MacBook Pros Might Soon Have Touchscreens - DTNS 5127

0:01This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, October 17th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories and to help each other understand. Today, Andy Beach tells us about the Screen Actor Guild's first AI casting and how Apple MacBooks might finally get a touchscreen. Finally. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Jen Cutter. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. I'm sitting here with my MacBook Pro. I'm touching the screen. It's not doing anything. But you know what? In the future, it might. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is reporting that Apple will introduce touchscreens into its upcoming MacBook Pro models, some of them anyways, with a projected release sometime in late 2026, maybe even early 2027.

0:49Still a ways out. This actually backs up an earlier report that we heard by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from last month, kind of alluding to the same thing. The updated laptops will feature M6 chips. So this will be part of the M5 just came out. So the next generation of chips along with OLED screens and a reinforced hinge and screen hardware. That's really meant, according to the report, to improve the stability of the device. If you're reaching up and you're touching the screen and everything, maybe that hinge needs to be better to kind of provide resistance against that type of control. That's what that's all about.

1:29German's report also states that the new laptops will incorporate thinner and lighter frames. So somehow these things are going to get lighter. That's nice. The display will no longer have the notch up top. So if you love the notch, sorry to say, it's going to be replaced by a hole punch design that surrounds the front facing camera. Don't worry though, none of this means that the keyboard and the touchpad are going to go away. I wouldn't have assumed that, but I think it's important to state that. Touchscreen does not mean it suddenly disappears. But do worry if you don't like spending more money on things because German says that these changes are likely to increase the cost by several hundred dollars to account for the higher end components.

2:13Now, Apple is expected to roll out these features to the high end MacBook Pros first, and it's going to monitor market demand from there, see if maybe they could bring that feature to more of its lower end options down the line. So I don't know. Have you, are you on a MacBook or are you PC or what? I am a PC and learning Linux and I'm learning Linux on an old ThinkPad X220, which has a touchscreen, but it's also one of those ones that has like the touchscreen. Old laptop with a touchscreen. It's also one of the ones with a pen, like you could flip the top half around and use it also as a writing surface, which is, and to jump to the obvious question, like I am playing with PopMOS as my Linux distro because I'm looking to leave Windows.

3:00But every time I switch back from my touchscreen to my regular laptop, which is just running Windows 10, I do actually reach out to touch the screen because for some things it is just faster if you're navigating through menus really quickly. You could do it faster touching than with a mouse. So like, okay, I kind of get it now. And also, I know I say this every time, but Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo, outstanding hit rates. So I'm always inclined to believe them. 100%, definitely inclined to believe them. Now, this would be significant from the perspective of Steve Jobs famously decrying a move to touchscreens and laptop.

3:41He always wanted to say like, absolutely not. Laptop is a different type of device. No touchscreen on the laptop. But like you say, we've seen a lot of other laptops do this. You know, my MacBook Pro is primarily what I use, but I've used a lot of Chromebooks in my past. I've relied on them many times throughout my career. And having the touchscreen, which pretty much most of the Chromebooks that I use do, they don't all include touchscreen capability, but the Google's, you know, Pixel touchscreen laptops did. And I would say that in my use, having the touchscreen was never necessary for my use.

4:25However, there were definite moments where I was really happy that I had it. Like it wasn't 100 % of the time I'm using the touchscreen all the time, gorilla arms and all that kind of stuff. But there were times in my use where it was kind of nice to just like rest my hand on the side of the display and scroll up instead of, you know, kind of using the touch pad down below. So I would say non-essential, but really nice to have. Would you agree with that? Or do you find essential uses for it? I, I, I, on my main PC, I run two monitors and I have a very old, but very functional Wacom bamboo tablet.

5:06It's not a screen, it's just a tablet. And I have it mapped to one of my monitors so that I can use the stylus as kind of a touchscreen because I can just jump around rather than have to drag a mouse. I have it set like that. So I know where my corners are. I know mouse intensive that doesn't always map to keyboard shortcuts. Like if I'm doing stuff with magic wand, if I'm doing stuff with like certain keying tools, I will use the tablet and pen to kind of simulate using a touchscreen to just trace around things. And it's just smoother for me than with a mouse. I know some people are just experts with mice and it makes it easy for them.

