I have always thought a touchscreen to be a great additional feature. I would assume it would come with an on/off toggle in the control panel and so would be a non issue for those who find it annoying. When I first got my MBP with the touch bar muy fingers always went up to the screen bring something into focus or move it out of the way. I can think of one scenario where a touch screen would be great - airplanes. If you have ever tried to do work in a cramped environment with the laptop on your lap even the trackpad can be a pain. I see it as a three level input formation - touch screen for basic interaction, track pad for general use, and mouse for detailed and speedier control. None negate the others tho I am definitely a mouse person. My daughters are both trackpad or touch users exclusively.
Im a bit torn: I won’t like smudging my screen so I doubt I’d use it unless somehow it was smudge proof, and I’d be leery of the OS maybe pushing me to use touch once it’s available as a default with the pad being secondary.
I don't care to use touch screen on macbook because vertical screen is awkward for using touch so little usage of touch screen. So, Apple can redesign hinges of macbook and make it like 360 degree 2-in-1 laptop that HP/DELL/LENOVO/etc make and sell.
I’d be more interested in a Track Pad that was also a screen
That's a concept that would be a lot more useful than both making the display a touch screen and redesigning everyone in macOS to be large enough for a finger.
Definitely not needed as it’s a gimmick feature. Had them on work Windows machines and they were an oft forgotten about annoyance. Reaching up to the touch the screen when your hands are on the keyboard is baaad, m’kay?
IMO, is the same experience when using an iPad with keyboard. Do you think is a bad experience in the iPad too?
Yes. As attested to by the unused forgotten keyboard for my iPad sitting in some storage box somewhere
This is how Apple innovates. They wait so long that everyone forgot it should have been implemented 10 years ago, and then announce it like it's a miracle invention. This is a long long long overdue feature.
Or it’s a slow news day and some staff writer had to push out a filler article. All speculation and at such a long time frame that it can be explained away as “plans change” when it doesn’t happen.
I’m in. Its function is more for an incidential situation rather than a fully functional aspect. The constant usage of iPad, iPhone and auto’s infotainment system wire our brain to react this way. I find myself sometimes reaching for the screen unintentionally when trying to show people something on MacBook Pro. But when I work alone, I never think of touching the screen.
I believe there exist benefits to a touch screen on a Mac. But that’s a very weak statement — all you need is one instance of the touchscreen being useful for that statement to be true.
The real question is whether the benefits exceed the cost. Partly that’s device cost, but it’s also increased complexity of the UI which imposes costs on users, apple, and developers. The touch bar is a great example of cost exceeding benefits.
still, they’ll probably do it because a lot of people think they want it
The feature I hate most about my iPhone and iPad is the fingerprints.
Me too. I have microfiber wiping clothes prepositioned pretty much everywhere I use a touch device, including in my car, at my desk, within reach of where I park my carcass on the sofa, etc. Funny thing is that when I’m using my iPad Pro on the Magic Keyboard I almost never touch its screen. The most common things that I still use touch for even when I’m using a keyboard with an iPad are Touch ID (on older iPads) and word suggestions/completion. Why the latter? Because the word suggestions/completions bar is perfectly positioned on the bottom of the screen close to the keyboard. It takes me less time to touch the screen than to move the cursor and click on the suggested word. The way the Magic Keyboard is positioned makes this so natural.
Here’s the deal, at least for me. Addition touch support as an alternative interaction method to a device that is primarily keyboard based, or adding keyboard + mouse support to a device that is primarily touch based gives me more options for adapting the device to my use of the device. As much as I love the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard combo, it isn’t really ideal for when I’m using my iPad on the sofa or on an airplane tray table for heavy content consumption tasks (web, movies, music, reading, etc.) or light creative/productive tasks like email, photo touch up, posting on social networks, etc. Being able to snap the iPad Pro off the Magic Keyboard is a perfect adaptation and a much appreciated option.
I can easily envision that there will be comparable use cases with a touch enabled MacBook where the touch option provides me with more options to adapt the device to my needs. I will say that a touch enabled MacBook may not solve the airplane tray table issue unless they make it a 2:1 foldable design, but who knows?
The most important point in all of this is that when viewed through the lens of touch or keyboard being added as an alternative input method all it really does is provide users with more options. Who does not like options? Of course the caveat is that you can’t sacrifice the integrity of the core design to deliver new options. The options also have to work.
Trying to replace real keyboards with touch based virtual keyboards that obscure the screen content or replace high precision pointers with sausage sized finger poking can result in options that suck (OTS), which was a recurring theme in Microsoft’s many attempts to bring touch to Windows before realizing that you’ll just have to buy a damn keyboard and pointing device if you want to use Windows in a non-sucky way. So far, I haven’t seen Apple push an OTS approach on us and expect that if they bring touch to the MacBooks they will do so in a most appropriate way, just like they did with the stellar support for keyboards and pointers on iPad.
Not a good idea, mechanically wise. It would require a complete redesign of display hinge. The actual mechanism with t-con board and tensor flexes is quite fragile. It would lead to some kind of hinge-gate, loose hinges, video distortion, backlight and color uniformity issues, etc.
Native touch support would also make it easier (and seamless) to bring iOS/iPadOS apps over to the Apple Silicon MacBooks.
