Comment by rubicon33
3 hours ago
Not me personally, but my wife does. She will not buy a laptop unless it has touch screen. "So get an iPad" everyone tells her.
No, you don't get it. She wants the keyboard, she wants a first class desktop experience, and she wants a touch screen.
Watching her work is... different. She mostly uses her laptop on her lap, on the couch, scrolling and "clicking" with touch... and when she needs to type something she slides it back slightly, and types. Almost never uses the track pad.
This is how my 8-year-old works on her school Chromebook. And all of the kids at her school that I've seen using laptops are similar. Touch the screen to interact, type on the keyboard. I think they're just wired to believe every screen should be touchable and go with whatever is easiest for them in the moment.
A touchscreen is a way more natural and intuitive interface than a mouse cursor driven by a trackpad.
If I'd never used a laptop before I'd probably do the exact same thing as the kids!
For interacting with a UX that's designed around keyboard and mouse? I get how it's intuitive to reach out and touch something you can see, but in terms of much of the UX it doesn't make any sense.
Exactly. Why on Earth would they default to touching something away from the screen that's an imperfect map to it when they can just touch the thing they want directly? I've seen so many people saying they don't understand and would never use a touchscreen on a laptop, and I just have to think they've not really been around non-technical adults or children.
You lose control without a desktop and mouse. I can't even begin to count the number of times I got hit with a dark pattern where an app steers me in a direction that I can't click out of because on touch interfaces, you have less control.
4 replies →
Huh that's really interesting because my 12 year old has been using a school-provided chromebook for 3 years now and she and all her peers almost NEVER use the touchscreen, they use the trackpad almost exclusively. And I've watched her using her ipad too, and she uses the touchscreen when she's in (her words) "that kind of app" but if she's in Google Docs she's 100% trackpad.
I wonder if by the time she's 12 she'll switch over more and more. I suspect that the trackpad is just a little too disconnected in her brain for now, especially since we don't really do a lot of screens / laptops. I don't think pinching to zoom and scrolling quickly and tapping things far away from where the cursor is will go away easily though.
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Yes unless you've seen nontech people use a touchscreen you won't get the appeal.
Some people don't intuitively use trackpads so they'll use a mouse and if they discover touchscreens that becomes a feature that needs to come with any laptop after that.
Yea, it's pretty funny seeing all the posts here from people who cannot fathom why a product like this exists.
It's pretty eye opening really. If it weren't for seeing someone close to me do it, I'd be in the same camp, wondering who in their right mind would use their laptop like that.
I've seen someone close to me do it, and I still don't understand. I've asked her to explain why she fumbled around trying to perform a simple cursor move instead of moving the mouse, and I got a vague "it's easier" (it wasn't easier).
Same here. I couldn't understand it until like you and the comments before, saw younger generation all thought screens by default should be touchable, and other people casually scroll on the display and then return to keyboard for typing.