MacBook Pros Might Soon Have Touchscreens - DTNS 5127  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: MacBook Pros Might Soon Have Touchscreens - DTNS 5127 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/133596d5-26cf-4fab-b9f4-488033c0aa7e ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **MacBook Pros May Add Touchscreens** - Apple is reportedly planning touchscreens for high-end MacBook Pros with M6 chips and OLED displays in late 2026 or early 2027. - The change may raise prices by several hundred dollars and will debut on Pro models before broader rollout. Transcript: Jason Howell I'm sitting here with my MacBook Pro. I'm touching the screen. It's not doing anything. But you know what? In the future, it might. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is reporting that Apple will introduce touchscreens into its upcoming MacBook Pro models, some of them anyways, with a projected release sometime in late 2026, maybe even early 2027. Still a ways out. This actually backs up an earlier report that we heard by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from last month, kind of alluding to the same thing. The updated laptops will feature M6 chips. So this will be part of the M5 just came out. So the next generation of chips, along with OLED screens and a reinforced hinge and screen hardware. That's really meant, according to the report, to improve the stability of the device. If you're reaching up and you're touching the screen and everything, maybe that hinge needs to be better to provide resistance against that type of control. That's what that's all about. Gurman's report also states that the new laptops will incorporate thinner and lighter frames. So somehow these things are going to get lighter. That's nice. The display will no longer have the notch up top. So if you love the notch, sorry to say, it's going to be replaced by a hole punch design that surrounds the front facing camera. Don't worry, though. None of this means that the keyboard and the touchpad are going to go away. I wouldn't have assumed that, but I think it's important to state that. Touchscreen does not mean it suddenly disappears. But do worry if you don't like spending more money on things, because Gurman says that these changes are likely to increase the cost by several hundred dollars to account for the higher End components. Now, Apple is expected to roll out these features to the high end MacBook Pros first, and it's going to monitor market demand from there. ([Time 0:02:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f1103bc0-06c6-4a66-b41c-6e4cd6c92cf9)) - **Touchscreen Speed Wins Small Tasks** - Jenn Cutter recounts using a ThinkPad X220 with a touchscreen and pen and finding touch faster for quick menu navigation. - She says touching the screen often feels quicker than using a mouse for some tasks. Transcript: Jenn Cutter I am PC and learning Linux and I'm learning Linux on an old ThinkPad X220, which has a touchscreen, but it's also one of those ones that has like the touchscreen. Old laptop with a touchscreen. It's also one of the ones with a pen, like you could flip the top half around and use it also as a writing surface. And to jump to the obvious question, like I am playing with PopMOS as my Linux distro because I'm looking to leave Windows. But every time I switch back from my touchscreen to my regular laptop, which is just running Windows 10, I do actually reach out to touch the screen because for some things it is just faster If you're navigating through menus really quickly. You, you could do it faster touching than, uh, with a mouse. ([Time 0:05:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c5d1841-a3f5-4b05-bb66-46563bb67844)) - **Touch Is Nice, Not Always Necessary** - Jason Howell finds touchscreens non-essential but occasionally very useful for tasks like scrolling without using the trackpad. - He describes them as a 'nice to have' rather than a must-have feature. Transcript: Jason Howell Definitely inclined to believe Now, this would be significant from the perspective of Steve Jobs famously decrying a move to touch screens in the laptop. He always wanted to say like, absolutely not. Laptop is a different type of device. No touchscreen on the laptop. But like you say, we've seen a lot of other laptops do this. You know, my MacBook Pro is primarily what I use, but I've used a lot of Chromebooks in my past. I've relied on them that many times throughout my career. And having the touchscreen, which pretty much most of the Chromebooks that I use do, they don't all include touchscreen capability. But the Google's, you touchscreen laptops did. And I would say that in my use, having the touchscreen was never necessary for my use. However, there were definite moments where I was really happy that I had it. Like it wasn't a 100% of the time I'm using the touchscreen all the time, gorilla arms and all that kind of stuff. ([Time 