Foldable MacBook Pro delayed to at least 2027

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited August 22

Technical challenges mean that Apple won't be able to launch a foldable MacBook Pro in 2025 as expected, says Ming-Chi Kuo, and it may not be out until late 2027 or 2028.

An image generated with AI showing a large iPad-like tablet folded in half on a desk.
A generated image of a foldable MacBook concept



It's previously been rumored that Apple was working on an all-screen, foldable MacBook Pro, which would have a 20.3-inch display. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, though, the the project has been delayed by years -- and the 20.3-inch version has been dropped.

Foldable MacBook survey update - mass production delayed significantly
1. Final display size spec confirmed at 18.8 inches. Apple has canceled the 20.25-inch design.
2. Due to technical challenges with the display and mechanical, the assembly mass production schedule has been https://t.co/mPviHVeK0x

-- (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo)



While Kuo says that the final display size has been "confirmed at 18.8 inches," he gives no specific basis for this. He does, though, refer to his supply chain surveys for the rest of his report, in which he casts doubt on a folding iPad.

Kuo previously expected a foldable iPad to be launched in 2024. So did research firm CCS Insight, and seemingly even Samsung was predicting the same.

In his new report, Kuo refers to a prevailing belief that a foldable iPad would launch in 2025. He says there's no indication of that date or of any folding iPad.

He comments that this may "be because some call this foldable MacBook a foldable iPad." That would fit as presumably it will only be the software macOS that will distinguish an all-screen MacBook Pro from an all-screen iPad.

While Apple itself has of course not commented on future products it has filed multiple patents to do with research into folding displays. The most-often rumored result of which, though, is the expected iPhone Fold.


Rumor Score: Possible

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    edited August 22 AfarstarpulseimageswilliamlondondewmeM68000mattinozlibertyandfree
  • Reply 2 of 23
    PemaPema Posts: 121member
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Too right. I am typing this missive on my MBA M3. Soon as I am done, I will be folding it on the hinge and park it away for the night. 

    Perhaps the next lateral - not revolutionary but evolutionary - idea from Apple will be a rollable MacBook. You roll it up and tuck it under your arm like a newspaper. 

    It's strange how Apple is becoming a lot like Google a great deal of $ and a boatful of engineers totally clueless on the next big thing since Jobs passed and Ivy left. One bone-headed pointless idea after another: 
    1) Apple Car
    2) Apple Vision Pro
    3) Foldable Phone 
    4) Foldable Mac
    5) Clothes that interact with the wearer - as long as the wearer is not beset by flatulence - then we have a meltdown.

    Actually the best new invention that I have seen is Humane AI Pin. Unfortunately the execution fell a bit short - so short that it's DOA. This is where Apple can step in, buy the company and fold it into Apple Ecosystem and make it a success. 

    Genius is not learnt but born. And a guy like Jobs happened like a meteor, flew over the Apple heavens and burnt too soon. And now we have a boatful of engineers and a ton of $ and no idea. Google has 253 dead ideas in its graveyard and Apple is not too far behind. 
    9secondkox2M68000
  • Reply 3 of 23
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,977member
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Sarcasm aside, the problem with that is the half of the device that isn't screen. 

    A 'foldable' laptop isn't a foldable tablet and as such will cater to different use cases.

    At some point macOS and iPad OS will converge to have a best of both worlds solution. 
    edited August 22 muthuk_vanalingam9secondkox2
  • Reply 4 of 23
    We just need an iPad with MacOS, I still don't get the hold out.

    Just do a little tweak on the software and we have the. Best Mac ever done.

    Touchscreen, thinner than anything, light, 5G connection, amazing screen, good cameras.
    iOS_Guy80williamlondon9secondkox2
  • Reply 5 of 23
    So no real keyboard? People complained about the Touch Bar, so they got rid of it and now they will replace it with all screen on the MacBook Pro?
    williamlondon9secondkox2
  • Reply 6 of 23
    I'm pretty sure that a foldable-screen laptop won't have the moniker "Pro".  How could it?  It'll have less actual screen space - the part you'd look at rather than type on or point with - and we all know how much less efficient on-screen keyboards are than the real thing.  I do often wish that Apple either re-introduced a 17+" MBP - or one with multiple foldable screens.  You can buy add-ons that'll let you add screens to the left and right of your MBP, but they are clumsy solutions that involve wires, funky stands, etc.  Such a multi-monitor MBP would truly deserve the "Pro" name.
    9secondkox2
  • Reply 7 of 23
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,037member
    There is already a foldable MacBook Pro. Screen on one side, mechanical keyboard (the way it should always be) on the other. 

    An 18 inch screen configuration would be most welcome. 

    But this article seems to be describing a foldable ipad. And that would make more sense - if they can truly get it right. 

    But then again, it only makes sense if it runs Mac OS. 

    And then that makes a case that apple should just make touchscreen Mac’s. No need to bother with foldables. 
  • Reply 8 of 23
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,037member
    We just need an iPad with MacOS, I still don't get the hold out.

    Just do a little tweak on the software and we have the. Best Mac ever done.

    Touchscreen, thinner than anything, light, 5G connection, amazing screen, good cameras.
    You make a great case for a MacBook Pro with touchscreen - even better than iPad with Mac OS. 
  • Reply 9 of 23
    Fred257Fred257 Posts: 252member
    They already have foldable pcs that are great. Accept of course for the OS that runs on them 
    9secondkox2
  • Reply 10 of 23
    We just need an iPad with MacOS, I still don't get the hold out.

    Just do a little tweak on the software and we have the. Best Mac ever done.

    Touchscreen, thinner than anything, light, 5G connection, amazing screen, good cameras.
    I don't think just a "little tweak" will be enough to make macOS work all that well with a touchscreen. Even if it were just a tweak, way more significant is all the macOS apps that would also need to be tweaked for touch. 

    You can connect an external touchscreen to a Mac and try it out. I have done this for a purpose-built interface running as a full-screen kiosk. Exiting the kiosk UI and interacting with macOS via touch is not great. You can also try touch on macOS with an iPad using Yam Display. Unlike Sidecar, Yam lets you use finger touch when the iPad is being used as a secondary monitor. (Interestingly, Sidecar on iPad does allow the Apple Pencil to be used as a touch interface for macOS). 

  • Reply 11 of 23

    avon b7 said:
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Sarcasm aside, the problem with that is the half of the device that isn't screen. 

    A 'foldable' laptop isn't a foldable tablet and as such will cater to different use cases.

    At some point macOS and iPad OS will converge to have a best of both worlds solution
    I believe Apple has said that they aren't interested in OS convergence, but seeing that Apple is a "never say never" kind of company, it may well happen. I think the path to this would be to [continue to] grow iPadOS into a more fully featured OS because it is designed from the ground up to be a touch-first OS. Plus, Apple's control of the iPad App Store would be an advantage for them (even considering current alternate App Store access issues). Modifying the keyboard/mouse based macOS for touch seems like way more work than it's worth, and of course it's not just the OS that needs modification, it's the apps too. 
    dewme
  • Reply 12 of 23
    coolfactorcoolfactor Posts: 2,327member
    Pema said:
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Too right. I am typing this missive on my MBA M3. Soon as I am done, I will be folding it on the hinge and park it away for the night. 

    Perhaps the next lateral - not revolutionary but evolutionary - idea from Apple will be a rollable MacBook. You roll it up and tuck it under your arm like a newspaper. 

    It's strange how Apple is becoming a lot like Google a great deal of $ and a boatful of engineers totally clueless on the next big thing since Jobs passed and Ivy left. One bone-headed pointless idea after another: 
    1) Apple Car
    2) Apple Vision Pro
    3) Foldable Phone 
    4) Foldable Mac
    5) Clothes that interact with the wearer - as long as the wearer is not beset by flatulence - then we have a meltdown.

    Actually the best new invention that I have seen is Humane AI Pin. Unfortunately the execution fell a bit short - so short that it's DOA. This is where Apple can step in, buy the company and fold it into Apple Ecosystem and make it a success. 

    Genius is not learnt but born. And a guy like Jobs happened like a meteor, flew over the Apple heavens and burnt too soon. And now we have a boatful of engineers and a ton of $ and no idea. Google has 253 dead ideas in its graveyard and Apple is not too far behind. 

    Think broader. The Apple Car project may not have resulted in a drivable car, but it pushed Apple — and technology — forward in the car space, and elsewhere. Apple Vision Pro isn't a pointless idea. It has advanced spatial tech by leaps and bounds.

    Or we could do it your way, and never try anything new.
    edited August 22 williamlondondewmeroundaboutnow
  • Reply 13 of 23
    charlesncharlesn Posts: 1,081member
    Gotta love Ming's "kick the can" predictions. "Hey, foldable Macbook Pro coming in 2025!" Which gets picked up by the tach press as gospel. But now that 2025 is only about four months away? Ooops! Turns out Ming was wrong by "at least" two years--as if he actually had ANY visibility into Apple's plans for 2027 and beyond--and I guarantee that when 2027 is upon us, Ming will have kicked the can down the road another couple of years. It's actually a great strategy: every prediction, with his name attached, gets picked up by the press, and ultimately he never has to admit that his predictions are total BS... they were just "early" by a couple of years, so just wait! 

    I remember back in the day, before he went out on his own, Ming was the best and most reliable analyst covering Apple. Now? He just makes stuff up to keep his name in the press and the most reliable thing about Ming is that he's almost certainly wrong. 
    tht
  • Reply 14 of 23
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 2,141member
    Pema said:
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Too right. I am typing this missive on my MBA M3. Soon as I am done, I will be folding it on the hinge and park it away for the night. 

    Perhaps the next lateral - not revolutionary but evolutionary - idea from Apple will be a rollable MacBook. You roll it up and tuck it under your arm like a newspaper. 

    It's strange how Apple is becoming a lot like Google a great deal of $ and a boatful of engineers totally clueless on the next big thing since Jobs passed and Ivy left. One bone-headed pointless idea after another: 
    1) Apple Car
    2) Apple Vision Pro
    3) Foldable Phone 
    4) Foldable Mac
    5) Clothes that interact with the wearer - as long as the wearer is not beset by flatulence - then we have a meltdown.

    Actually the best new invention that I have seen is Humane AI Pin. Unfortunately the execution fell a bit short - so short that it's DOA. This is where Apple can step in, buy the company and fold it into Apple Ecosystem and make it a success. 

    Genius is not learnt but born. And a guy like Jobs happened like a meteor, flew over the Apple heavens and burnt too soon. And now we have a boatful of engineers and a ton of $ and no idea. Google has 253 dead ideas in its graveyard and Apple is not too far behind. 
    You are confusing misinterpreted patents and drivel from over-hyped "analysts" with actual things that actual engineers at Apple are doing. Just because something gets a write-up on a rumor site does not mean that thing is actually happening, or that it is happening the way it's being interpreted. Particularly with the patents, a company like Apple is doing R&D on all sorts of things, and when you have patent attorneys on staff, pretty much any notion that seems like it might be something is worth patenting. That doesn't mean it will ever become a product. Also, each patent is clearly written to get a specific thing covered, while revealing as little as possible about anything else that may be in the pipeline. It seems pretty evident that those drawings likely contain deliberate red herrings for anything drawn or described beyond the specific item or concept being patented. "Oh look! They're going to power the Vision Pro off of Air Pod batteries!"

    We just need an iPad with MacOS, I still don't get the hold out.

    Just do a little tweak on the software and we have the. Best Mac ever done.

    Touchscreen, thinner than anything, light, 5G connection, amazing screen, good cameras.
    There will be no iPad with macOS. On the software side, macOS currently must run everything from a MacBook Air to a Mac Pro. A Mac Pro with multiple screens would be an ergonomic nightmare if some or all of the monitors are supposed to be touch screens. The menu-driven UI for macOS is not conducive to poking with your finger. The hybrid touch/menu-driven UI that Windows offers for the Surface is a bloated nightmare. Apple is not looking at that as an example of what they should emulate. The iPad's and iPadOS are designed together to have a touch UI. Macs and MacOS are not. 

    On the hardware side, the reason the iPad is so thin and compact is because it has neither active nor passive air-cooling capability. The Mac Pro is one huge fan-box designed to rapidly dissipate the significant heat generated by processor-intensive macOS workstation functionality. Even the cheapest MacBook Air has passive venting and airflow to cool the processors. An unvented iPad running macOS would be prone to overheating enough that it might even set the lithium batteries on fire, which many people would consider to be a bad thing. 

    So you know, that's probably the hold out.

    charlesn said:
    Gotta love Ming's "kick the can" predictions. "Hey, foldable Macbook Pro coming in 2025!" Which gets picked up by the tach press as gospel. But now that 2025 is only about four months away? Ooops! Turns out Ming was wrong by "at least" two years--as if he actually had ANY visibility into Apple's plans for 2027 and beyond--and I guarantee that when 2027 is upon us, Ming will have kicked the can down the road another couple of years. It's actually a great strategy: every prediction, with his name attached, gets picked up by the press, and ultimately he never has to admit that his predictions are total BS... they were just "early" by a couple of years, so just wait! 

    I remember back in the day, before he went out on his own, Ming was the best and most reliable analyst covering Apple. Now? He just makes stuff up to keep his name in the press and the most reliable thing about Ming is that he's almost certainly wrong. 
    Ming Chi Kuo has had a good game going all these years, somehow convincing sites like this to artificially pump up his reputation whenever citing his guesses. Maybe he had a string of good ones once. At this point, however, he just appears to throw things at the wall, change predictions repeatedly, and then cleverly make sure he's credited as having been "right" when his fifth guess is issued just as Apple releases a product and is finally correct.
    thtroundaboutnow
  • Reply 15 of 23
    M68000M68000 Posts: 848member
    “Delayed” - as if someone is waiting for this.  Doubt it. Instead, how about maintaining laptops with the best keyboards anybody has ever used?
    edited August 22
  • Reply 16 of 23
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,452member

    avon b7 said:
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Sarcasm aside, the problem with that is the half of the device that isn't screen. 

