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There are two types of people in this world, those who have no problem touching a computer screen,

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and those who cannot tolerate it at all.

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I believe that fingers should stay down on keyboards, but sometimes you don't know until you try.

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For over a decade with the launch of the MacBook Air, Apple has resolutely refused to add a touchscreen to the Mac.

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It's not in an optimal position, you don't feel comfortable. The best way to deliver multi-touch in the notebook

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is through the track pad. But in this office, that attitude is deeply confusing

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among the many Windows PC users who have touchscreens. They say a touchscreen is useful, essential even,

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and that Mac users have no idea what they're missing.

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Well, to find out, we're going to build a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen.

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And here it is.

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It can do everything your touchscreen Windows laptop can do.

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You can open apps, close apps, zoom, scroll, move the text input cursor,

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and even swipe between desktops. How neat.

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There are drawbacks though. The laptop doesn't close anymore, eliminating some of its portability.

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It's much heavier, which puts a lot of weight on the screen hinge,

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so it can't hold it up at certain angles. And this cable is really annoying.

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These are things that wouldn't be a problem on a proper TouchMac book.

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But nevertheless, having this $300 espresso screen taped onto the computer

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has fooled me into thinking it was the actual screen. Green tape, not withstanding.

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After using this for a while, I have to say that I rarely reached up to use it.

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And I think I know why.

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The arguments for a touchscreen on a laptop seem to circle around convenience.

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It's useful in specific postures, like standing, or walking, or squatting, or sitting on a couch.

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These positions can naturally encourage you to hold your laptop in a way that places your fingers

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closer to the screen than the trackpad, making it so much more convenient to navigate around.

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Here's the deal. Apple has a device for these cases and positions,

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with software explicitly designed from the ground up for touch.

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The iPad, which leads me to an argument that needs to be made.

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And it's one I think Apple's been trying to articulate.

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The finger is a blunt instrument, fat and round.

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The pointing device, a mouse or trackpad, is a precise instrument.

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You can see it on the screen how the pointer tapers to a pixel-thin point.

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And pixels are very small now. What works well with a mouse doesn't work well with a finger.

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And what works well with a finger, obviously, it's a mouse. So if you design a device with an interface for touch,

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it needs to have big, simplified UI elements, while being light and easy to hold,

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like an iPad or an iPhone. That form factor is in fact limiting.

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But by remaining focused, it's also liberating. Now, I am aware of the addition of mouse and trackpad support on iPadOS,

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but I think people are a little confused about it, because I'm quite certain it was purely for the magic keyboard.

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Apple believes reaching up from a keyboard to manipulate a screen

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is so inconvenient that they were willing to make the iPad

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more laptop-like just to solve it. It wasn't a convergence of these platforms.

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It was a solution to an ergonomic problem brought upon by a keyboard accessory.

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And look at the pointer when using that trackpad on the iPad.

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It's round and blunt, like your finger, only transforming when it gets close to something it can manipulate.

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It's abundantly clear that the iPad will always be a touch-first device.

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And so it should remain that the Mac be a pointer-first device.

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Remember Windows 8? Microsoft meekly and foolishly thought they could force the industry

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towards touch with their start-screen interface. But nobody fully committed to it, not even them.

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Even their touch-first, ARM-based Surface RT still had a mousey desktop mode,

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quite simply because the office team didn't even bother to make a touch version of their productivity suite for it.

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And that took over two years. And by that time, Microsoft returned to a mouse-centric form with Windows 10.

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Oh, and did you know that Windows 10 still has a tablet mode

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and that Microsoft Office has a touch mode? Bet you didn't. And I bet you'll never use them either,

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because we all know how Windows works, and changing those basic concepts isn't worth the effort of learning them.

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But let's imagine that Apple thought integrating touch was worth doing.

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Well, you can bet that it would be done in a way that would be very exciting and worth the effort of learning.

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Because let's not forget how beloved and revolutionary the experience on the iPad was.

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The release of Big Sur actually got a lot of people speculating that Apple was preparing macOS for the touchscreen.

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There's the additional spacing between items and menus, and the friendly touchability of the new control center.

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But I think Apple would have to go further, because touch interfaces are difficult to use when your ARM is suspended in mid-air.

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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.

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Yes, you can move the dock there now, but what kind of monster really does that?

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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.

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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.

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This would allow the OS to remain dense and the mouse remain useful,

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while still offering the magical, convenient, and collaborative character of natural interfaces.

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The reason I'm working so hard to imagine the possibilities of touch

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is because after using this MacBook for a couple of weeks,

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as well as a Dell XPS 2-in-1, I can tell you that I seldom reached up and touched the screen.

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A scroll here, a tap there, maybe, that was about it.

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And again, maybe that's because this OS isn't made for touch.

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If it didn't take me two taps to close an app in full screen mode,

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perhaps taps would be more inviting. As it is, I basically only used it when my hand was near

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an already exposed button or scrolling opportunity.

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But when I'm sitting at a desk writing, that rarely happens.

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And when I'm sitting on a couch lamping, I'll use an iPad.

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If Apple releases their next MacBook with a touchscreen option,

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everything would be fine. But I still wouldn't understand it, and I definitely wouldn't select it.

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It would have to be implemented like mouse support on iPad. Convenience, sure, but inessential.

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To me, that convenience is not worth the fingerprints on the screen.

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Thanks for touching on this Mac Address.

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I've heard all the arguments for adding a touchscreen on the Mac.

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Comment below what your thoughts on this whole touchscreen conversation is.

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I'm curious if I really am the minority here.