MacBook Air: The greatest and most popular laptop ever made. Cook's Apple of course has killed it off with neglect and replaced it with much more expensive.
Um, when the MBA was launched in 2008, it started at $1800 and topped out at $2500. Definitely an aspirational price at the time. The current MBP, in its first launch year, is far more capable even in its minimum configuration, and it's $1500.
So, not "I wouldn't use this" or "I don't see the benefit," just "Terrible idea" with no explanation of what you perceive to be terrible about it.
With due respect, it's hard to take your pronouncement very seriously when you don't provide any reason whatsoever for it.
I think it's a GREAT idea! If/when there's one available for the most recent 15" MBP I will definitely give it a spin, unless there's a compelling reason not to.
This isn't a new idea. We've been running something like this in my department at a college for about 10 years. It's a usb screen that is mounted over the front of a 42" TV. Connecting the VGA input on the TV to a Mac, we turned it into a touchscreen computer.
The problem is the 3rd party drivers and keeping them current with Apple's OS. Development on the touchscreen stalled and we had to stop OS updates on the computer to keep the touchscreen working. It needed to be calibrated weekly and that part was a little flaky too.
We tried the infrared approach, like what's being described in this article, on a 103" Panasonic plasma. The challenge we had there was that the display bezel put the detection area about an inch away from the screen. That's enough to introduce parallax error with a screen that big. It worked perfectly at the eye level of whoever was using it, but when pointing to things above or below the user, they'd often miss. Of course, that wouldn't be a problem with a display that isn't the size of a living room wall with a typical bezel depth.
Ours also seemed to require periodic recalibration, but we never decided conclusively if it was actually drifting or if the perception of misalignment was the result of different users each approaching it differently.
What are touch screens good for that you guys say you want one so badly? Serious question... I can pinch and zoom, scroll, switch apps, etc etc etc with my trackpad and never have to reach up to smear my fingers across the screen. I'm genuinely asking because work provided a touch screen laptop that I don't use the touch screen on even though I tried for about a week. I haven't found a solid use case for it. I suppose if you had a shitty windows laptop with an equally crappy touch pad that doesn't do half of what the Apple touch pad can do maybe you'd think a touch screen was handy, but I genuinely haven't found a use case for a touch screen in a laptop. those of you talking about using a pen on a laptop screen I really can't relate with. To me that sounds like lipstick on a pig. If you want to write or draw use a flat surface. Touching a screen in photoshop sounds aweful, using your fingers in office apps seems redundant against the mouse... so WTF is a touch screen for on a laptop? I think most pc's are compensating for their crappy track pads.
Regardless I would really appreciate some direct answers as opposed to comments saying "if apple would just release a touch capable laptop I'd could do my work so much better"... you have to state why it's better or how it speeds things up, because I don't see it.
I went on about this at length in another thread and am feeling too lazy to repeat it all here right now. Maybe later. Or if you're super motivated you could search the forum for the subject using "touch screen" and my name as the criteria.
Let me ask you this, though: since the things that make it useful to me are not things you're likely to do, would you even accept that there's a valid argument in favour of touchscreen, or would you simply conclude that I'm a so-called "outlier" and therefore my preferences are invalid? If the latter, what's the point of discussing it?
I may be in the minority, but I wish Apple would make a good touchscreen laptop. There are many things for which touching is more efficient than a trackpad, and Apple is essentially trying to market the iPad Pro (with keyboard and stylus) as a pseudo laptop computer. I need a replacement to my aging MacBook Air and iPad, and the cost/performance point of the latest MacBooks as well as the issues with battery life are driving me to look at PCs
You're not in the minority.
From what group? Please share your data. Of the Apple/Mac geeks I know, most are aware of Jobs and Schiller stating how they tested touch Macs and thought it was a poor experience. Thus your desire for it would be in the minority. Or if we look at sales of touch PCs to non, another minority. Etc.
Not necessarily. Schiller et al also decided that it was more important to keep the MacBook Pro slim, quiet, cool, light, and power efficient than it was to use a design that would allow for more than 16GB or RAM. While I haven't any data one way or the other, anecdotal observation suggests that those who disagree with Apple's choices MAY be the majority.
Likewise the wisdom collective at Apple decided that retaining legacy ports would yield a poor experience. Clearly the majority disagree. In this case, those of us who SUPPORT the choice are the minority.
It was Apple that decided the space inside an iPhone was better utilized by things that are not a headphone jack. Poll your friends to determine whether Apple's view of a poor experience lines up with theirs.
I am not arguing either for or against any of Apple's choices here -- I'm simply saying that Apple having done research and drawing a conclusion does NOT necessarily mean that those who disagree are ipso facto in the minority.
You're not in the minority.
