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points by CountSessine 1 day ago | 0 comments

Touch-screen Macs is kind of a terrible development for anyone who loves the Mac. It's not just a harmless feature that you can ignore if you don't want it, because it's customer-facing and will now generate complaints and bugs from people who do use it. Those people will complain (rightly) that macOS UI widgets are too small to accurately manipulate with your fingers (they are indeed too small) and don't make sense with a touch screen (they don't make sense).

That means Apple will begin imposing all sorts of UI dreck on all of us, whether we want to use our screens as touch surfaces or not.

This is basically what happened with Microsoft - Windows Vista and 7 were installed in plenty of laptops with touchscreens, and customers would complain about not being able to maximize windows without closing them, not being able to open menus without touching toolbar buttons, etc.

Eventually Microsoft listened to them and we got Windows 8. Now this is the beginning of the same process for macOS.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

I would argue that once the dust settled post-Windows 8 with Windows 10 a full decade ago, the touch screen has been the opposite of what you’ve described for Windows systems. It absolutely is a harmless feature that you can ignore. There’s no reason not to have one.

Same goes for Linux. My CachyOS install on my Framework 13 Pro has a touch screen. There’s literally no downside for me having it. I don’t have to use it if I don’t want to. But if I want to scroll a website or scrub a video the option is there.

[–] tannhaeuser 1 day ago

I don't think you can say that. Windows 10+ has a tablet mode that is completely detached from desktop mode, and it's a global toggle. Switching on tablet mode brings full-screen, upscaled, simplified explorer and settings, and switches off the classic desktop launcher with paper bin, shortcuts, etc. in favor of a larger "Start"-type menu launcher. What deeper and experimental integration there was in Windows 8 had just been removed as it became clear MS couldn't quite sell into the iPad/Android tablet market or compete in terms of power management. After stripping most of Windows 8 innovations, what remains is a touch keyboard, touch mouse emulation, and a few affordances in explorer to make tablets not outright terrible, with the target audience education and mbas interested in mobile powerpoint and web/mail.

[–] disposedtrolley 1 day ago

Windows 10 had a tablet mode. Windows 11 does not - it just appropriately scales up the padding and size of some UI controls to make them easier to tap.

[–] thewileyone 7 minutes ago

Which is a horrible interface IMO.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

I’m failing to see where there’s some kind of downside here. What you describe doesn’t really sound like a bad experience.

[–] unsloppable 1 day ago

You cant figure out how those kinds of requirements might influence or curtail development in the non touch parts of the system?

We saw the same thing happen with mobile first on websites.

[–] mpyne 1 day ago

The introduction of the mouse led to developers paying less attention to keyboard shortcuts and function keys, but I don’t see anyone seriously saying computers should not have mice.

Or for that matter, that adding support for game controllers (something that has actually happened with Linux desktops) would led to curtailed development of non-controller parts.

[–] flohofwoe 15 minutes ago

> The introduction of the mouse led to developers paying less attention to keyboard shortcuts and function keys, but I don’t see anyone seriously saying computers should not have mice.

Well, a lot of devs did move back to the terminal ;)

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Have you found some kind of performance or other detriment of the mere support of touch screens or is this just theoretical?

[–] jasomill 14 hours ago

I've never hard particularly good experiences with using Windows laptops as tablets, but mostly on account of form factor rather than software.

The sweet spot for me is the iPad mini, but I tend to use tablets as glorified e-readers and video players; the only serious work I do on them is reading.

With that said, I have zero problem with touchscreens or convertable form factors. In fact, I used a Surface Pro for years as my main laptop, and it was one of the best Windows laptops I've used.

But again, I'm not a big fan of mobile devices as primary computing devices unless I'm actually working on the go.

Even for commuting back and forth between an office and a home office, I'd rather just put something along the lines of a Mac Studio in a bag — for a few months last year, it was actually a SFF (not micro, weighed about 10 kg) Dell OptiPlex in an aluminium briefcase, which was fine!

[–] asadotzler 1 day ago

It's a fine experience. It's not what Apple is doing though. Apple is doing the half way experience that will leave all unhappy.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

But even an half-way experience is an improvement for a feature that costs nearly zero dollars to include.

One of the most common actions among all computer users, zooming and centering a photo, is easier with a touch screen.

Even adding just that one thing is worth having a touch screen for.

Another example: working in the iOS simulator is now way easier because you can touch your apps that you're developing for iOS and iPadOS. And, by the way, macOS can run iOS/iPadOS apps directly from the App Store, so if there's something you really want to run that you just can't find a macOS equivalent for, there you go, you can just do it and interact with the app more naturally.

