What does the folding MacBook with 20-inch screen look like?
Apple doesn’t see much in a folding phone yet, but the company seems to have set its sights on a folding MacBook with a huge 20-inch screen. What does that look like?
Read on after the ad.
Foldable MacBook with huge screen
It was the most spectacular Apple rumor this week. According to the highly reliable analyst Ross Young, Apple is investigating the possibility of offering MacBooks with foldable screens. It concerns screens of approximately 20 inches with resolutions of 4K or higher.
Such a folding MacBook is more useful than it sounds. It can be used in two ways, as Young describes. First of all, when folded, the MacBook acts like a ‘normal’ laptop, with the lower part acting as an on-screen keyboard.
If you unfold the foldable MacBook, you have a 20-inch monitor in front of you. You can then operate the Mac with an external mouse and keyboard. Very functional, because the display of the current MacBooks is just too small for your (home) office. This product would make the monitor obsolete for many people.
The drawings you see on this page were made by industrial designer Federico Donelli. He made the concepts for Astropad. In the illustrations we see a kind of hybrid MacBook/iPad. The device has a touchscreen and Apple Pencil support there, so you can also use it as a drawing tablet.
Or a foldable iPad Pro?
Young’s rumor is striking, because so far Apple has seen nothing in a touchscreen Mac. Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, among others, has repeatedly stated that he is not in favor of this. The macOS operating system is fully optimized for indirect input (mouse or trackpad) rather than direct touch. And you can’t optimize for both, according to Schiller.
What we find more plausible is that Apple is developing a foldable iPad. It is already fully designed for touch with iPadOS, so that would be a more logical step. In addition, a MacBook with a touchscreen would cannibalize the iPad Pro.
We may soon hear more rumors about a foldable MacBook or iPad. Do you want to stay informed of the developments? Sign up for our newsletter:
