I highly doubt it. They have tested it internally as far back as the original iBook... but reality is touchscreen computers SUCK. The last thing I want to do is leave my fingerprints all over a screen or keep clicking on things in a awkward hand angle. Its why the market for them is nearly non-existant.

I don't know why it's taking so long. I'm so used to everything being touch screen that I always find myself tapping on my wife's MacBook expecting it to do what it should. Oh right, I have to use that thing below the keyboard...

Please, no… don’t do this shit. Nobody wants a fucking touch screen computer. We have phones and iPads for that.

I just don’t understand the benefit other than for art stuff.

They're not going to add a touchscreen, stylus support, create a hybrid device, etc. as long as their devoted fanbase continues to purchase both a MacBook and an iPad to browse the web. They've been clinging onto these double-dippers for ages - the rest of the industry does not have this luxury, so they added all of these things a decade ago without issue

>but reality is touchscreen computers SUCK

They're fine. Same with stylus support. Apple just wants MacBook/iPad double-dippers.

>Its why the market for them is nearly non-existant.

What? Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, etc. have had a constant variety of touchscreen laptops from budget to flagship throughout the last decade or so.

The number one thing I miss from my Surface Laptop is the touch screen. I can’t believe this MacBook Pro costs this much and doesn’t have a touch screen. Literally insane to me.

This is what sidecar is for, and it works great. And you keep the higher quality non-touch screen.

Having a feature be commonplace and demand for that feature are two different things. Most computers sold in the late 90s had zipdisk slots. You know what medium never caught on? Zip disks.

My friend just returned her new laptop because it wasn't a touch screen and that was a dealbreaker. Some people are very accustomed to using the screen to scroll and hit buttons on web pages.

Mental gymnastics. Touchscreens would've died a half decade ago if this was the case. But as I said, the rest of the industry have had a constant variety of touchscreen laptops at all price points for quite a long time now. They're quite obviously here to stay. And when Apple finally caves and does it in 2030 you lot will act like it's a killer new feature that the ghost of Steve Jobs crafted with his bare hands

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Do you really believe that? The surface pro line is an amazing example of a great touchscreen computer. I’ve loved it since day 1 of buying it. It goes from laptop to tablet seamlessly.

Prior to my surface pro I had the surface laptop which worked great as well. It’s just an additional interface which works great.

They honestly don’t need to if we’re just gonna be real. Are touch screen laptops that big of deal for most people? I don’t think so. I myself at least have a MacBook Pro for my desk work and if I need to go somewhere for work I can easily pack it up but when I’m laying in bed or just going up to the local coffee shop for a break I take my iPad. I’m sure some people out there want a touch screen MacBook but I don’t think it’s the majority of people.

Great, more issues to go wrong so Apple can charge me $2000 for a simple fix more often

I have an HP Elitebook for work and it’s a touchscreen laptop that can completely fold over to be a tablet-like device. It’s nice, I’m not a fan of touching the screen, but it comes with a stylus and I can sign or initial digital document (I’m required to approve things). It’s handy to have, but not something I need. I’d be happy if my MacBook had the functionality.

I work in a position that puts me in front of many different clients on a daily basis. Whenever I put my macbook in front of them, the first thing most of them do is try and scroll by touching the screen. Like it or not, touchscreens are a commonplace on todays portable computers and are here to stay. Most would call it the most intuitive way to navigate an OS. Apple is going to have to adapt eventually.

And they'll make a HUGE deal about it, like it's something no one has ever done.

I disagree. When I pack my bags for a work trip, it feels like I’m packing every device under the sun into my bag. iPads can almost be used as MacBooks, but not quite. MacBooks don’t have touch or flexibility to fold back, so they’re not as nimble for flights. So as a result I need all the devices and their cables and their protective cases.

Like c’mon, merge them already.

Touchscreens suck. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Another Apple "innovation" a decade behind? Do tell.

If apple was to(and I don’t trust them at all) to create a touchscreen macbook that can fold over and be used as a tablet as well for under $1500 it would sell like bananas.

I trust them to get the hinges and the flexibility right(form factor/durability). I don’t trust them to have a decent price point. Would probably be a MacBook Pro max or whatever and be priced at $2500

Basically a baby of the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro.

You could also get a surface pro 8 that does all of that, for significantly less.

how is this going to work? macbooks for a while now have had thin displays, a touch screen display that thin is going to break easily. it's going to be a challenge to keep the weight and the dimensions down while making sure the build quality is still there.

and with that we have tablets

Yup, same. We have multiple Surfaces for home and work use, even my 70-something parents both have them as their main computers and use the touchscreen regularly for interfacing with the computer.

Sucks you're getting downvoted by Apple fanboys and folks who haven't actually used the setup regularly.

I have a Dell XPS with a touchscreen that’s almost 5 years old, lighter and thinner than my MacBook Pro that’s only about a year (maybe 2) older. It’s 2.8 lbs and super thin.

It’s traveled to several countries with me and gotten 5 day a week use throughout the 5 years and works great still. No problems. I mean I take care of my devices in general, but the MacBook has had a dead pixel corner that showed up within the first year with a lot less moving around and not nearly as much use.

Anecdotal evidence sure, but PC makers have been making thin, light touchscreen laptops for years now, so clearly it works.

Right... which is why Microsoft is clearly pissing away money on the.... checks notes... 9th generation of the Surface lineup.

Or you could just buy a Surface for far less.

Or there’s this crazy possibility that other people have tried them and didn’t like them nearly as much as you claim to.

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Touch screen computers suck if you try to use them exactly like desktop computers with a bonus input device.

If, on the other hand, you have valid use cases for using touch screen computers—or say, an entire ecosystem based around touch screen devices that are approximately the same size as a small computer screen, aka the iPad—it can be great.

That being said, I feel like the iPad and Surface already have that space covered…so they really should just be merged with the lowest tier models of laptops.

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Not only do I believe it, the market bears it out in the fact they still, to this day, have never taken off.

It's for one off tapping. So you're sitting with your hands on the keyboard typing and you need to just click a button or switch to a different app or something. Just a very short one-off click, and it's just much faster to reach up and tap it than it is to move your hand to the track pad (esp awkward in tight spaces like a airplane), figure out where the cursor is and steer it in to the button and click.

The other big benefit is just a quick scroll. You just reach up and flick to scroll a web page or whatever. Scrolling with multi-finger gestures on the trackpad isn't too bad, but only when you have enough space to push the laptop far enough out that your hand isn't cramped/awkward just keeping it near the trackpad at all times. In a small space, the trackpad will likely be right up against your body so it would be super awkward to have your hand there. The natural position of your hands is next to the laptop right where the screen is (elbows in line with your body and where the trackpad is). Perfect for reaching in from the side and doing a quick scroll.

Nobody would use 100% touch screen all times. It's not replacing the trackpad on windows laptops. It's a multi-modal thing where you use the touch screen for ergonomics/convenience every now and then, and trackpad for sustained precision work.

Touchscreens have not died because they keep trying to force it down as a high end thing.

But the fact that they are on a VERY slim fraction of computers sold tells you its a niche product with no traction.

The surface is more of a hybrid device where you can convert it into a tablet or a laptop depending on what you're doing. Hybrid devices definitely have their place, but just straight touch screen laptops suck. I have one for work and it's totally useless. Annoying even, since you occasionally get misclicks.

Just because its a touch screen doesn't mean you "have" to touch it... just saying.

Arent they kinda merging the Ipad OS and MacOS, maybe at this point it is trivial to add?

surface pro is a 2-in-1, similar to ipad devices.

My work laptop is a touchscreen and I like it a lot. I liked it enough that I sold my MacBook and replaced it with an HP, almost entirely because I wanted my personal laptop to have a touchscreen too. Aaaaaaaaaand then I never ever ever used the touchscreen and ended up selling the HP too, lmao.

After a decade-long year run, the surface pro still has less than 3% market share. I'm sure some people see value in it, but to me a touchscreen laptop is really nothing more than a nearly useless gimmick IMO. There obviously could be other reasons surface market share is low, but to me this proves that it's not enough of a novelty to win over most people.

It's so good how nothing can be discussed on this website without victims of Apple Derangement Syndrome inventing shit in their head to get mad about.

I've had touchscreen laptops for 15 years, I could never go back. I'm way more efficient with it.

Touch is handier (geddit?) but much less precise that the mouse.

• It depends a lot on what you are doing. For browsing it's convenient, but you can't do any detailed work with touch screens
• It depends on your posture. Touch isn't very useful when your computer is on a desk, but great when you are lying on a couch. If you use the same device in both positions it's a good addition.
• It depends on what you are used to. I have a touch screen mostly for casual use, but find myself occasionally touching my non-touchscreen since I started using the touch screen.

I have one from my office and didn’t know it was a touchscreen until someone else had to show me some routine on it. They’re the only person who has used the touch function on my device because otherwise it’s pointless in my role.

I think the scrolling is a moot point.

How many “one off” clicks does someone do? Like 2-3/day let’s say?

You’re going to put an entire touch screen on a laptop to save like 1,000 seconds a year? Or 16 mins/year. That’s like an hour or two for the lifetime of the laptop; not worth it imo.

Make a 2 in 1 Mac Yoga with 5G

I don’t care as long as they don’t get rid of MacBooks without touchscreen. I don’t want to pay an additional premium for something I won’t use.

Yup. I have a nice MacBook as a personal computer. My work laptop is an HP with a touch screen. I've literally never used the touch screen functionality on it.

Fingerprints on the screen also drive me insane.

No it runs a full windows OS. It’s a full PC where you can install anything you want. Very different than the ipad.

I tried out a surface pro 3 before. I sold that and got back into Mac.

It was the one time I tried surface pro and I’ll never try it again.

It couldn’t run older windows program I think because it was a 4k display and it was basically shrunken down.

It was definitely overrated.

Touch screens are great if the apps are designed to be touch based with gestures, larger UI elements etc. But desktop apps are designed primarily for mouse and keyboard interaction. It will always feel a bit weird using touch for desktop apps, and a mouse with an iPad.

Im sure if it was a good idea and they would sell well, Apple would do it. They have probably done their research.

Bear in mind they did their Touch Bar, and it was rejected by consumers. Maybe that was their test?

"Today, we'd like to announce that we at Apply have created the first ever touchscreen notebook."

So basically a iPad

What's the use case here? I either want the convenience of a touchscreen (so the iPad will work fine), or I need the power the MacBook Pro provides (and if I need that computing power, the touchscreen is an annoyance, not an asset).

Really, it just feels like people want to be able to run OSX on their iPad?

I like the laptop form factor for when I’m actually working working but in travel mode or for entertainment stuff the touch screen would be nice.

Harder to use a laptop on flights than a tablet for me and I fly fairly often. There’s a ton of great games made for iPads as well.

Would also be nice to use a pen on the touch screen for graphic design and other random stuff I work on.

Essentially reducing the amount of stuff I need by combining them.

I think the downside is that it could hurt iPad sales. They might actually want people to buy both even if they lose some customers because of it. Business wise I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons they haven’t done it.

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I think it's something that like 20% of people get obsessed with.

I have one and use it occasionally (certain buttons are just easier to hit that way for some reason), but my brother uses it non-stop.

There's definitely a market for it, but yeah not 100% of people.

Damn you got some HP sales reps super fucking excited then sad for a second there.

Yes, I literally am. I have been wanting a touchscreen Mac since the second I got an iPad specifically for the one-offs. I don’t need to use it constantly to justify it, I just need the option so there isn’t anything standing between me and whatever I’m doing.

Touchscreen support on a mac would be amazing.

Windows tablets are great. And having a touchscreen for drawing is awesome. The fact is that on macs, currently wacoms are kinda the only option. This will open a lot of opportunities.

You can connect an iPad with sidecar and use it with the mac.

I’m not a designer and have no idea if it’s any good.

Sigh. I'd rather get an internal disk reader back.

Apple fan boys will be defending the guerilla arm as a positive just you watch.

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I’m in school right now and it’s been a lifesaver for me. I can read books and highlight with a stylus and it’s mighty handy. When I got my first degree, I had to do it with an iBook. It’s been way easier with the touchscreen to read with my Lenovo laptop. But I’m probably going back to Mac because everything I use for school and work uses Apple products.

It does mean apps will have annoyingly resized ui elements to facilitate touch even if you don’t use it, and the overall cost of the device will go up

My work has surface laptops and I don’t know a single person that uses the touchscreen on a regular basis

I really enjoyed my surface pro 4 but the different form factor made the touchscreen way more useful. You could remove the keyboard, draw, take notes, etc. It just feels so awkward on a laptop when the trackpad is already right there, and the angle makes it basically impossible to draw or write

You had me in the first half…

please be serious

No they won’t

I hate touchscreen since I have get used to "touch" my screens to compare figures, but I don't want to click on anything by that touch. This is a habit transfer from paper reading to screens. A touchscreen will make this super annoying

Will say that I personally have a Surface Book 2, a Surface Pro 5, and occasionally use a Surface Pro 2 at work. On both the Pro's, despite it technically being easier to flip them to full tablet (just yank off the mag keyboard), I find that the slightly larger and heavier Surface Book feels more comfortable for doing 'walk-around' tablet mode. Sitting down with the Surface Book 2 on a table I will literally switch between the keyboard, touchscreen, and the wireless mouse I have connected to it on the fly, different actions feel more natural between each.