5:48But for me, I do find it easy to use a touchscreen type of deal, though I do prefer a stylist to actually physically touching things when I'm doing artistic things. Well, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. My fat fingers are not very artistic, that's for sure. But what this also reminded me of is, remember, there was a short period of time, wasn't that long ago, it's not a distant memory at this point, it's still somewhat fresh, where Apple as kind of the trade-off for not having a touchscreen did the touch bar. Did you ever get to experience the touch bar? All I remember about the touch bar were the issues with it and a lot of the repairs.

6:32Like I saw like they're saying, oh yeah, okay, don't worry about, you know, we're going to make sure the hinge is good. And I have concerns because they are, you know, mixing that new hinge with thinner and lighter frames. I have an iPhone 16 now and it is so thin it makes me worried. especially because women's pockets are small. So like I'm very careful to like throw it in a purse or a much bigger bag than try to cram it in a pocket. Cause like, I don't want to sit down and break a phone and I don't want a laptop to bend while it's in a knapsack. Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. Um, well I'm, I'm super curious to see, uh, as a MacBook pro user.

7:10And I mean, the MacBook that I'm on, I think it's still like an M, uh, it's an M one pro. So I'm now realizing Oh, this thing's starting to get a little dated compared to some of this stuff. Isn't it weird when you buy a new laptop, you're like, oh, I am set. This thing's going to last me forever. And then I feel like I blink and it's five years later. I'm like, oh, dang. Well, also, you know, a lot of our sense of time has been broken since approximately 2020. It's a little warped. You're absolutely right. Is there a price that would disqualify the new MacBook from your interest list? Depending on the jump.

7:45Is there a way that they could like make you get a lower end MacBook if this ends up completely insane? Oh, that's a really good question. I think it sounds like part of the question that you're really getting to is, is this enough for me to feel like I need to stick with like a MacBook Pro? You know what I mean? Like, is the touchscreen worth it to me to pay more for? And I'd probably pay a little bit more for it. But again, like I was saying, I don't see it as essential. I see it as a nice to have, not an essential to have. And so, yeah, there probably is a price. I don't know what that price is.

8:22I don't know if it's a couple of hundred dollars boosts, you know, how when you buy a computer, at least with Apple, and it totally gives you the full screen of like, activate this, add$200 for this feature and everything. I'm wondering if that's going to be the case. And if so, that's going to be a real interesting decision-making point of like, well, is this worth$350 extra to add touchscreen, I'm kind of thinking I might not unless the price to begin with is lower. Prices is a consideration. I don't know what my value is for that quite yet. I'd also be surprised if Apple launches with just a touchscreen because that's not something they do.

9:03I feel like they're going to have some extra software thing to make it extra cool because they have all of this experience with touchscreens with the iPads and the iPhones and stuff. So if they're going to cram that in a laptop, I would be surprised if it ends up as like just a touchscreen. One more thing. It's more than just a touchscreen. CTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Norm Fazekas, Chris Allen, Reid Fischler, and welcome to our new patrons, Sebastian and Mark. Welcome, welcome. Standing slow clap for you all. There is more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

9:44OnePlus has taken the veil off Oxygen OS 16, the next major update of its mobile operating system set to release on the upcoming OnePlus 15. The new update includes deeper Gemini AI integration with its Mindspace app, letting users reference saved content with Google's AI model. The update also includes improved personalization options for creating vibrant lock screens with motion photos, an AI writer for text work, including turning text into mind maps and tables, improvements to animations and fluidity throughout the OS, and enhanced photo editing tools like Portrait Glow and Perfect Shot. Oxygen OS 16 will roll out to select OnePlus devices starting in November 2025.

10:31I'm just a long time OnePlus fan. So I'm always looking forward to, you know, their upgrades and everything. And the last couple of generations of OS upgrades that they've done with Oxygen OS have, I think, made a really big difference to how their platform works and is usable by users and everything. So I've seen and experienced kind of early aspects of this update. And it does look really, really positive, really engaging. And I like what they're doing with Mindspace. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this update. A group of hackers published highly personal data, including the names, phone numbers, and addresses of hundreds of U.S.

11:16government officials on Telegram. Group appears to be, it's kind of confusing on the reporting here, from scattered lapses hunters. Also, the COM, I think maybe they're part of the same group, but still labeled differently. Not sure I entirely understand that. But anyways, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, ICE, and nearly 700 people from DHS are included in the information dump. Some of the data that was released is confirmed to match real government officials' addresses. The agencies themselves have not yet publicly commented on the incident. The DHS is claiming, though, that Mexican cartels are offering cash for doxing agents, but U.S.