According to every poll I can find on this topic (here and on other Apple sites), this view is in fact the minority, and a pretty small one at that. For me, the touchpad gives me all the touching I want done on my MBP (I cannot abide fingerprints on my Mac's screen!), and that appears to be the majority view. That's not to say you're wrong to want a touchscreen Mac, only that your statement is inaccurate -- it is not a majority view. Just in this thread, for example, there appears to be three of you out of 26 comments ...
[...] (I cannot abide fingerprints on my Mac's screen!)
I understand that there are reasons people either don't see the need for or want a touch-screen Mac, but this one has always confused me. It's okay to swipe your fingers all over your phone or iPad screen, but not a computer screen. Why is one okay but not the other?
(As an aside, this afternoon a visiting 7-year-old asked if he could select a video on my new MacBook Pro. I told him to go ahead, and waited to see what he would do. He reached up and touched the thumbnail on the screen. When it didn't work he pressed it again. He seemed annoyed when I told him he had to use the trackpad. To him it was counter-intuitive and unnecessarily complicated.)
[...] (I cannot abide fingerprints on my Mac's screen!)
I understand that there are reasons people either don't see the need for or want a touch-screen Mac, but this one has always confused me. It's okay to swipe your fingers all over your phone or iPad screen, but not a computer screen. Why is one okay but not the other?
(As an aside, this afternoon a visiting 7-year-old asked if he could select a video on my new MacBook Pro. I told him to go ahead, and waited to see what he would do. He reached up and touched the thumbnail on the screen. When it didn't work he pressed it again. He seemed annoyed when I told him he had to use the trackpad. To him it was counter-intuitive and unnecessarily complicated.)
1. I clean my iPhone/iPad often, and have a (more) oilophobic screen protector on them. They are considerably easier to clean than my desktop or notebook. I *accept* that I'm going to get fingerprints on the iOS devices because that is their primary interface (and I reduce it by typing on a BT keyboard most of the time). I appreciate that it is not the primary interface for the Mac, because my arms would get tired from typing, cleaning, typing, cleaning ...
2. A 7-year-old who has grown up around touch interfaces will naturally think they're great ... until he starts forming complex thoughts and the need to express them. Maybe he'll never need to learn to type much, perhaps dictation will be the norm in a decade or so, but I have a hunch he'll want to start expressing more complex notions than "launch the app" and find touch a bit limiting in some ways well before he enters college ...
Comments
The current MBP, in its first launch year, is far more capable even in its minimum configuration, and it's $1500.
With due respect, it's hard to take your pronouncement very seriously when you don't provide any reason whatsoever for it.
I think it's a GREAT idea! If/when there's one available for the most recent 15" MBP I will definitely give it a spin, unless there's a compelling reason not to.
We tried the infrared approach, like what's being described in this article, on a 103" Panasonic plasma. The challenge we had there was that the display bezel put the detection area about an inch away from the screen. That's enough to introduce parallax error with a screen that big. It worked perfectly at the eye level of whoever was using it, but when pointing to things above or below the user, they'd often miss. Of course, that wouldn't be a problem with a display that isn't the size of a living room wall with a typical bezel depth.
Ours also seemed to require periodic recalibration, but we never decided conclusively if it was actually drifting or if the perception of misalignment was the result of different users each approaching it differently.
I went on about this at length in another thread and am feeling too lazy to repeat it all here right now. Maybe later. Or if you're super motivated you could search the forum for the subject using "touch screen" and my name as the criteria.
Let me ask you this, though: since the things that make it useful to me are not things you're likely to do, would you even accept that there's a valid argument in favour of touchscreen, or would you simply conclude that I'm a so-called "outlier" and therefore my preferences are invalid? If the latter, what's the point of discussing it?
Not necessarily. Schiller et al also decided that it was more important to keep the MacBook Pro slim, quiet, cool, light, and power efficient than it was to use a design that would allow for more than 16GB or RAM. While I haven't any data one way or the other, anecdotal observation suggests that those who disagree with Apple's choices MAY be the majority.
Likewise the wisdom collective at Apple decided that retaining legacy ports would yield a poor experience. Clearly the majority disagree. In this case, those of us who SUPPORT the choice are the minority.
It was Apple that decided the space inside an iPhone was better utilized by things that are not a headphone jack. Poll your friends to determine whether Apple's view of a poor experience lines up with theirs.
I am not arguing either for or against any of Apple's choices here -- I'm simply saying that Apple having done research and drawing a conclusion does NOT necessarily mean that those who disagree are ipso facto in the minority.
(As an aside, this afternoon a visiting 7-year-old asked if he could select a video on my new MacBook Pro. I told him to go ahead, and waited to see what he would do. He reached up and touched the thumbnail on the screen. When it didn't work he pressed it again. He seemed annoyed when I told him he had to use the trackpad. To him it was counter-intuitive and unnecessarily complicated.)