[–] freehorse 1 day ago

The touchscreen laptops I have seen last years are just normal windows laptops that happen to have a touchscreen, which I assume is what you refer to as "half way experience". How are you supposed to use it any differently anyway when you cannot actually turn it into a tablet anyway by separating screen and keyboard? And my impression was not that anybody was unhappy anyway.

[–] naravara 13 hours ago

The only touchscreen laptop I ever understood the appeal of was that one Lenovo one where you can fold the bottom back to make it a literal tablet or prop up as a kickstand.

The value of “tablet mode” would mainly be if I want to do content consumption, like watch video or read a book, while on the couch or in bed since it allows a wider range of postures you can sit or lay in when you don’t have to rest it on a flat surface.

If you can’t fold it back I just don’t get the appeal.

[–] cjarrett 1 day ago

The downgrade to touch is fine for basically everyone. People clutching pearls are simply mostly uninformed or specifically worried about deep edge cases from some stupid mountain of stupid superiority.

[–] freehorse 1 day ago

"Tablet mode" was not necessary to use for touchscreen, though. As far as I remember you can have full touchscreen functionality in the default mode of windows. I had a surface pro 4 for some years and I do not remember using tablet mode ever.

Windows 8, which was tablet-oriented, was one of these skip generations of windows that nobody cares about in the end, and when the next comes everybody forgets. I never installed it anyway. I have not owned a touchscreen laptop myself since then, but from friends that have and I have used theirs, it is like OP described as a "harmless additional feature/why not", something that just makes certain interactions a bit faster.

But especially on an actual laptop, one that you cannot just separate the screen from the keyboard, stuff like "virtual keyboard" and "tablet mode" matter much less because it is not like you will take it and use it as a pure tablet anyway.

[–] mrtesthah 1 day ago

Sounds like touch screens on laptops are so great! I sure am excited about the future of touch screen Macs! /s

[–] CountSessine 1 day ago

I made this point below, but Windows 10 still doesn't have the display-real-estate efficiency of Windows 7. Windows 10 wastes all kind of screen space on large, flat surfaces that a non-touch-screen user will never use. Windows 7 wasn't as pretty as Windows 10, but it was better at displaying information.

So actually, you are harmed by this decision every day you use a Windows 10/11 laptop. You live with this every day. You just don't know what you're missing.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Windows 10/11 looks almost identical to Windows 7. I really don’t see a major difference.

But even if I accept your premise, I’ll remind you that Windows 7 came out 19 years ago. I didn’t exactly own a 27” 4K monitor in 2009, and a 14” or 16” screen laptop in 2009 would not have been thin and light like it is today. 2009 was like “my bezels are over a half inch wide” era.

The OS is fully scalable as well. You can just make it smaller in a very granular way. Windows 7 wasn’t capable of that.

[–] bityard 18 hours ago

UI designers think that an interface should look like an art project rather than a tool, and that discoverability and information density are bugs to be squashed.

[–] QuarterReptile 19 hours ago

Windows 8.1 and 10 were both better than 7.

[–] justsomehnguy 1 day ago

Let's try to imagine a situation when Win10+ UI has "the same display-real-estate efficiency of Windows 7".

Would it change anyhthing? No. Because developers of the programs what are not part of Windows aren't keen on keeping "the same efficiency". Audacity 4, Thunderbird are good examples of a bad interface - and they did it disregarding the OS UI.

[–] pmontra 1 day ago

I've been using Thunderbird since I don't even remember when and I never noticed that it's got a bad interface, unless when they broke manually sorting folders and fixed it years later. It's got the UI that a mail client has to have. GMail does have a bad UI. Sometimes I don't understand where a message ends and where a message starts. Luckily I don't have to use it.

[–] bityard 18 hours ago

You aren't going to like what's coming down the pike for Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew...

They are basically throwing away the existing UI asking with its decades of refinement in favor of something that looks like what you'd get if apple mail and outlook had a disfugured child.

[–] zuhsetaqi 1 day ago

The obvious downside is that all the UI elements are unnecessarily big for all the people not using touch.

[–] cptskippy 1 day ago

They aren't. If you ever had a convertible laptop, it would enbiggen the UI in tablet mode and reduce it in laptop mode.

I rarely used tablet mode but genuinely miss having a touchscreen.