12:00authorities have not yet provided evidence of those bounties. So there's still a big question mark there. The group is an offshoot of communities behind other major data breaches like Scattered Spider. That targeted MGM Resorts, just as one example. And then Lapsus, which targeted gaming companies like Electronic Arts. So that kind of gives you an indication of why their name, Scattered Lapsus Hunters, actually makes sense. But yeah, it sounds like a really massive data dump of a lot of high profile people potentially. Yeah. And for those outside North America, DHS is Department of Homeland Security, right?

12:36That's right. That's right. You got that right. Yeah. Probably should have spelled that out. Well, you know, you just get so used to seeing all of the acronyms. It's easy to get lost in them. Yes, indeed. Anthropic introduced CloudSkill for its Cloud AI model, allowing users to create folders containing markdown files with instructions, scripts, and other resources tailored to specific tasks. The upgrade will make Cloud smarter at tasks like handling Excel documents or sticking to brand guidelines, which is a very specific ask. Skills leverages Claude's coding environment to create an agent that's capable of automating any number of computer tasks.

13:18Companies like Box, Canva, and Rakuten are using the tools. The update is available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise customers. So it's not quite an everybody thing. Yeah, and I want to dive into this a little bit more. We'll probably, almost certainly, we'll talk about this next week on the AI Insight podcast. But model context protocol is another aspect that Anthropic has been using to kind of have these kind of like hardware software integration approaches. This sounds like it's a little different from MCP. And integrations like this are a really big deal right now. It's one of those, you know, those big major kind of trends that's happening in AI along with agents, along with all these other things that we keep hearing about.

14:02you know, ChatGPT just brought in their kind of app integrations into their service a couple of weeks ago. So we're seeing a lot of this right now. And I'll be really curious to see like, which ones are stronger than the others, which ones tend to do better with this. Do you think AIs are going more like trying to do a little bit of everything? Or do you think there will be more specialization as these all try to differentiate themselves? Yeah, that's a good question, because if they're all integrating with the same services, like what sets them apart? And I mean, you know, when you look at Anthropic and one of the things that they're very known for, and I haven't had any direct access or direct experience with the coding side of things, but that's what a lot of people think about Anthropic is, oh, that's a really good, you know, AI service, AI model for coding functions and stuff.

14:53So I think, you know, to a certain degree, they all do have a little bit of their differentiation to say, you know, well, this one's really generally pretty good for this, generally pretty good for that. But it does kind of seem like they're doing what a lot of other sub kind of industries inside of technology do. I'm thinking of smartphones as one example, which is where they all differentiate. And then over time, it's like they tend to kind of blur together or social media is another great example where they all kind of start with their own focus. And over time, they end up all kind of looking the same because, oh, well, now we've added short form, even though they were long form to begin with and blah, blah, blah.

15:32So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we see that with AI as well. Interesting stuff. So Wikipedia experiencing a notable drop in human visitors, according to Wikimedia Foundation senior director of product Marshall Miller. He says this is the result of generative AI chatbots and search engine summarizations. Of course, he's not the only one talking about how AI is, you know, is impacting websites with content. It's just Wikipedia is a much, you know, a very large scale as far as that's concerned. Miller told 404 Media that although AI and platforms increasingly are relying on Wikipedia for training data and answers, the resulting traffic loss that they're seeing is about 8 % compared to last year.

16:18And that actually threatens the long-term viability of their resource. The foundation is enforcing policies for third-party bots, encouraging responsible use, also access of Wikipedia's content, and urging users to look for citations and click through to original sources when you're using generative AI tools, which is just a good general practice, to access this kind of information. Not only is it good just to, you know, to know the source that it's coming from and to make sure that it's true, but it also kind of shows the website that there are still humans involved in the process, you know? Yeah, like you and I will click through 100 % of the time.

16:56I am also one of those people who disabled all AI answers in all of the search engines I use. But yeah, for a lot of people, they just think they've got the answer in that top block and call it a day. And that's how you can get yourself into trouble when it's wrong. Yep. Yep. Be very, very careful. Be sure. All right. And here's just a few headlines that are good to know for future stories that might actually come up on the show. Apple and Formula One signed a 140 million per year, five-year US media deal to stream every F1 race exclusively on Apple TV beginning in 2026. This replaces ESPN as the media partner and includes F1 TV premium for Apple TV subscribers with some races available for free in the Apple TV app.