0:05:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7e69198d-3968-4b0a-9388-8e190216735f)) - **Look For Software, Not Just Touch** - Expect Apple to pair touchscreen hardware with software features drawn from iPadOS and iPhone experience. - Don’t assume the laptop will only add touch; watch for unique software integrations. Transcript: Jenn Cutter I'd also be surprised if Apple launches with just a touchscreen because that's not something they do. I feel like they're going to have some extra software thing to make it extra cool because they have all of this experience with touchscreens with the iPads and the iPhones and stuff. So if they're going to cram that in a laptop, would be surprised if it ends up as like just a touchscreen. ([Time 0:11:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b67b133-f125-4c40-b1aa-5aee42ac2602)) - **Mass Doxing Of U.S. Officials Reported** - A hacker group published personal data of hundreds of U.S. officials, including DHS and DOJ personnel, on Telegram. - The release may be tied to offshoots of groups like Scattered Spider and Lapsus and raises safety concerns. Transcript: Jason Howell A group of hackers published highly personal data, including the names, phone numbers, and addresses of hundreds of U.S. Government officials on Telegram. Group appears to be, it's kind of confusing on the reporting here, from scattered lapsus hunters. Also the calm. I think maybe they're part of the same group, but still labeled differently. Not sure I entirely understand that. But anyways, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, ICE, and nearly 700 people from DHS are included in the information dump. ([Time 0:17:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30980bef-7f42-46ed-b504-f238b09503a7)) - **Anthropic Ships CloudSkill For Task Automation** - Anthropic launched CloudSkill for Cloud AI to create folders of instructions and assets to tailor model behavior for tasks like Excel handling and brand adherence. - The tool lets companies build agents that automate workflows using Claude's coding environment. Transcript: Jenn Cutter Anthropic introduced CloudSkill for its Cloud AI model, allowing users to create folders containing markdown files with instructions, scripts, and other resources tailored to Specific tasks. The upgrade will make Cloud smarter at tasks like handling Excel documents or sticking to brand guidelines, which is a very specific ask. Skills leverages Claude's coding environment to create an agent that's capable of automating any number of computer tasks. Companies like Box, Canva, and Rakuten are using the tools. The update is available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise customers. ([Time 0:19:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10ad5268-1b8b-41af-b8ff-66de9223e54a)) - **AI Is Reducing Wikipedia Traffic** - Wikipedia reported an 8% drop in human visitors attributed to AI chatbots and search summaries using its content. - The Wikimedia Foundation warns this traffic loss threatens long-term viability and urges citation and responsible AI use. Transcript: Jason Howell Wikipedia experiencing a notable drop in human visitors, according to Wikimedia Foundation Senior Director of Product, Marshall Miller. He says this is the result of generative AI chatbots and search engine summarizations. Of course, he's not the only one talking about how AI is impacting websites with content. It's just Wikipedia is a very large scale as far as that's concerned. Miller told 404 Media that although AI and platforms increasingly are relying on Wikipedia for training data and answers, the resulting traffic loss that they're seeing is about 8% compared to last year. And that actually threatens the long-term viability of their resource. The foundation is enforcing policies for third-party bots, encouraging responsible use, also access of Wikipedia's content and urging users to look for citations and click through To original sources when you're using generative AI tools, which is just a good general practice to access this kind of information. ([Time 0:21:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/da6326aa-ce54-4d34-b317-55a6fb769b13)) - **SAG-Licensed Voices Power Interactive Drama** - Andy Beach explains Pickford AI cast licensed voice models under SAG's new AI protocol and will pay actors per distribution. - Actors need not record every line because licensed voice models generate new lines for interactive content. Transcript: Jason Howell The first voice actors have been cast under the Screen Actors Guild's new rules for AI in entertainment. Andy Beach is here. Hey, Andy. Tells us how it all went down. Andy, thanks for joining us. Hey, Tom. Good to see you. Tom Merritt Okay. So SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, fought very hard, as did a few other unions, to set the rules about when AI can and can't be used. And we got one of the first tests. Tell us about it. Andy Beach