Apple has said that Macs will never sport touchscreens. However, the the folks over at Handy Abovergleich have put together some intriguing concept pics imagining what a MacBook Touch (pictured) would look like. This gave me an idea for a Mac peripheral that I’d love to see: the Magic TouchPad.
It would be an enlarged version of the Magic TrackPad with two built-in OLED screens. A small, narrow screen would house the Touch Bar present on the latest MacBook Pros. A bigger screen would support gesture controls — as the Magic TrackPad already does — as well as offer 3D Touch for haptic key feedback. This would, among other things, allow you to use the Apple Pencil with a Mac.
The Apple Pencil could also be operated as a joystick, a rotational controller, or other input devices in addition to serving as a touch sensor input device. For example, on-screen content could be rotated, tilted, or otherwise manipulated using rotational controller and joystick input from the inertial sensor.
Apple could still offer a separate, less expensive Magic TrackPad for those who don’t want such features. And this would allow Macs with touch input without having touchscreens on the desktops and laptops themselves.
I’d buy such an accessory. Would you?