17:47There you go, race fans, Apple's your place to go. So OpenAI has halted Sora video generations of Martin Luther King Jr. after his estate flagged, quote, disrespectful depictions, end quote, of his image. I had logged into Sora the other day and I definitely saw a few myself, so I know what they're talking about. OpenAI asserts that public figures like Martin Luther King Jr. should continue to have total control over how their likeness is used with the service. Apple is breaking tradition by partnering with Peacock to offer a discounted streaming bundle that starts at$15 per month starting October 20th.

18:26Apple also plans to offer select Apple Originals to Peacock subscribers. Interesting. Steam just shattered its concurrent user record, reaching 41.6 million gamers on October 12th. This was timed with the release of some popular titles that were kind of all happening at once. Battlefield 6, Hollow Knight, Silksong, also demos from Steam Next Fest. Yeah, Battlefield 6, people are like, oh, we don't know if it's going to launch with the big numbers. And it just it crushed all of the records. Crushing it. Meta will shut down its Messenger app for Mac OS and Windows on December 15th, pushing desktop users to the Facebook app on Windows and Facebook and Messenger websites for those chats.

19:13Meta provided no explanation for the end of the dedicated apps. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper. Yeah, the first voice actors have been cast under the Screen Actors Guild's new rules for AI in entertainment. Andy Beach is here. Hey, Andy. Tells us how it all went down. Andy, thanks for joining us. Hey, Tom. Good to see you. Okay, so SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, fought very hard, as did a few other unions, to set the rules about when AI can and can't be used. And we got one of the first tests. Tell us about it. Yeah, so we're seeing it play out now in real time. Pickford AI has a new interactive murder mystery coming out called Whispers.

19:58And it is the first project to cast voice actors under that new SAG AI protocol. What does that mean for the casting? Are these AI voices or did people let their voices be simulated? How does this work? So it is voices of individuals that have been licensed and they will be paid in the typical way that SAG would expect every time that that production is distributed. So it is not a problem that was previously experienced was, you know, you pay for it one time and then the production company has perpetuity rights to it. this moves effectively AI into a similar existence that that would have if if I was a live voice actor commissioning my voice for use inside of a production.

20:47But the difference, just to make sure I've got this right, is that I, the actor, don't have to record all the lines. The model is going to create them. Correct. So you you effectively have a version of your voice that has been has available for licensing, but the licensing that it falls under is compensated. Now, it's not compensated at the same rate as if I were live recording things, but that's okay, because the idea is that your voice can show up theoretically in a lot more productions simultaneously, potentially. Okay. And then why did Pickford AI do that? Did they want to save time or money or was there some creative part of this?

21:26Well, for them, I think the reason they went this route is because of sort of a scale factor. It is an interactive murder mystery. So not everybody's going to experience this the same way. So it's not like they went and had to record approximately an hour's worth of production content. There's going to be really technically hundreds of hours of production content that I pick and choose the path that I listen to. So I still get an hour's worth of material. And so for scale factor, I think it was going to be very difficult to and costly to try and put that amount of production time together, whereas they could generatively create a script, they could apply voices to it and create the same experience and in a more low cost way.

22:10And I actually have always said that I expected to see more interactive type shows start appearing, sort of somewhere between a video game and a media experience. And this is a good first attempt to see if that takes off and has some popularity. So it's not as far as the characters are LLMs and I'm chatting with them during the story. Right. Think of it more as a choose your own adventure. Yeah. And that's just a lot of recording to have to do. So it allowed them to save a little time and probably a little money too. How do you consume this? great question I mean I think there's going to be a lot more information obviously they're just in the middle of kicking off this production now and so it's not uh coming out but when it comes out it's likely to be something that very much driven towards a a smart screen experience so it's likely more of a computer consumption or even mobile consumption so it's an animated video then it is it's an animated series that'll be out uh and you know I doubt it's something that you're watching with a remote control in your hand for interacting, it's likely something you're more watching on your mobile screen.

