Is Apple Releasing A Touchscreen MacBook?

Apple has been rumored to be working on new macOS devices, including touchscreen Macs. While the company hasn’t confirmed any of these rumors yet, a tweet featuring an App Store graphic seems to indicate that such a new device might be making its way to the market in the future.

A tweet from developer Louie Mantia showed a graphic in the App Store featuring a stylized human hand as it interacts with what appears to be a screen that has “macOS interface elements.” The tweet has since been deleted.

The tweet, still accessible via the Wayback Machine, also showed various parts of a display interface. It’s unclear what the elements are, but some clues in the graphic itself provide some hints as to what they could be.

• First, there’s a caption that reads “Great in Big Sur,” followed by “Widgets Get an Upgrade.” This alone reveals that the graphic image pertains to the new macOS version for a macOS device.
• Second, there’s a caption at the bottom-left portion of the screen that reads, “Notifications and widgets come together in Big Sur.” This is the second time the macOS version is mentioned, indicating that the graphic indeed pertains to a Mac device.
• Third, at the lower-right corner of the graphic, there’s a square box that has the familiar red, yellow and green buttons similar to the ones used on the macOS interface. These buttons indicate that it is a macOS device’s display.

Now, how could these suggest the possibility that Apple is working on a touchscreen Mac? It’s actually very simple: The stylized hand featured in the graphic moves around, interacting with the various elements on the “screen” of the device running macOS Big Sur.

What’s more, Apple has replaced the moving graphic with a “static image,” indicating that it doesn’t want to reveal that yet. Someone might have made the mistake of releasing the graphic early, forcing the company to take it down and replace it with a non-moving image that doesn’t feature the hand.

The move suggests that Apple could be working on a touchscreen Mac for future release. The Cupertino-based tech giant may not mention that it’s in the pipeline, but this recent gaffe simply indicates that it just might be.