Earlier this year, I wrote a post about how the biggest challenges the iPad would face in 2026 were coming from Apple and not competitors.

The MacBook Neo went after the iPad’s role as the cheapest way to get into an Apple computer. The iPhone Duo attacked the iPad’s role as a portable large-screen device. And the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is the touchscreen Mac that a vocal minority have wanted the iPad Pro to be.

To my surprise, the touchscreen MacBook Pro ended up being the weakest of these attacks. I find myself strangely disappointed in a product I never had any intention of buying.

From what’s been presented so far, it looks like the MacBook Pro picks up a lot of touch interactions and gestures from iPad. We have the expanding window controls when you tap them. In one video, I saw you can fling windows to either side to create a Split View. It sounds like controls space themselves out a bit more when you’re using touch. Which is kind of funny because that’s exactly where Microsoft landed with Windows 10 and 11. They went from a very well touch-optimized version of Windows with Windows 8 to “we added some padding for touch and called it a day”.

But after years of waiting for a touchscreen Mac, I’m left with a feeling of “that’s it?”

The MacBook Pro is still the traditional laptop form factor, not a detachable, not a convertible. There’s no cellular option. There’s no Apple Pencil support. I was hoping to be at least somewhat tempted by a new design, but it’s barely changed. While I appreciate the weight savings, particularly on the 14-inch model, I wanted something that approached the sleekness of the 2016 MacBook Pros, especially since Apple now has chips that perform way better in thermally constrained environments.

As an iPad Pro user, there’s not really anything here that moves the needle for me since the 2024 redesign already brought tandem OLED to the product.

(I am jealous of the Dynamic Island, though. I’d love to see a software-only version come to iPad yesterday.)

What Do Touchscreen Macs Mean for the iPad?

Ultimately, not much. At least in the current iteration. Apple has said they’re going to continue to optimize macOS for touch so in theory there will be more affordances as time goes on. It’s also not a stretch to imagine a time in the near future when every Mac laptop has a touchscreen.

But until Apple decides to experiment with other form factors, touchscreen MacBooks aren’t particularly compelling buys over an iPad. An iPad is a tablet first and foremost, but a lot of its appeal is its adaptability. With the right accessories, it can also be a laptop. Or a desktop. Or a drawing tablet. Or a portable TV. And on and on.

All that being said, it’s not the worst thing in the world if Apple does push the Mac into different form factors so that the iPad is challenged. Because it’s in that challenge that the iPad has to evolve or die (see Phil Schiller’s Grand Unified Theory of Apple Products).

My theory is that the radical changes in iPadOS 26 were driven by the in-development iPhone Duo, because that product challenges the iPad by pushing firmly into its territory. If the iPad only had its Split View–based multitasking in the era of the Duo, I can see why someone could look at the iPad and say “and why do we still have this thing?”

Now it’s easier to see a future where the iPhone handles more iPad tasks, the iPad handles more Mac tasks, and the Mac?

Well, something has to run my coding agents, right?