23:22Yeah. I saw you noted that it screened at the Busan Film Festival. I'm curious to figure out how that works when you get a handful of people. Sort of assuming that for there, they just had to go with a golden path of everybody was able to watch the same thing together. But ultimately, the idea behind this production and other productions like it will be that we all get to watch our version of it and we get to follow our path through it. And to bring us full circle, does this mean that the union members feel treated fairly? This is by their rules and everything. Yeah. I mean, everybody's watching it still critically, obviously, to make sure that it pays off, but it ultimately does show them a path forward on how an actor can be correctly compensated.

24:10And there can be a world where AI exists in production talent. Yeah. Well, that's great to know. And thanks for highlighting this for us. We'll keep an eye out for it once it actually rolls out, because I'd like to play around with it. If folks want to play around with your content, where can they go to read what you do? Well, I haven't made that interactive yet, but I do write a lot of content on Substack. My Substack is called Engines of Change.ai, and I'm writing about the intersection of media and AI technologies. Fantastic. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Tom. Yay. Thank you, Andy. That's so interesting.

24:44I mean, I think it's really important to make sure that people who are acting, who have a voice, who have a likeness, that they are given the ability to make those choices and to feel like they have control. Not just feel like they have control, but have control over their voice and their likeness and have the ability to say yes or no. So sounds good to me. Need a snazzy gift for a coworker or colleague? We've got dozens of ideas at dailytechnewshow.com slash store. Pick up a mug, t-shirt, or handy dandy mouse pad with our new DTNS logo. They're wonderful gifts and a great way to support the show.

25:27We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. And today we have a couple of folks with different perspectives on the new co-pilot features for Windows 11 that we talked about yesterday. First, Andrew says, I had a visceral no reaction to the Microsoft story about elevating voice to be a first class input to the computer. Some of that likely stems from having worked in open floor pan offices, which are already noisy and distracting as individuals have very different norms about whether or not to take meetings out in the main area. If some portion of the people are also talking to their computers all day, it may be unbearable.

26:07And that's from Andrew from Colorado. Yes. And then Marty says, hey, I've had access to Copilot Vision for a few weeks. I tried asking it how to do things in an app I was developing, and it did a good job at identifying user flows and creating a virtual mouse cursor to guide me around the app, showed me what to click on and stuff for a private app where it couldn't have had prior training data on specifically, I thought it was pretty smooth. So that's two varied opinions. What Andrew's email really reminded me of, because this is super fresh, is just the other day I was sitting on the couch with my younger daughter.

26:48She's 12 and she was kind of playing on her tablet, her iPad, playing a game on Roblox. And I was kind of working with AI and kind of formulating my ideas around a script that I was working on. And she's sitting there and I'm sitting there. And it just occurred to me, I'm just going to use my voice for these things. So every two or three minutes out of the silence, she would suddenly hear me launch right into a conversation with the AI for like two minutes and then shut up. And then another two minutes of silence and then launch And it was reflected back to me a little bit later in the evening when we were at the dinner table and she started like doing her impression of dad, like psycho dad on the couch, talking to his computer randomly.

27:30And this email kind of makes me think of that, like in a world where suddenly everybody's talking to their machines. It's just what a chaotic environment that would be if that's the case. Yeah. Well, I remember like way back in the day when, what was it called? Dragon Naturally Speaking was new and everyone was testing that and I could not get it to recognize my voice. But I also have problems with that on like the early DS games like Brain Age, where it just did not like what I was saying. It didn't like my accent. But of course, these things got much better over time. Now there's those TVs where you can talk to your remote and it's pretty accurate.

28:05So I have to assume Microsoft has all of the data on this to make it work. Yeah, indeed. What are you thinking about? Do you have some insight into a story? Please, as always, share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Andy Beach, Marty, and Andrew for contributing to today's show. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business. All you got to do is become a patron. It's that easy. Patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll see you next time.

28:46This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host, producer, writer, Tom Merritt. Host, writer, Jason Howell. Co-host, Sarah Lane. Co-host, Jen Cutter. Producer, Anthony Lemos. Producer, Roger Chang. Editor, Hammond Chamberlain. Editor, Victor Bognat. Science correspondent, Dr. Nikki Ackermans. social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding. Our mods are amazing mods. Beatmaster, W. Scottis1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. GadgetVirtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Luters.

29:32Art by Len Peralta. Acast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Bobby Wagner, our guests this week, Andy Beach and Sean Hollister. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.

29:55The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.