Don’t expect touchscreen Macs at this week’s ‘hello, again’ event (or anytime in the near future)

We may see touchscreen iMacs some day, but it won’t be at Apple’s “hello, again” event on Thursday — although Scott Tzu of Orange Peel Investments disagrees. 

In a Seeking Alpha article , he says the event “is going to be a full-scale reinvention of the Mac computer and we think this could be significantly important in driving consumer interest in the product line prior to the holiday.” Touch screen iMacs and MacBooks are the “first and foremost” items he’s expecting. 

“We expect to see Mac computers that you can also touch similar to the way you can with your iPad or iPhone. This development has been a long time coming. While most other major PC manufacturers have already put together computers that work with touch screens, Apple has lagged the competition in implementing this technology,” he writes. “We certainly don’t think it was because they don’t have the means to do it, rather we likely believe they’re developing something slightly different and better than the industry standard, as the company tends to do, but still something that will allow users to use touchscreen.”

This may happen someday, but if I were a betting man, I’d place big money on no touchscreen Mac announcements anytime soon. And my experience with the Zorro Macsk doesn’t make me pine for a touchscreen iMac. 

Meanwhile, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says we’ll see new Mac laptops at this week’s “hello, again” but no new iMacs or a Thunderbolt Display announcement. He doesn’t say why, but says those won’t arrive until the first half of 2017. I hope he’s wrong, but you can check back Thursday morning for my “hello, again” predictions.