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Welcome to 2010!

Wtf, why buy an iPad and a Mac when you can half a combination of both

> as much as you claim to

Are you implying that u/flanagan could be lying about liking touch screens? Why would they do that?

No they wont, nor should they.

> The surface is more of a hybrid device

This is true for Surface Pro and Surface Book but I don't think the Surface Laptop converts to a tablet.

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I don’t really care

"I might have brought my arrowhead collection on board. But I didn't!"

-random vintage comedy reference

This is kind of the only thing I’d possibly care about it for. Current options for drawing as a designer on Mac are certainly suboptimal:

1. Draw analog and scan stuff in
2. Draw on a Wacom connected to the laptop and get no visual or haptic feedback
3. Buy an iPad Pro, have a whole separate workflow from your native Illustrator/Photoshop

I’d really like to be able to draw with a stylus directly in the environment I most frequently use for all my creative work.

If you don't care, why comment with your snarky nonsense?

You need attention that bad?

This would make sense with all of the iOS like changes they are making to the UI. I really can't say I would need, nor appreciate having a touch screen... that's why I have an iPad.

I repair laptops (among other things) and I can honestly say 99% of my customers with touch screens have told me that they never or almost never use them.

Jobs made a semi-famous speech some years ago about why Macs don’t have touch screens, and he was entirely right about it. Granted, the equation has changed a LITTLE since then; specifically, iOS wasn’t a thing. So I could see exactly one reason to have a touch screen on a MacBook: full out-of-the-box compatibility with iOS apps. This will NEVER happen as it will cannibalize Apple’s sales, but if Apple ever made a MacBook with a screen that can flip 180 degrees and effectively be an iPad, I’d buy three of them today.

Ummm, isn’t that what an iPad with the keyboard accessory is? It’s literally the same thing

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Because I felt like it at the time

Thought exactly this lol

I once absolutely crushed an HP sales rep's ego. I was sitting next to him in a conference room, and he started making fun of my MacBook. I just looked over at his HP Elitebook and said it looked awful lot like my Mac.

Apple is about 15 years late. They felt if they created a touchscreen Mac. Customers would stop buying iPads. This was back when tablets were still a new concept.

Can also do it with your iPhone.

my work laptop is touch screen and i honestly use it all the time. Scrolling documents is way better with touchscreen. Pinch-to-zoom is amazing if you work with documents and images. I have to click the same buttons in a menu all the time - I can do that way faster with my fingers than a mouse. I use the calculator a lot, and with no numpad on my keyboard, touching the buttons directly on the screen feels a lot better than using the number keys. Grabbing different windows and arranging them with my fingers, it feels better and faster for me than using a mouse

How about people who don’t want to pay for two devices?

They could just let the iPad Pro run Mac OS and that would solve the problem but they don’t want to as it will eat into their profits…

It's not at all hard to see why many people would legitimately not like them. Fingerprints all over the display constantly? Screen wobble every time you touch the screen? Extra thickness on the display?

School districts often do requests for proposals for touchscreen laptops, and Apple doesn't even have one. I would imagine making a touchscreen laptop would be lucrative for Apple.

Don't see the appeal of a high quality retina display covered in smudgy fingerprints.

I find it’s mostly doctors that use the touch screen laptops , so they can sign prescriptions and scribble doctors notes quickly

As Mac user I don’t have much interest… unless they do something different from everyone else I don’t see the point.

My personal laptop is a touch screen and I keep stopping myself on my work one.

This thread illustrates how spot on you are with this comment. From what I can tell most people in this thread aren’t huge fans but a few comments have sparked bitter flame wars between touched and the untouched

Too late, I already went on to PC.

I think running full Photoshop (and other media editing) on an accurate, pressure sensing display will appeal to a lot of creative pros (many already love the pencil for the iPad). We’re also seeing the first generation of kids raised on tablets start to hit adulthood. Old people and others will have their own interest in it. I think it’s something that has been long-awaited.

