In public, Apple will never confirm working on a Mac with a touch screen. However, this is what a very credible rumor stated at the beginning of the year. But the computer didn’t wait for the manufacturer to gain a touch screen! The 1999 iMac had already received such treatment…
The 1999 iMac G3, with its tangy design and good looks, had everything to seduce stores looking for computer kiosks and thus attract customers. Only problem: using the keyboard and mouse – which was not the most practical with its round design – was not easy. This is why companies have decided to integrate touch sensors into the CRT screen of these machines!
An iMac at your fingertips
This is the case of Elo, a specialist in cash registers, which at the time enjoyed the status of “Value Added Reseller”. This allowed him to buy iMacs to turn them into touchscreen outlets, then resell them (around $1,600), all with Apple’s consent. And as Michael MJD shows on his YouTube channel, the result is truly astonishing.
Michael collected a very rare iMac prototype designed by Elo, in which two transducers were added to the screen: the first emits acoustic waves, the second receives them. Touching the screen disrupts the wave and changes the amplitude at a specific point. The controller installed on the back of the CRT monitor can then determine the X and Y coordinates of the finger, and even the depth Z axis.
The system actually takes into account the force of pressure on the screen, more than 20 years before 3D Touch/Force Touch technology that Apple unfortunately ended up abandoning! Very effective technology, as can be seen in the video above. What is less obvious, however, is that MacOS 8.6 is poorly suited to all-touch use, which is quite logical — Apple was developing its operating system for the mouse.
However, it is more than likely that the stores or restaurants that used this type of iMac-based touchscreen kiosks ran their own software on them displaying an interface better suited to the fingers. As explained ArsTechnicathe Value Added Reseller status still exists, it is a badge for companies that offer technical assistance or security tools.
So it’s entirely possible to make the Mac a touchscreen computer! The blocking is not technical on Apple’s side, it is rather philosophical and based on a simple observation: raising your arm towards the screen is very quickly tiring. But as we saw with the iPad, which combined with a keyboard and a stand can act as a more traditional computer, this is less and less of a problem.
So we come to this rumor from the beginning of the year: Mark Gurman, the famous leaker Bloomberg, indicated that Apple was working on a touchscreen MacBook. And not just a Touch Bar, no: a complete touch screen. The release would be planned for 2025…
Read Apple is preparing the MacBook that it has always said it does not want to produce
Source :
ArsTechnica