    A 'foldable' laptop isn't a foldable tablet and as such will cater to different use cases.

    At some point macOS and iPad OS will converge to have a best of both worlds solution
    I believe Apple has said that they aren't interested in OS convergence, but seeing that Apple is a "never say never" kind of company, it may well happen. I think the path to this would be to [continue to] grow iPadOS into a more fully featured OS because it is designed from the ground up to be a touch-first OS. Plus, Apple's control of the iPad App Store would be an advantage for them (even considering current alternate App Store access issues). Modifying the keyboard/mouse based macOS for touch seems like way more work than it's worth, and of course it's not just the OS that needs modification, it's the apps too. 
    They could have taken the iOS shackles off iPadOS anytime since the name change.  But really they seem like they either don’t understand the potential (which is out of character) or they are deliberately avoiding it. 

    Maybe these device will bring a new ProOS, as the MacOS killer Apple should be shipping by now. Targeting  fixed and foldable pro pad devices and as the base for visionProOS. Leaving iPadOS shackled to iOS for lighter devices. 
  • Reply 17 of 23
    PemaPema Posts: 121member

    Foldable MacBook Pro delayed to at least 2027 


    That's great. Hopefully by 2027 Apple will come to its senses and forget all about this foolishness the same way it abandoned the Apple Car and should have dumped the Vision Pro. 

    Apple needs to focus on better typing experience on the tinny keyboard and beef up security across all devices. It is good - there's always room for improvement. 
  • Reply 18 of 23
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 2,141member
    mattinoz said:

    avon b7 said:
    drewsaur said:
    Wait, I’ve been folding my MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. Maybe I should get a patent for my idea. /s
    Sarcasm aside, the problem with that is the half of the device that isn't screen. 

    A 'foldable' laptop isn't a foldable tablet and as such will cater to different use cases.

    At some point macOS and iPad OS will converge to have a best of both worlds solution
    I believe Apple has said that they aren't interested in OS convergence, but seeing that Apple is a "never say never" kind of company, it may well happen. I think the path to this would be to [continue to] grow iPadOS into a more fully featured OS because it is designed from the ground up to be a touch-first OS. Plus, Apple's control of the iPad App Store would be an advantage for them (even considering current alternate App Store access issues). Modifying the keyboard/mouse based macOS for touch seems like way more work than it's worth, and of course it's not just the OS that needs modification, it's the apps too. 
    They could have taken the iOS shackles off iPadOS anytime since the name change.  But really they seem like they either don’t understand the potential (which is out of character) or they are deliberately avoiding it. 

    Maybe these device will bring a new ProOS, as the MacOS killer Apple should be shipping by now. Targeting  fixed and foldable pro pad devices and as the base for visionProOS. Leaving iPadOS shackled to iOS for lighter devices. 
    See my comments above. The iPad does not fit in the same functional family as the Mac Pro. An OS cannot serve both of those devices without becoming a bloated, Windows-like mess that is functionally inferior to the current versions of either iPadOS or macOS. M4 or not, the iPad is not physically built to handle the heat generated by macOS. To run MacOS on an iPad without overheating, it would have to be so throttled that a fully-kitted M4 iPad Pro would markedly underperform even the most entry-level MacBook Air. There is not going to be a macOS-running iPad/Mac hybrid, no matter how many times people make superficial, fan-fiction hot takes on the subject.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 2,141member

    Pema said:

    Foldable MacBook Pro delayed to at least 2027 


    That's great. Hopefully by 2027 Apple will come to its senses and forget all about this foolishness the same way it abandoned the Apple Car and should have dumped the Vision Pro. 

    Apple needs to focus on better typing experience on the tinny keyboard and beef up security across all devices. It is good - there's always room for improvement. 
    Of course, there's no evidence beyond Ming Chi Kuo's extremely dubious (and unsurprisingly delayed) prognostications that Apple is seriously (or even at all) pursuing a folding screen MacBook, so it's probably not necessarily who needs to come to their senses. Of course, as noted by @Drewsaur above, foldable MacBooks have been a mainstay for years. In fact, I'm using one right now. Its foldability is literally the reason for the "Book" in MacBook.
    drewsaurwilliamlondon
  • Reply 20 of 23
    danoxdanox Posts: 3,296member
    Foldable screen, waste of time, it will never last or hold up underuse a customer nightmare……
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