Omg life will never be the same!

I do way more than that. Instead of moving the mouse, you click it instead, that’s like dozens of times a day. It’s one of those things where if you don’t have it, you don’t see the need for it but I personally love it.

I think it’s a great option if you don’t want to/can’t spend on a laptop and a tablet

I hate Apple lol

I’ve honestly noticed it’s gone quite a bit, after having gone from a windows laptop with it to MacBook.

It just makes your laptop feel more natural. Most of the time you use your trackpad, but on occasion you just want to poke at the screen.

There’s also an entire generation of people coming who expect every screen to be touch enabled by default. It’ll soon be like shipping a black and white tv in the 90s.

You can use a stylus currently with the MacBook trackpads & the surface area is big enough for signatures which I often do as well for work. This is the only “touch” use case I can think of for a regular laptop user. iPads exist for a reason & fill the “hybrid” niche well IMO.

I’m against touching my Retina display at all costs as fingerprints drive me crazy. If Apple can come up with a better oleophobic coating then what they use on iPhone for the display I’d maybe consider it but still find it unnecessary.

are the screens not greasy and disgusting enough already?

I bought an HP touchscreen laptop and used it for 8 years while barely using the touchscreen. Laptops are for keyboards and touchpads.

No, they're on a very slim fraction of MacBooks aka 0%. On other modern laptops, they're available on most models. I know you're just trolling here, but at least try to use facts that aren't easily disproven.

The amount of Apple fan boys here that are just like "we Mac users don't use touch screens on our laptops, so hardly anyone does" is just too damn high. Of course I expect nothing less.

I used to work in retail selling Home Electronics. Back when Windows 8 was launching we had to go and get sales training from Microsoft and the instructor was running it on a Macbook Pro.

Spent a fair amount of time trolling him - "So you're saying you'd like us to upsell to a Mac, you know... the superior Windows computer?"

IPad Pro with Magic Keyboard is basically Mac Book with touch screen. But when I use they keyboard… I almost never touch the screen.

I hear it'll only cost 3 payments of 30k! (Not including the charger, and the outlet adapter to make the charger work, and the headphone adapter)

Surface isn't the only touch screen laptop though. Almost all other popular laptop makers have quite a few popular models with touch screens.

Not really. Windows is made for touch screen and resizes when using the laptop as a tablet (iirc, correct me if I'm wrong). Although it's already accessible without the resizing. I wouldn't call the windows interface particularly any bigger than apple's macOS. Certain buttons like the close/minimize button are bigger, but I think they're just too tiny on macOS personally.

The touch bar is useless 90% of the time though. I use it to adjust audio, that's it. It's completely different to having your entire screen be touch screen.

I use one in my workshop and even there the screen doesn't get dirty enough to be concerned by it. If you're on the stand or holding it properly they're relatively stable. The thickness is not noticeable, considering touch display features do not add enough thickness to even concern any average consumer with.

Literally all they need to do is make a native touch driver for Mac OS so it can be compatible with 3rd party touch screens without requiring you to pay extortionate prices for 3rd party drivers.

Do we really need a touch screen when we have iPads?

I agree. I regularly have to ask my colleagues and wife to not touch my screen when they are pointing to something on a non-touch screen. But with that said, some people don’t care and you can use the functionality sparingly without dirtying up your screen.

I'm so old I still get mad when someone touches my external display.. and still work 90% of my day using an external display. I cannot stand having finger prints on the screen of the device I use to actually get work done. If there was a touchscreen on my 16" MBP M1 Max I would never use it. That said I know there's a huge market of people that causally use their Mac and it might be something they want. I am sure the option will be nice for some people I just hope there's an option to skip it if you don't want it.

Sure, if they can make them as cheap as Chromebooks so schools can afford them, why not?

I've had two touchscreen laptops, and I NEVER used them.

You have to remember in that split second to use the touchscreen, which goes against the habit of going right for the touchpad/mouse, so it takes even longer because you have to think about it.

If you built up a new habit, that's a bit different. But how many one-off clicks does that take to build a new habit?

I agree. Touch screens on laptops are kinda eh... And the thing is, this has been known about for some time. They experimented with this back in the 1980s and found that it's actually quite physically stressful to have a hand elevated for any length of time. The keyboard/mouse interface means your arms are rested on a surface. Lifting your arm continually to touch something on your screen gets tiresome.

