How will a MacBook with a foldable display work?

With reports claiming that Apple is developing a laptop with a foldable display, how exactly would such a device come to fruition?

Apple is exploring the possibility of offering foldable display laptops. The company is said to be in discussions with its suppliers for the device, which would have a display size of around 20 inches. Young added that this display size could support 4K or higher resolutions.

Extensive and accurate insights into Apple's plans, such as the iPhone 13 Pro's ProMotion display, the sixth-generation iPad mini's display size and bezels, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro's mini-LED displays with ProMotion, and more , so his report deserves to be taken seriously. Foldable laptops could form an entirely new product category for Apple, he said, but at this very early stage little is known about the mysterious new form factor, and Apple appears to have three main options for how to conceive the device. .

Full-screen MacBook

Perhaps the most obvious implementation of a foldable Apple laptop is the full-screen MacBook, with a display that covers the entire interior of a clamshell design. Young seemed to speculate that this implementation could result in a dual-purpose product, saying it could be used as a laptop with a full-size on-screen keyboard when folded, and as a monitor and used with an external keyboard when unfolded.

There are several downsides to the possibility of this design, including Apple's well-known reluctance to offer a touchscreen-based Mac, with company executives often publicly denying the possibility of it offering such a device. For example, former Apple design director Sir Jony Ive has said that touchscreen Macs "are not a particularly useful or appropriate application for Multi-Touch."

macOS is heavily optimized for indirect trackpad or mouse input, rather than touch. In 2020, Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi said Apple designed and improved the look of macOS so that it feels comfortable and natural across a range of devices and doesn't remotely consider things like touch. Not to mention potential ergonomic issues with touchscreen keyboards and trackpads. As a result, an all-touchscreen MacBook seems very disconnected from the company's thinking in recent years.

Foldable display with physical keyboard

A more left-of-center form factor could be a MacBook with a vertically longer display that folds at the hinge and connects to the device's physical keyboard connected. This solution can provide the benefits of a larger monitor and leave room for peripheral screen content, while still retaining the benefits of a physical keyboard and trackpad.

The design could also provide a way to bring back the Touch Bar without sacrificing physical function keys. In a separate interview, Federighi explained that the MacBook Pro form factor with Touch Bar avoids the ergonomic issues that come with other touchscreen laptops:

We really feel like the ergonomics of using a Mac are yours Putting your hands on a surface and raising your arms to poke at the screen is tiring.

Whether or not the Touch Bar is resurrected, extending the MacBook's display in this way would comply with Apple's ergonomic requirements of providing a new location for touch input without lifting your arm to touch the screen. .

In this case, a 20-inch display size might make more sense, possibly offering a larger MacBook Pro to sit above the 16-inch model in the lineup, similar to what the company did in 2006 The 17-inch MacBook Pro offered between 2011 and 2011.

Just a foldable iPad Pro?

The device is described as a "foldable laptop," but if it were a full-screen device, it might actually be a foldable iPad Pro. After all, full-screen touch-based laptops running macOS are likely to cannibalize the ‌iPad Pro‌, so a device running iPadOS might make more sense.

This idea seems to be in line with Apple's current prospects. Last year, when asked about touchscreen Macs, John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, pointed to the iPad:

We make the best touch-enabled computer in the world with iPad. It's completely optimized for this. The Mac is completely optimized for indirect input. We haven't really felt the need to change that.

There have been sketchy rumors about Apple developing a foldable iPad Pro in the past, so the idea isn't completely unheard of.

This implementation may also be consistent with rumors of a larger iPad Pro. Last summer, Apple was working on a larger iPad model that could further "blur" the lines between tablets and laptops:

I’m told that Apple’s engineers and designers are exploring a larger iPad that could be available as early as a few years. They're unlikely to show up next year - Apple is focusing its attention on a redesigned iPad Pro in the current size for 2022 - and they might not show up at all. But for many people, myself included, the big iPad will be the perfect device and will continue to blur the lines between tablets and laptops.

At least two Apple suppliers, BOE and LG Display, are preparing to provide Apple with larger OLED displays for future iPad models.

The larger display size may bring the iPad closer to the Mac than ever before, but software improvements may be needed to properly take advantage of the larger display. Apple last updated the ‌iPad Pro‌ in April 2021, but some users complained that iPadOS didn't take full advantage of the hardware the ‌iPad Pro‌ had to offer, making replacing a Mac more challenging than ever.

Apple ultimately needs to allow Mac apps and a Mac-like multitasking experience, with more flexibility in arranging app windows on iPad Pro. By the time the larger iPad becomes available, further iterations of iPadOS will likely improve the experience to better take advantage of the iPad's hardware.

Release Date

Young said Apple's foldable laptop could be released "later" than 2025, with 2026 or 2027 considered reasonable possibilities, but Apple is still possible Stop the project long before that happens.

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