Your dream of a touchscreen Mac was already realised back in the 90s

Did you know that there was a touchscreen Mac in the late 90s? It wasn’t made by Apple, but by a company called Elo.

(Image: Michael MJD)

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The closest thing to a Mac with touch support Apple has ever blessed us with is an iPad that runs on the same chips as the latest MacBooks. Yes, we are talking about the iPad Pro M2. But that doesn’t really run macOS, so it doesn’t count. What a bummer.

And Windows PCs that support touch are everywhere, so it’s not like Apple can’t make a Mac with a touch screen. The almost $3 trillion-worth company definitely has the resources to create one – it simply doesn’t want to. But what if we told you that the Mac of our dreams does exist? You just can’t have one.

Back in the olden days of the late 90s, a company called Elo decided to do what Apple wouldn’t and added touchscreen capabilities to the iconic iMac G3. Apple has been stubborn about not making a Mac with touchscreen support, so it took an outsider to do it.

The iMac G3 was introduced in 1998. It was an instant hit with the masses. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

Also read | Android users may soon enjoy a feature Apple users have been enjoying for years

As part of the Apple Value Added Reseller program, which allowed companies to take Apple hardware and soup it up, Elo turned a regular iMac G3 into a touchable wonder.

YouTuber Michael MJD got his hands on a touchscreen iMac G3 and tested it out and, surprisingly, it worked pretty well. To recall, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer that looks like a colourful bubble with a screen and a computer inside. Apple sold it from 1998 to 2003.

The reason why these touchscreen Mac machines were made isn’t fully clear, but it’s thought they were used as kiosk machines with custom software. However, the unit shown by the YouTuber doesn’t seem to have any special tweaks and runs standard Apple software.

Of course, you can’t expect iPad-level touch sensitivity from a machine that was built when dial-up internet was still a thing, but as you can see in the video above, it works surprisingly well – almost as if Apple itself had made it. The only issue is that since the software wasn’t designed with touch support, certain elements look oddly tiny for a device that could be operated directly from the screen.

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There’s no telling when Apple itself will take upon the responsibility to produce something like this, but Elo’s iMac G3 will forever remain a rare and fascinating piece of Apple history.