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LOS ANGELES: Apple is expected to unveil its first touchscreen MacBooks on Wednesday, abandoning a long-held aversion to the technology as it caps a burst \u200bof product launches ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.<\/strong><\/p>\n Apple is holding an \u200cevent in Los Angeles after launching a folding iPhone, Duo, at its Silicon Valley headquarters in September and a smart home hub in New York earlier this month. While those products will test new markets for \u200bApple, the Los Angeles event could rekindle an old question: should Apple put \u200bthe touchscreens that it made mainstream in iPhones and iPads in its \u2060oldest product line?<\/span><\/p>\n Apple executives long resisted the idea, with Steve Jobs saying in 2010 \u200bthat touchscreens on laptops were \u201cergonomically terrible\u201d and then-CEO Tim Cook saying in 2012 that such \u200bdevices would be as pleasing to users as converging a toaster and a refrigerator. Before becoming Apple\u2019s current CEO, John Ternus argued that Apple already made a touchscreen computer with its iPad lineup.<\/span><\/p>\n But touchscreens have \u200bbeen widely available for more than a decade on Windows devices, and with the \u200biPhone nearing its two-decade anniversary, a new generation of buyers expects screens to respond to touch.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI believe \u200cthey were \u2060always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in,\u201d said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. \u201cSome things are purely inevitable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A key question for Apple is how customers will respond. The company has seen an uptick \u200bin Mac sales, \u200bbut much of that \u2060growth has been among technology enthusiasts and businesses buying the machines to handle AI tasks on-device.<\/span><\/p>\n While Apple this week announced an upgraded \u200bbase model of its MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip, \u200bBloomberg News \u2060has reported that it plans to ship touchscreen models with its existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that already come in MacBook Pro models, meaning the new machines would not \u2060gain a \u200bsignificant performance boost over existing ones.<\/span><\/p>\n