[–] smileybarry 1 day ago

Not anymore, a lot of apps (from browsers to the system UI) adapt to whether you have a touch screen and whether you use it. For example, Windows Explorer and Edge (and Chrome) still use (relatively-)compact widgets on touchscreen-less computers.

[–] kbolino 1 day ago

At 100% scaling with "Compact view" on, Windows 11's File Explorer takes 135 pixels to get from the top of the titlebar to the top of the content. The same dimension in Windows 7 is 92 pixels. That's almost 50% vertical space bloat for no discernible benefit.

[–] nagaiaida 1 day ago

unless i misunderstand the implication as to their behavior on touchscreenful computers, this would seem to poorly address the concern upthread of explicitly expecting the touchscreen hardware, and thus the concomitant software annoyances, to become effectively unavoidable

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Are you making this point from the context where you’ve never tried a touch screen computer?

This isn’t an unimplemented theory. You can head over to Best Buy right now and see what it’s like to use a touch screen laptop.

I feel like all this debate is taking place in an odd vacuum where a lot of us are talking about a bunch of potential problems with having a touch screen on a computer and all these problems are already resolved.

Maybe it’s similar to the whole iPhone duo thing where Apple users are just discovering all the caveats of a foldable phone, but we’ve already gone over all of it with competitors.

[–] cjarrett 1 day ago

In general the vast majority of folks that make these comments are exactly from that viewpoint. It was a valid concern a decade ago--right now it just makes them uninformed.

[–] westoque 1 day ago

> It absolutely is a harmless feature that you can ignore. There’s no reason not to have one

what i've learning developing and creating products over the years is that harmless features tend to be the ones that cause the most problems. for ex, now you have to add touchscreen code to the OS vs previously not having it at all. and this code or feature we will support for the rest of the lifetime of that product.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

While I agree with you in many cases in concept, I think it's also possible to erroneously avoid features by being too afraid of this.

In the case of touch screens, it hasn't caused a lasting problem in Windows or Linux.

[–] megablast 23 hours ago

Why would the app developer have to add touch screen code????

[–] hecifato 1 day ago

You make a good point. Windows 10 course corrected fairly heavily from Windows 8. The tablet mode was there but you could ignore it pretty easily.

However, I still feel like Apple is in their Microsoft era where they're making some of the same mistakes Microsoft have made in the past 20 years.

Aero -> Liquid Glass

Ads in the OS -> Ads in core applications

Fullscreen ads for Microsoft services in the OS -> banner ads for Apple services in the OS

Dark patterns for Windows 11 upgrades -> Dark patterns for macOS 26 upgrades

Windows Mixed Reality -> Vision Pro

I could also say Surface Duo -> iPhone Duo but at this time it's too early to tell. I also think that a touchscreen Mac is a mistake. Not because it's something Microsoft already did but because the reason a MacBook does not need a touchscreen is because Apple has best-in-class trackpads.

[–] k_roy 1 day ago

I turn it off in the bios.

1. Takes extra battery 2. I’m not touching my screen regardless. It gets dirty enough

My last three or four laptops, which never even booted Windows, have had disabled touchscreens

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

This is like saying you take the battery out of your Casio wristwatch at night to conserve battery.

[–] abhinavk 1 day ago

It's an one time action and it turns off touch services on Windows and prevents any app to change its behavior after detecting a touchscreen.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

My point is that it doesn't save battery so turning it off is a wasted exercise.

Apps in Windows and KDE don't really change their behavior just from having a touch screen.

I routinely forget that my Framework 13 Pro even has a touch screen.

[–] k_roy 9 hours ago

> My point is that it doesn't save battery so turning it off is a wasted exercise.

Every watt matters, and turning it off hurts nothing I care about.

And apps DO change their behavior. The on screen keyboard pops up when the screen on a KVM connects before the keyboard.

Why the hostility? I’m not going to touch my screen anyway to try to avoid making it filthy.

[–] jtbayly 1 day ago

The UI is worse, which is the GP’s claim, and you don’t address that at all?

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

The UI isn't worse though, it's literally the same. It's just an additional option you have to be able to touch the screen. I routinely forget that my Framework 13 Pro even has a touch screen. I don't really care that it does because that functionality of the computer cost a single digit amount of dollars to include in the design.

I'll list out two immediate benefits with zero UI changes that macOS touch screen users will get:

iOS developers will be able to touch their apps in the simulator.

Pinch/zoom/centering photos will be highly intuitive for basically everyone because basically everyone has family photos and a photo library.

