there are two types of people in this world those who have no problem touching
a computer screen and those who cannot tolerate it at all
i believe that fingers should stay down on keyboards but
sometimes you don't know until you try
hmm for over a decade with the launch of the
macbook air apple has resolutely refused to add a touchscreen
to the mac it's not in an optimal position you don't feel comfortable
the best way to deliver multi-touch in the notebook is through the trackpad
but in this office that attitude is deeply confusing among the many Windows
pc users who have touch screens they say a touch screen is useful
essential even and that mac users have no idea
what they're missing well to find out
we're going to build a macbook pro with a touchscreen
and here it is
it can do everything your touch screen Windows laptop can do
you can open apps close apps
zoom scroll move the text input cursor
and even swipe between desktops how neat
there are drawbacks though um the laptop doesn't close anymore
eliminating some of its portability it's much heavier
which puts a lot of weight on the screen hinge so it can't hold it up
at certain angles and this cable is really annoying
these are things that wouldn't be a problem on a proper touch macbook
but nevertheless having this 300 espresso screen taped onto the computer
has fooled me into thinking it was the actual screen green tape
notwithstanding after using this for a while
i have to say that i rarely reached up to use it
and i think i know why
the arguments for a touch screen on a laptop seem to circle around
convenience it's useful in specific postures like
standing or walking or squatting or sitting on the couch
these positions can naturally encourage you to hold your laptop in a way that
places your fingers closer to the screen than the trackpad making it so much more
convenient to navigate around here's the deal apple has a device for
these cases and positions with software explicitly designed from the
ground up for touch the ipad which leads me to an argument
that needs to be made and it's one i think apple's been trying to articulate
the finger is a blunt instrument fat and round
the pointing device a mouse or trackpad is a precise instrument
you can see it on the screen how the pointer tapers to a pixel thin point
and pixels are very small now what works well with a mouse doesn't work well with
a finger and what works well with the finger obviates a mouse so if you design a
device with an interface for touch it needs to have big
simplified ui elements while being light and easy to hold
like an ipad or an iphone that form factor
is in fact limiting but by remaining focused it's also liberating
now i am aware of the addition of mouse and trackpad support on ipad os but
i think people are a little confused about it because i'm quite certain
it was purely for the magic keyboard apple believes reaching up
from a keyboard to manipulate a screen is so inconvenient that they were
willing to make the ipad more laptop-like just to solve it it
wasn't a convergence of these platforms it was a solution to
an ergonomic problem brought upon by a keyboard accessory and
look at the pointer when using that trackpad on the ipad it's round and blunt like
your finger only transforming when it gets close to something it can manipulate
it's abundantly clear that the ipad will always be a touch first device
and so it should remain that the mac be a pointer first device
remember Windows 8 microsoft meekly and foolishly thought they could force the
industry towards touch with their start screen interface but nobody fully committed to it not
even them even their touch first ARM-based surface rt still had a mousy
desktop mode quite simply because the office team didn't even bother to make a touch
version of their productivity suite for it that took over two years and by that
time microsoft returned to a mouse-centric form with Windows 10. oh
and did you know that Windows 10 still has a tablet mode and that microsoft
office has a touch mode bet you didn't and i bet you'll never use them either because we all know how
Windows works and changing those basic concepts isn't worth the effort of learning them
but let's imagine that apple thought integrating touch was worth doing
well you can bet that it would be done in a way that would be very exciting and
worth the effort of learning because let's not forget how beloved and revolutionary the experience on the ipad
was the release of big sur actually got a lot of people speculating that apple was
preparing macOS for the touchscreen there's the additional spacing between
items and menus and the friendly touchability of the new control center
but i think apple would have to go further because touch interfaces are
difficult to use when your ARM is suspended in midair the dock
would have to be placed on either side of the screen so you can hold your hand on the side and stabilize it yes you can
move the dock there now but what kind of monster really does that
and even compared to the way things are on big sur i still think buttons would need to be
20 to 30 to 50 larger or maybe apple could do
something really unusual and let us swipe pinch and do all the multi-touch
gestures on the screen but not tap this would allow the os to
remain dense and the mouse remain useful while still offering the magical
convenient and collaborative character of natural interfaces
the reason i'm working so hard to imagine the possibilities of touch
is because after using this macbook for a couple of weeks as well as a dell xps
two in one i can tell you that i seldom reached up and touched the screen
a scroll here tap there maybe that was about it and
again maybe that's because this os isn't made for touch
if it didn't take me two taps to close an app in full screen mode
perhaps taps would be more inviting as it is i basically
only used it when my hand was near an already exposed button or scrolling
opportunity but when i'm sitting at a desk writing
that rarely happens and when i'm sitting on a couch lampen
i'll use an ipad if apple releases their next macbook
with a touchscreen option everything would be fine but i still
wouldn't understand it and i definitely wouldn't select it it would have to be implemented like
mouse support on ipad convenient sure but inessential and to me that convenience
is not worth the fingerprints on the screen
thanks for touching on this Mac Address i've heard all the arguments
for adding a touch screen on the mac comment below what your thoughts on this
whole touchscreen conversation is i'm curious if i really am the minority here
hi i'm a mac and i'm a pc what you got there piece
of a touch screen before yes belongs on an ipad
what's this it looks really dumb yeah