本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

The Inside Story of Why Apple Finally Brought a Touch Display to the Mac

Save this storySave this storyIt’s a bright day in Cupertino. Apple’s new CEO strolls to an outdoor seating area within the company’s otherworldly ring-shaped headquarters and pulls up a chair. An employee notes the angle and asks if he minds the sun. John Ternus doesn’t mind at all.

库比蒂诺阳光明媚。苹果公司新任首席执行官漫步至公司那座超现实环形总部内的户外休息区，拉开一把椅子坐下。一名员工注意到阳光的角度，询问他是否介意。约翰·特努斯（John Ternus）一点也不介意。

Nearly two months into his tenure, he’s been busy. While the tech world buzzes about AI agents and the upcoming IPO of a company reporting spectacular losses, Ternus’ leadership of a ridiculously profitable firm has so far been defined by a sequence of significant launches—the long-awaited foldable iPhone, a household device that can control digital appliances, new Mac Minis, and AirPods. Intentionally or not, all that activity sends a message that, even as AI dominates the public imagination, hardware products still rule.

上任近两个月来，他一直忙得不可开交。当科技界热议人工智能代理以及一家报告巨额亏损的公司即将进行的首次公开募股（IPO）时，特努斯对这家盈利能力惊人的公司的领导，目前为止以一系列重大发布为标志——期待已久的可折叠 iPhone、一款可以控制数字家电的家用设备、新款 Mac Mini 以及 AirPods。无论是有意还是无意，所有这些活动都传递出一个信息：即使人工智能占据了公众的想象力，硬件产品依然占据主导地位。

Photograph: Shot on iPhone 18 Pro Max by Peter Hapak/Courtesy of Apple Ternus doesn’t endorse that take, but he doesn’t object when I suggest it. “We’ve been working on these products for quite some time,” he says. “It feels like everyone here is just kind of riding high right now, enjoying it.”

图片：由 Peter Hapak 使用 iPhone 18 Pro Max 拍摄/苹果公司提供 特努斯并不完全认同这种说法，但当我提出时，他也不反对。“我们开发这些产品已经有一段时间了，”他说，“感觉这里每个人现在都处于一种高昂的状态，正在享受这一切。”

I ask if Apple is about to break a long-imposed taboo and introduce a Macintosh with a touch screen. Ternus beams. “Who knew?”

我问苹果是否即将打破长期以来的禁忌，推出一款带有触摸屏的 Macintosh。 特努斯笑了。“谁知道呢？”

We are referring to the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display that Apple is releasing today at an event in Los Angeles. It’s got a mighty M5 Pro or M5 Max chip and a show-stopping tandem OLED screen. (A tandem screen has multiple light-emitting layers, producing more dramatic contrasts.) But its most conspicuous feature is one that’s been deeply woven into iPhones, iPads, and even Apple Watches for years but not Apple’s laptops: a touch display. After years of resistance, a Mac screen has finally gone digital. As in fingers.

我们指的是苹果今天在洛杉矶发布会上推出的新款 MacBook Pro，它配备了 PROLED XDR 显示屏。它搭载了强大的 M5 Pro 或 M5 Max 芯片，以及令人惊艳的串联式 OLED 屏幕。（串联式屏幕具有多个发光层，能产生更具戏剧性的对比度。）但其最引人注目的功能是多年来已深深融入 iPhone、iPad 甚至 Apple Watch，却从未出现在苹果笔记本电脑上的功能：触摸显示屏。经过多年的抵制，Mac 屏幕终于实现了数字化。也就是用手指操作。

This turnaround is a big deal to Apple fans. Ternus shrugs off the drama. “The Mac is first and foremost an indirect input device, built around the trackpad and keyboard. But I think there’s times when it’s comfortable and handy to have touch.”

这种转变对苹果粉丝来说是一件大事。特努斯对这种戏剧性反应不以为意。“Mac 首先是一个间接输入设备，围绕触控板和键盘构建。但我认为，在某些时候，拥有触摸功能会更舒适、更方便。”

Ternus and Apple want to make sure that the Mac faithful don’t panic that the 42-year-old franchise is losing its identity to Apple’s gangbusters mobile products. “We needed to get to a point where adding touch didn’t make the product lesser in any way. It didn’t make it heavier. It didn’t make it thicker. That came together with the OLED screen, the best display we’ve ever put into a Mac,” Ternus told me. “All of these things, and, oh yeah, it has touch as well.”

特努斯和苹果公司希望确保 Mac 的忠实用户不会因为这个拥有 42 年历史的产品系列在苹果大获成功的移动产品面前失去自我而感到恐慌。“我们需要达到一个阶段，即增加触摸功能不会以任何方式降低产品的品质。它没有让产品变重，也没有让它变厚。这一切都随着 OLED 屏幕的出现而实现，这是我们放入 Mac 中的最好的显示屏，”特努斯告诉我，“所有这些因素，哦对了，它还具备触摸功能。”

Photograph: Courtesy of Apple Apple has a long history of refusing to implement certain desirable features, only to pivot when it feels the time is right. Steve Jobs once proclaimed iPods would never do video, until they did. He also once said “no one’s going to buy” a jumbo-size phone—and then Apple released a supersized iPhone 6. Then there was that time Jobs declared styluses inappropriate for tablets. Now the Apple Pencil works with iPads and the brand-new Duo.