Yeah. So we're seeing it play out now in real time. Pickford AI has a new interactive murder mystery coming out called Whispers. And it is the first project to cast voice actors under that new SAG AI protocol. Tom Merritt What does that mean for the casting? Are these AI voices or did people let like their voices be simulated? How does this work? Andy Beach So it is voices of individuals that have been licensed and they will be paid in the typical way that SAG would expect every time that that production is distributed. So it is not a problem that was previously experienced was, you know, you pay for it one time and then the production company has perpetuity rights to it. This moves effectively AI into a similar existence that, that would have if, if I was a live voice actor, uh, commissioning my voice for use inside of a production. Tom Merritt But the difference, just to make sure I've got this right, is that I, the actor, don't have to record all the lines. The model is going to create them. Correct. ([Time 0:25:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/addcf6e6-f655-48c0-86c2-5b0d596e3677)) - **Generative Voices Enable Massive Branching Content** - Pickford AI used generative voices to scale hundreds of hours of branching interactive content that would be costly to record traditionally. - This model suits choose-your-path experiences sitting between games and scripted media. Transcript: Tom Merritt And then what did Pickford, why did Pickford AI do that? Did they want to save time or money or was there some creative part of this? Andy Beach Well, for them, I think the reason they went this route is because of sort of a scale factor. It is an interactive murder mystery. So not everybody's going to experience this the same way. So it's not like they went and had to record approximately an hour's worth of production content. There's going to be really technically hundreds of hours of production content that I pick and choose the path that I listen to. So I still get an hour's worth of material. And so for scale factor, I think it was going to be very difficult to, and costly to try and put that amount of production time together. Whereas they could generatively create a script, they could apply voices to it and create the same experience and in a more low cost way. And I actually have always said that I expected to see more interactive type shows start appearing, sort of, you know, somewhere between a video game and a media experience. ([Time 0:27:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/51526069-7019-4bde-bd41-7e02e7012509)) - **Prepare For Voice Input Social Costs** - Consider the social consequences of voice-first computing in shared spaces and open offices. - Plan for etiquette and privacy because constant spoken commands can quickly create chaos. Transcript: Jenn Cutter First, Andrew says, I had a visceral no reaction to the Microsoft story about elevating voice to be a first class input to the computer. Some of that likely stems from having worked in open floor pan offices, which are already noisy and distracting as individuals have very different norms about whether or not to take Meetings out in the main area. If some portion of the people are also talking to their computers all day, it may be unbearable. And that's from Andrew from Colorado. Jason Howell Yes. And then Marty says, hey, I've had access to Copilot Vision for a few weeks. I tried asking it how to do things in an app I was developing and it did a good job at identifying user flows and creating a virtual mouse cursor to guide me around the app, showed me what To click on and stuff. For a private app where it couldn't have had prior training data on specifically, I thought it was pretty smooth. So that's two varied opinions. What Andrew's email really reminded me of, because this is super fresh, is just the other day I was sitting on the couch with my younger daughter. She's 12. And she was kind of playing on her tablet, her iPad, playing game on Roblox. And I was kind of working with AI and kind of formulating my ideas around a script that I was working on. And she's sitting there and I'm sitting there. And it just occurred to me like, I'm just going to use my voice for these things. Three minutes out of the silence, she would suddenly hear me launch right into a conversation with the AI for like two minutes and then shut up. And then another two minutes of silence and then launch in. And it was reflected back to me a little bit later in the evening when we were at the dinner table and she started like doing her impression of dad, like psycho dad on the couch, talking To his computer randomly. And this email kind of makes me think of that like in a world where suddenly everybody's talking to their machines. It's just what a chaotic environment that would be if that's the case. ([Time 0:32:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0d55dbd0-0bc3-481e-8bfe-9301dd35fcfb))