It would be useful for using the iOS simulator, a lot of Mac users are developing iOS apps. Trying to mimic multi-touch using the click inputs is tricky, even swipe up to multi-task but this is a small use case. It would probably be better if an iPad displayed the testing window so it would be running on the Mac simulator and showing the visuals and using inputs on the device.
If they added touch to the Mac, they would definitely need to reinforce the displays. I'm surprised at how thin they are on Macs. The iPads are laminated too but pressing a fingernail on the screen doesn't warp the screen like it does on the Mac.
While certainly an optional feature and not necessarily “needed,” Apple should offer the touchscreen on all macs by default. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but you can if you do. It seems an awful lot of computers have this now and there’s no real reason not to have the option.
If Apple is going through all these lengths to give the iPad Mac like features, they may as well give the Mac iPad like features.
At the very least, it will give some users an input option while their Magic Mouse is charging upside down…
Mac OS is fairly touch friendly as-is currently.
Time to add the feature to macs. I personally will hardly use it. Thst doesn’t mean I don’t want the option.
I have a touch screen on my work HP f dragonfly. I don’t use it. For scrolling, and that is about it. And let’s be honest, touchscreens are probably offered because for some unfathomable reason windows trackpads are crap, and have always been crap, despite the mac example to copy.
if apple goes touch screen in 2025, it will be because the iPadisation of MacOS is complete; or it has become too hard to get a non touch OLED display.
Ironically, we are getting a thinkpad P14s workstation for engineering student daughter. It doesn’t have a touchscreen. And comparably priced to a very tricked out MBP. But I digress.
I have tried the trackpad in my customers ThinkPad P1 and Surface Laptops, and they are excellent. Maybe they are not as good as an Apple trackpad, but they are very close. Now, if we talk about keyboards, ThinkPad and Surface devices are far ahead of Apple. I suppose there is no perfect device.
interesting. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I love Apples iMac keyboard and the new PowerBook keyboards. They are the best typing experience I’ve had. Surface keyboards feel like they’re from an older era to me.
People are funny. We tend to relate something based on how it compares to my previous favorite thing rather than on its current merit often. I used to love typing on this huge, split Microsoft ergonomic keyboard with keys as tall and proud as skyscrapers. Then I switched to Mac and didn’t like the keyboard. Went back and forth for a while and now I can’t go back to that clunky thing or the new ones like it. Apple has found the happy balance between too much key travel and not enough. Mistakes are few and typing is enjoyable. The slimness of the keyboard also makes it easy for my fingers to find their place again after breaking form to use the mouse - something that’s a challenge with taller keys. All of my Apple keyboards feel sturdy the entire lifetime. The surface feels cheap in comparison.
It’s a no-brainer. At this point I try to use the nonexistent touch screen on my laptop everyday. Just basic functions would be super useful. In any case, I expect it to be there because every other device I use has it, so it’s currently missing. It’s required, not even an add-on.
Comments
No they're not.
The real question is whether the benefits exceed the cost. Partly that’s device cost, but it’s also increased complexity of the UI which imposes costs on users, apple, and developers. The touch bar is a great example of cost exceeding benefits.
still, they’ll probably do it because a lot of people think they want it
Here’s the deal, at least for me. Addition touch support as an alternative interaction method to a device that is primarily keyboard based, or adding keyboard + mouse support to a device that is primarily touch based gives me more options for adapting the device to my use of the device. As much as I love the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard combo, it isn’t really ideal for when I’m using my iPad on the sofa or on an airplane tray table for heavy content consumption tasks (web, movies, music, reading, etc.) or light creative/productive tasks like email, photo touch up, posting on social networks, etc. Being able to snap the iPad Pro off the Magic Keyboard is a perfect adaptation and a much appreciated option.
I can easily envision that there will be comparable use cases with a touch enabled MacBook where the touch option provides me with more options to adapt the device to my needs. I will say that a touch enabled MacBook may not solve the airplane tray table issue unless they make it a 2:1 foldable design, but who knows?
The most important point in all of this is that when viewed through the lens of touch or keyboard being added as an alternative input method all it really does is provide users with more options. Who does not like options? Of course the caveat is that you can’t sacrifice the integrity of the core design to deliver new options. The options also have to work.
Trying to replace real keyboards with touch based virtual keyboards that obscure the screen content or replace high precision pointers with sausage sized finger poking can result in options that suck (OTS), which was a recurring theme in Microsoft’s many attempts to bring touch to Windows before realizing that you’ll just have to buy a damn keyboard and pointing device if you want to use Windows in a non-sucky way. So far, I haven’t seen Apple push an OTS approach on us and expect that if they bring touch to the MacBooks they will do so in a most appropriate way, just like they did with the stellar support for keyboards and pointers on iPad.
It would lead to some kind of hinge-gate, loose hinges, video distortion, backlight and color uniformity issues, etc.
If they added touch to the Mac, they would definitely need to reinforce the displays. I'm surprised at how thin they are on Macs. The iPads are laminated too but pressing a fingernail on the screen doesn't warp the screen like it does on the Mac.
If it is a clamshell with hardware keyboard and trackpad, meh. Won't be a feature I'd use.
Mac OS is fairly touch friendly as-is currently.