to figure out, like you said, because like, if it becomes like, oh, you, a MacBook Neo 2 is this price, but then this price with a touchscreen. It's like, well, that also sucks. Like, on the Windows side, you, you, you do see plenty of that. There are lots of like, you know, like, the certain model at Best Buy, like, that's the touchscreen model. But like, if you go to like Lenovo or Dell's website, like, they'll, they'll, like, you know, if you like, cut this backroom deal, it feels like you buy, you can buy a crap one. You know, it's like, and it's like, it's like, that doesn't have a touchscreen. And sometimes it's not as bright, too.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  It's like the, the, the 300nit model, which is like, just barely passable. It's like, no touch, and it's like, bare bones, that's your entry level price. And it's like, then you get into like, the whole like, oh, it's 400nits and it's got a touchscreen. It's like, or then you could step up more, it's 500nits and it's OLED and it's touchscreen. It's like, it's a mess. And like, usually Apple's pretty good about avoiding those messes, but like, the Apple configurator is like, like, for MacBooks is more complicated these days than it's ever been. And just like, there's, because there's more Macs than there's ever been. So I, I feel like they're going to have to like, maybe like, kind of reset the line at some point when the touchscreens are all around. And, but I have no idea like what that means for pricing. It's going to be just a, it's a, it looks, it looks messy.

• 34:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, it does. And I think the, the question of, it's probably useful at this point, that the question of do I want a touchscreen is, is sort of made for you on every model, right? You, you either have it on the one that you buy, or you buy anything else and it doesn't have it. And we, we can litigate whether it is a requirement of these devices going forward and what that means and looks like some other time. I think that is, that's probably helpful in a lot of ways, because I agree, there are already too many inscrutable choices to be made trying to buy a laptop these days.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and, you know, Apple's very good at this game, the, the whole like, you know, you click a couple of updates, upgrades, and it's like, oh, well then, I might as well just, you know, they, they get you in the funnel, right? And it's like, maybe I should just step up to the, you know, M5 Pro from the M6 or whatever it might be. You know, it's like, and yeah, they can get you.

• 34:49David Pierce?

  Indeed. All right, we're going to have to test this thing. I'm, I'm very excited to actually figure out what it's like to live with one of these things. So we'll get one eventually, we'll talk about it. Until then, Antonio, good to see you, buddy.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, always a pleasure. Thanks, David.

• 35:04Speaker 06

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• 36:26David Pierce?

  All right, before we go, I have one more thing for you. So all the way back in December of 2025, almost a year ago now, Pebble, the rebirthed Pebble making smartwatches and other stuff, announced this thing called the Index O1, which is basically a smart ring with a button on it. And the first time Eric Michakovsky, the creator of Pebble, showed it to me was at CES the year before. And he showed me this thing that basically he used as a voice recorder. You hold it up to your mouth, you press a button, you talk, and it transcribes it onto your phone. And his was saving it into like a notes app.

• 37:01David Pierce?

  As a just dyed-in-the-wool productivity app nerd slash psychopath, I wanted this thing immediately. I pre-ordered one the minute that I could. I think they're, they're $75. And then for months, months and months and months and months and months, I sat around waiting for my Index to show up. It finally did. This week, while I was in Tennessee, there was a package sitting on my door for like three days, and it was, it was the Index. And it's this very simple little black ring with a button. I'm pretty on record as thinking smart rings are a really good idea. I think in a, in an AI-first world, if you believe that AI is going to be the way that we mediate everything, having an input system that is really fast and really simple becomes really important, right? You, you just need to be able to get ideas out of your head.

• 37:46David Pierce?

  You need to be able to record information as it comes. You need to be able to just dump stuff into a system as quickly as possible in order for AI to be able to work with that system. I think a lot of the devices that are coming out to do this kind of thing are intrusive and gross and bad. Like what, what Bee is doing at Amazon, where it's just this constantly recording wearable that is always on and always listening and giving you actionable insights about your daily day. Like, I hate that stuff. I am uninterested in having that as part of my life. But the idea of the Index, which is very personal, it, it's only designed to record a really small amount of space around it, is that you, you hold it up to your mouth and you press the button.

• 38:25David Pierce?

  It's not recording ever unless you press the button, and you press the button and you talk, and then it sends it to your phone, it transcribes it, and it does whatever you want with it. I think is the right way to think about this stuff. AI as a personal sort of introverted technology is really interesting to me. AI as an extroverted, affecting other people technology fills me with bad feelings. But anyway, so I set the Index up. Now it does things like integrate with Apple reminders, so that I can say, remind me to take my allergy meds at 9:00 PM tonight. And it will just send a reminder to my phone with a, with an information to do that at 9:00 PM tonight, and I'll get a reminder through Apple reminders. That's awesome. It'll take notes. I also used Claude code to rig it up to the note-taking app that I use called capacities.

• 39:08David Pierce?

  So now I can say, remember I need to buy bananas at the store? And it'll put it into my daily note in capacities that I need to buy daily notes at the store. Although ironically, the system sometimes gets confused about where things are supposed to go. So there's a decent chance that thing that I just said is going to show up in Apple reminders. The system is not perfect, but Pebble built this as a hacky thing. It has MCP access for AI stuff. It has a web hook that you can link to almost anything. The, the combination of this very simple microphone, the Pebble app, and any kind of AI vibe coding tool gives you all kinds of stuff to do. If you're an Android user, it's even better. You can do things like control music, you can integrate with your calendar better.

• 39:49David Pierce?

  There's all kinds of cool stuff that you can do that just Pebble doesn't have system access to on iOS that it does on Android. Anyway, I've had this thing for like 24 hours. It's immediately my favorite gadget ever. I feel like a spy, just like constantly holding it up and saying inane things to myself about what's going on all day. It's delightful. And I'm more convinced than ever that smart rings are going to be the thing. I don't know if it's this one, I don't know if it's Sandbar, another company I've covered, we've talked about smart rings before. I think smart rings have a really interesting space in the future of everything. Anyway, that's it for the show. Thank you again to Antonio for being here, and thank you as always for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feedback, if you have a use case for a touchscreen MacBook that feels like this scratches, I really want to hear about it.

• 40:33David Pierce?

  I think this is going to be a thing where a lot of people have one or two very specific things that they want to do, that this might be useful for. And if you are one of those people, I want to hear all about it. You can email us, [email protected], you can call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. Anything and everything, we love hearing from you. And as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support everything we're up to here at The Verge is to subscribe to The Verge. Theverge.com/subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters, it gets you all of our coverage of MacBooks and iPads and everything else. Theverge.com/subscribe. Thank you in advance. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Starcraft. See you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

• 41:16Speaker 02

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• 42:38Speaker 06

  From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.