​

What I want is an iPad and MacBook in one purchase. I want a MacBook that works like a laptop but I can pivot the screen 180, close the keyboard interface, and make it an iPad.

​

I like having a laptop for when I work on the go, but I could use an iPad for casual browsing and whatnot. I'd happily pay a premium to have both of these in something I can take almost anywhere with me. Maybe this is a step in that direction? I hope so.

Fair enough! It’s automatic for me, I don’t think I ever had to think about it

Only if you think the only difference between an iPad and a MacBook is the keyboard.

They are literally on 3% of all laptops sold... try to use facts teenager.

At one time they were 10% of all laptops sold, LAST DECADE. They have not experienced that high since 2013 because like 3D displays they are a freaking fad.

Ooh we got an edgy one. Let's see the source of your claim.

I just hope they will have options both with or without it. Having had 2 laptops with touch displays, I don't find this feature useful and wouldn't want to pay extra for it

I don't think very many people care about touchscreen on a laptop but its something handy to have if it comes without tradeoffs in image & screen quality.

I've had touchscreen Windows laptops and never used it. For me I'd rather use a mouse.. But we also have a whole generation of kids coming into the "Laptop" age who grew up using tablets/touch, so I could see how this would be a market driver.

You can have a touchscreen but not actually use it. I have a touchscreen laptop that I only use the touchscreen on when traveling, which isn't that often any more. I forget that it is a touchscreen most of the time, as I've got it set up in stand and the laptop display functions more like a secondary display.

Also, not sure if my own device is just special, but my laptop touchscreen never really shows fingerprints after being touched (while my stationary monitor definitely does if it's touched). It's not the same type of screen as phones and tablets have. (I am CONSTANTLY wiping down my tablet and phone because the fingerprints irk the shit out of me.)

It's not like the device having a touchscreen suddenly means you can't use the mouse and keyboard to do things - the touchscreen is just one of the options when it's there.

Windows has the option to disable the touchscreen as well if it's troublesome, and I would assume Apple would build the same option. (Might not be fair to assume, as Apple does make some weird decisions sometimes, but still.)

my work laptop is a touch screen and I didn’t even notice until I accidentally touched the screen several weeks into using it

Eh, definitely get the same sort of thinking on the Apple hater side of things too.

Human nature is like this with so many things. "Well I don't experience things that way, ergo no one does!"

One of the most frustrating things about dealing with people in general to me - the inability to understand that the world doesn't actually revolve around you and other people might want/use/need something you don't. It's literally the root of so many shitty things in the world.

Touchscreen laptops suck. It’s a feature that you are never going to use unless in fall into a few niche fields. I thought I would use it for handwriting, and I was wrong about that. If you want a touchscreen, get a tablet or use your phone. Using a touchscreen the size of even a small laptop is cumbersome. You hands will tire out and if the edges are not completely smooth when folded back on it’s self it will cut into your hand at some point. Multifunction devices are never as good as the stand alone device.

I mean the cost will go up because it's Apple. That's what they do.

And I've had a touchscreen Windows laptop - just a laptop, not a computer/tablet hybrid thing - for almost 5 years and literally have never come across any app that has "annoyingly resized ui elements to facilitate touch" for Windows. Sure there might be some out there optimized for touch that I just don't use I guess, but it just feels weird that this is something that anyone would worry about when it's ... not really happening?

For the average user it achieves the same result. I own both and have used them for school and work seamlessly.

If I could initiate sidecar from my iPad, it’d be close.

What I really want is the iPad experience for recreational activities like reading and note taking/pencil input. and the Mac experience when working. I do a lot in terminal and web dev that doesn’t always play nice with the iPad browser. Plus full USB MacOS support and hard drive support would be nice.

Really frustrating how close iPadOS and MacOS are without taking that last little step.

A lot of people use MacOS on MacBook Airs that have literally the same compute power as iPad pros: The M1 chip. These days you can ALMOST accomplish everything such a person might want on an IPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard, but not all. I personally need terminal and non-mobile web browsers for my work. But I don’t need a ton of compute power, and when I do, I normally remote into a desktop PC that has a beefy chip you won’t find in most laptops.

If surface pros had MacOS and terminal , you’d be right. Doing the work I do on a Windows PC would be somewhere between impossible and very difficult.