图片：苹果公司提供 苹果公司有着拒绝实现某些理想功能，却在认为时机成熟时进行转变的悠久历史。史蒂夫·乔布斯曾宣称 iPod 永远不会支持视频播放，直到后来它支持了。他还曾说“没人会买”超大尺寸手机——然后苹果就发布了超大号的 iPhone 6。还有一次，乔布斯宣称手写笔不适合平板电脑。现在，Apple Pencil 既适用于 iPad，也适用于全新的 Duo。

The 2026 MacBook Pro instantly qualifies as the canonical example of this switcheroo. Apple executives had been on record regarding touch on PCs as a misbegotten idea. Never mind that just about every PC maker not headquartered in Cupertino has implemented touch on their laptops. And customers of Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and HP have snapped them up. Clearly, people wanted touch on their laptop displays. Even toddlers knew it—put some rug rats in front of a computer and their little arms shoot straight to the screen in futile attempts to swipe and scroll as they do on their iPads. People were baffled why Apple—the pioneer in touch displays since the iPhone—was so steadfast in its rejection.

2026 款 MacBook Pro 瞬间成为了这种“变脸”的典型案例。苹果高管曾公开表示，在个人电脑上使用触摸屏是一个错误的想法。别管除了总部不在库比蒂诺的几乎所有个人电脑制造商都在其笔记本电脑上实现了触摸功能，而且微软、戴尔、宏碁、联想和惠普的客户都抢购了这些产品。显然，人们希望在笔记本电脑屏幕上拥有触摸功能。连蹒跚学步的孩子都知道这一点——把小家伙们放在电脑前，他们的小手会径直伸向屏幕，试图像在 iPad 上那样滑动和滚动，尽管那是徒劳的。人们感到困惑，为什么自 iPhone 以来一直是触摸显示屏先驱的苹果公司，在拒绝这一功能上如此坚定。

In 2015, while doing a story about a new iMac, I pressed Phil Schiller, then the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, on this very question. Usually, top Apple executives field such queries with cryptic remarks. In this case, Schiller began a filibuster. “I’m going to get a little bit philosophical,” he said, then launched into what I later described as the Grand Unified Theory of Apple Hardware.

2015 年，在撰写一篇关于新款 iMac 的报道时，我曾就这个问题向时任全球产品营销高级副总裁的菲尔·席勒（Phil Schiller）施压。通常，苹果高管会用晦涩的言论来应对此类询问。但在这种情况下，席勒开始了一场长篇大论。“我要变得稍微哲学一点，”他说，随后开始阐述我后来称之为“苹果硬件大统一理论”的内容。

He explained that every Apple hardware product—the Watch, iPad, iMac, MacBook—is basically a computer and a piece of glass. Each one has a specific function. And each one has an interface appropriate to the hardware. Multitouch is fine for products like the iPhone, he said—but not the Macintosh. He provided two reasons: ergonomics and the software interface. “From the ergonomic standpoint, we have studied this pretty extensively, and we believe that on a desktop scenario, where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable,” he told me.

他解释说，每一款苹果硬件产品——手表、iPad、iMac、MacBook——基本上都是一台电脑和一块玻璃。每一款都有特定的功能，每一款都有适合该硬件的界面。他说，多点触控对于 iPhone 等产品来说很好，但对于 Macintosh 来说则不然。他给出了两个原因：人体工程学和软件界面。 “从人体工程学的角度来看，我们对此进行了相当广泛的研究，我们认为在桌面场景下，当你拥有一个固定的键盘时，必须伸手去操作触摸界面是不舒服的，”他告诉我。

As for the interface, Schiller argued that Apple’s two main operating systems were built on different design principles. The iPhone and iPad’s iOS was multitouch from the get-go, and didn’t use macOS conventions that require precision, such as cursors and tiny boxes to close windows. “These two worlds are different on purpose, and that’s a good thing—we can optimize around the best experience for each of those and not try to mesh them together into a least-common-denominator experience,” he told me.

至于界面，席勒认为苹果的两大主要操作系统是基于不同的设计原则构建的。iPhone 和 iPad 的 iOS 从一开始就是多点触控的，并没有使用 macOS 中需要精确操作的惯例，例如光标和用于关闭窗口的小方框。“这两个世界是故意设计成不同的，这是一件好事——我们可以为它们各自优化最佳体验，而不是试图将它们合并成一种最低共同标准的体验，”他告诉我。

A year later, when Apple introduced a MacBook Pro with the ill-fated “touch bar”—a dynamic strip of virtual function keys above the keyboard’s top row—Schiller doubled down on the view that touch should never find its way into a Mac display. He said that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, and that would clash with the experience of pointer devices like a touchpad or mouse. “You can’t optimize for both,” he said.

一年后，当苹果推出带有命运多舛的“触控栏”（Touch Bar）——即键盘顶行上方的一条动态虚拟功能键条——的 MacBook Pro 时，席勒重申了触摸功能永远不应该出现在 Mac 显示屏上的观点。他说，这样的举动意味着要为手指完全重新设计菜单栏，而这会与触控板或鼠标等指针设备的体验发生冲突。“你无法同时为两者进行优化，”他说。

To double-check this assumption, Apple conducted user tests with touchscreens on Mac. “What the heck, we could be wrong,” Schiller told me then. “We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.” When I met with Apple executives Johny Srouji and Greg Joswiak this week to discuss the touchscreen MacBook Pro, you bet I invoked Schiller’s list o

为了再次验证这一假设，苹果对 Mac 上的触摸屏进行了用户测试。“管他呢，我们可能是错的，”席勒当时告诉我，“我们最终确信这不是正确的做法。我们的直觉是正确的。” 本周，当我与苹果高管强尼·斯鲁吉（Johny Srouji）和格雷格·乔斯维亚克（Greg Joswiak）会面讨论触摸屏 MacBook Pro 时，你肯定猜到我提到了席勒的清单。