Comment by whycome
4 hours ago
My god they finally did it. After all the fears of canibalizing iPad sales and gorilla arms. An Apple touchscreen MacBook.
Absurd it took this long when they basically led the field in touchscreen innovation (especially on the UX side of things)
I always thought the Surface Book design by Microsoft was very Apple like and it always seemed like the logical step: let the screen detach but keep the extra horsepower in the base.
CPU + battery in the top-cover kills the balance of the laptop and makes the whole thing heavier. It's a really awkward design compared to a clamshell laptop with a very thin display-only lid.
Flip-around convertible or kickstand with soft-cover keyboard both work a lot better, but also both have trade-offs.
I somewhat fondly recall my old HP Windows Pen PC where the screen would twist and lay back down over the keyboard. That thing was a brick, but it had the correct balance for a laptop and the keyboard keys were out of the way in tablet mode. Maybe Apple will bring that form factor back, but with a super thin OLED display and a really lightweight device.
With the surface books, the bigger battery and graphics card in the base ensured that it was the heavier part.