Hopefully. iPad OS is so close. Really wish connecting iPad pros to a keyboard just flipped on MacOS mode

Same. Or conversely if the iPad Pro switched to MacOS mode when you connected the Magic Keyboard, I’d be pretty happy

Do people actually like touchscreen laptops?

Honestly, it is and has been happening in Windows since the touch screen push with Windows 8.

Yep, that's what I'm talking about

And we know Apple can make a $300 iPad for schools (because they have for many years). I'm hoping they eventually come out with a $500 touchscreen MacBook for schools.

I'd buy one. I went out of my way to buy the last touchbar MacBook pro that Apple said they'd be making.

I think this was more or less my point. Functionally, a touchscreen Macbook already exists in the iPad pros. So, it doesn't make sense to me to make the Macbook a touchscreen, when that essentially already exists.

Do people just want to be able to run MacOS on their iPads?

Personally? Yes. If my iPad Pro could plug into a thunderbolt port at my desk and become a desktop running MacOS, unplug and turn into an iPadOS device, and then turn back to macOS when attached to the keyboard, it’d be amazing for me

I dunno... maybe because I'm old and need things zoomed anyway to see them, I don't see that as a nod to touchscreen, just better readability. Heh.

I guess it's probably for touch, but I've enjoyed being able to see things better.

But on Apple credit, they did invent multitouch on phone which paved way for the modern smartphone industry. With that aside, I do believe that Apple has to step up something unique to sell this touchscreen on laptops.

What will actually happen is we’ll get an iPad with a built in keyboard running iPadOS

Eww you bought an Intel MacBook Pro? That thing is awful in performance and battery life next to the new apple silicon models

No. It's a silicon model. They made one model of silicon MacBook Pro with a touch bar. 13 inch only.

John Elias and Wayne Westerman of Fingerworks invented multi-touch, which Apple purchased in 2005.

Alright, that could be said for many things. Thats not my point. Apple mainstreamed multi touch. Thats what I was trying to say.

The Microsoft Design Language used in Windows since Windows 8, previously called Metro, was explicitly designed for touch and introduced with Windows Phone 7.

Readability being improved is a side effect, and there are better ways to accomplish that goal than what is being done here.

The only info I can find on Google about laptop touchscreen sales rates says it was 10% of the market in 2013, and I'd be really surprised if that's dropped by 2/3 since then. Would love to see a source for that. Can't find anything about it so I could be wrong, who knows.

Anecdotally, feels like a lot more laptops now have touchscreen options than did in 2013. Why would they add it as such a widespread option if it's 3% of the market?

2-3/day? Lol no, at least 10x that, if not closer to 100x. Scrolling is not a moot point, it's an extremely common use case of a touch screen on a lap top. I try to scroll my macbook screen all the time because of muscle memory and it's just the most convenient way of doing it.

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This isn't some hypothetical. There already are laptops with touch screens. We know how they work and what the touch screen is used for, and plenty of people simply will not buy a laptop without a touch screen once they got used to it. That's not every single person, perhaps, but there are plenty of us. I have a macbook for work, but I simply wouldn't buy a laptop without a touch screen. It was a very clear "epiphany" for me after using a surface book for a few days. Like, yup, this is just what laptops are for me now, and I'm not going back.

I’m down for this if it’ll allow a full iOS mode for touch and a full macOS UI for keyboard and mouse input.

What I can’t deal with in Windows is the compromised experience on both. iOS and iOS apps on a Macbook could mitigate this if done exactly correctly.

Why is scrolling on a screen better than a touchpad.

As I already explained, because it’s easier to reach in cramped spaces like a plane or other small tables or, gasp, your lap. When the laptop is close to you, using the touch pad is awkward where you have to do that t-Rex arm thing to reach it, but the screen is by definition approximately a forearm’s length away due to the geometry of a laptop. So the screen is right where your hands are naturally when your elbows are at your side. It’s also more direct. If you want to scroll two inches, you move it two inches with your finger - with a track pad it’s not 1:1. You can also directly scroll any window, with a track pad you have to click an inactive window first before the scroll gesture gets routed the right way. Touch is fast and intuitive.

So it’s for cramped spaces? Lol

You’re grasping at straws. Enjoy your touchscreen.

LAP top. It's literally in the name. This isn't some fringe use case.

And Mr. Coffee is a man 😂