Comment by steveBK123
2 days ago
I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig. Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
From the perspective of someone with a touchscreen windows device, I agree. I rarely used the touchscreen not because it wasnt useful, but because it was unwieldy on windows.
I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
All this to say simply shoehorning touch on a mac is a pretty bad idea simply because the hardware, in its current iteration, is not there. I wonder if they'll release a "macbook touch" thats more akin to a surface for their touch interface.
> I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
I have a work Lenovo Yoga and have a similar experience with the 2-in-1. I actually appreciate that I can fold the keyboard all the way back under and use it as a tablet. I'll sometimes use that for doing document reviews on the couch. I've also used it folded, hmmm, 290 degrees or so as a touch interface for some monitoring software. Windows seems to have some APIs that will report to applications when it switches into tablet mode and applications that auto-switch their UI to have bigger buttons etc are quite appreciated.
This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).
For me it's vision and physical ergonomics. The GUI and mouse did great things for computing, but were never strictly safe from an ergonomic standpoint, and I see a lot of people walking around with carpal tunnel braces. Especially CAD operators and computer programmers.
After trying it out roughly every year, Ubuntu finally seems to have fairly transparent touch screen support, and I've given up on Windows. At a comfortable reading distance, with the laptop actually on my lap (as I'm typing now), I can reach out and touch the screen more easily and comfortably than manipulating the trackpad.
Getting good at this didn't happen overnight, and its behavior isn't identical to my Android or Apple tablets.
Precise cursor positioning is hit or miss, but it is with the mouse too. In either case, I usually get as close as I can, and then move the cursor with the arrow keys. Precise mouse work also gives me eyestrain headaches.
I can only do limited programming on the laptop anyway because the screen is too small. It could be that I'm a freak because I fall into the divide in between how people "should" use laptops and tablets. The programmers do think I'm a freak.
I think the best use cases of iPad are basically bifurcated into:
1) Consumption device People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head).
2) Creative (not productivity/coding!) device Artists needing pencil & touch interface for precise tactile writing/drawing/editing
> not productivity/coding!
You don’t think a non-artist, non-coder can be productive on an iPad?
Some jobs are heavily writing, reading, email/messaging, meetings, etc. Feel link those people can do quite well with an iPad, no?
10 replies →
Touch on standard laptops really doesn't make any sense. At most it should be a BTO option, not something that comes stock. That capacitative sensing capability doesn't come for free after all (and not just in terms of monetary costs) and users who know that they'll never use it shouldn't have to pay for it.
> demand for a touchscreen on a laptop
My take is that consumers didn't want this; it was manufacturers trying to "add value" or sell something new. Same as the recent "AI PC" craze.
I don’t think so. It was one of the most requested features for the Framework 13 for some reason.
1 reply →
this. it took me 2 years to notice my T14s even had a touchscreen
its useless
flexes too much to actually use it
It was one of those basic things Jobs was right about years ago when people were clamouring for it. Holding your arm out to a laptop screen is tiring and pointless. If only they'd stuck with his other bit os wisdom that phone screens should be small enough to use one handed.
What we need is a single MacOS that can run an iOS-like touchscreen launcher and dumbed-down 'apps' while operating via touchscreen, but with a keyboard+mouse connected switches back to 'productivity mode', exposing the full power of MacOS.
MacOS can basically do this already, running iOS software on Macs. It's just a matter of choosing to unlock the potential of modern iPad hardware, putting the same OS on iPads and Macbooks. Full software compatibility. iPads that can be more than locked-down toys.
But would Apple ever give up the control and App Store revenue that locked-down devices provide?
Strong disagree. I gave up my Macbook for an iPad + (Mini + Jump). I do a fair amount of penciling and consumption, but most of my time is booping around in the window environment with the Magic Keyboard case. Emails, YouTube, WhatsApp, Obsidian, Remoting into more capable machines, sometimes I touch the screen, most times I'm using the trackpad or a mouse.
You're one of the (relatively) few who found the iPad useful for getting actual work done. There are others like you, just not that many. (I tried and failed to make the iPad + Magic Keyboard my only machine.)
There are at least two of us!
> Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee." -- Yahtzee Crowshaw
We figured out that light pens were an abomination for ergonomics back in the 1980s.
The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
> The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
Did they do it when Apple offered the touch bar? Or did annoying nerds complain so much that Apple finally removed this pretty cool feature?
Anybody who thinks about it for a few minutes will realize that any touch interface on a laptop has to be on the bottom part and not on the screen to be great. The touch bar was an attempt, and could have been very useful. Maybe having the entire keyboard be a touch interface could be something, like BlackBerry did?