[–] Exoristos 1 day ago

The way you describe it, this release amounts to an extremely large and expensive Touch Bar.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

There's nothing expensive about touch screens. They are nearly free to include in a bulk custom laptop panel design.

Go over to the Lenovo/Dell/HP website and you'll see that they offer a touch screen option for something like $50 and you can just choose whether you have it or not.

Go buy a $450 iPad from Apple and it has a touch screen. That's cheaper than any Mac on sale.

Hey, that's another great point, maybe Apple's laptops could be more customizable and modular, wouldn't that be nice?

[–] Exoristos 11 hours ago

You had me until the whining.

[–] VerifiedReports 1 day ago

Disagree. The Windows UI is now an absolutely dysfunctional shitshow. It never recovered from Microsoft's half-assed touchscreen adventures.

[–] sublinear 1 day ago

I agree. KDE is by far the best desktop environment for Linux laptops with touchscreens.

[–] jonplackett 1 day ago

I was expecting there to be more like a ‘studio mode’ where you can fold it over to make it a screen interface that has some kind of bigger iPad style Ui. Where you could also use a stylus.

Basically a product for the people currently carrying around a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro.

Just touch on a laptop screen makes no sense. I’ve never felt the need to do this.

[–] digitaltrees 1 day ago

Totally this. Or a second screen next to the track pad.

[–] jonplackett 7 hours ago

That sounds fun. What do you mean?

[–] Gigachad 1 day ago

The touch screen mac and iphone duo feel like ideas Apple has rejected for so long because they suck, but consumers keep asking for it. Seems they finally relented and released them, and people can learn it's simply bad.

[–] chrisco255 1 day ago

Foldable phones are a growing segment of the mobile phone industry. The newest iterations of foldables work quite well and I'm quite happy with mine, and I have no desire to go back to a candy bar phone after having one.

I think touch screen Mac is mostly pointless though.

[–] wiseowise 22 hours ago

Duo is a great idea. The only reason foldables suck right now is because foldable screens are a plastic joke.

[–] naravara 13 hours ago

If you can special plead away the unavoidable materials science and engineering downsides there’s lots of ideas that can sound great. Alas that’s not the world we live in.

[–] flohofwoe 1 day ago

Maybe it comes and goes like the Touch Bar (yeah I know, quite unlikely, but one can dream) ;)

[–] QuantumNomad_ 1 day ago

I have a MBP M1 which has been my main laptop since it came out. I never really understood why so many people complained about the Touch Bar. In fact, I will kind of miss the Touch Bar when I eventually replace the MBP M1 with something else a few more years down the line.

[–] antonkochubey 1 day ago

The main complaint was not about the touchbar itself, but about removal of F-keys to accommodate it.

[–] jmspring 1 day ago

It not only removed the F-keys, but it was not as responsive as a keyboard and a misplaced finger did something you may not want. Personally I HATED the thing.

[–] Wololooo 1 day ago

And the escape key became a virtual thing...

I liked the touch bar for some things, but I deeply hated it, add to this the butterfly keyboard, and you got yourself the perfect storm...

[–] QuantumNomad_ 22 hours ago

> the escape key became a virtual thing

Yeah I could see that being annoying.

On my MBP M1, the Esc key is physical one sitting in the same place as normal; top left. On the top right is the power / Touch ID button. And filling the space between them is the Touch Bar.

And I think the reason I like the Touch Bar is because being able to slide the screen brightness and the speaker volume up and down on it is both pretty quick and precise. Much more comfortable than only having volume up / down and screen brightness up / down buttons. And I can’t really think of anything that I am missing physical Fn buttons for in anything of what I am doing on the machine. Even booting into recovery mode does not involve use of any Fn keys. Just press and hold the power button when powering the machine on and keep holding it pressed until it goes to startup options.

[–] zerd 1 hour ago

Adjust brightness/sound: I can do that very easy and precisely without a touch bar. There's a button in the top right corner that has a slider. Both take about the same amount of time/movement to do.

My main gripe is that some of the buttons move around depending on which app you have focused.

[–] oskenso 1 day ago

Exactly! To this day i’m not sure why we can’t have both, would be a nice addon option. Telegram emotes and stickers show up beautifully there. I love having a built in open deck bar I can put my own shortcuts on

[–] LexGray 1 day ago

I agree. The only issue with the touch bar was its placement. It should have been put above the function keys and not close to where accidental touch could reach it. If they can manage a bezel-free screen they should just figure out how to wedge it in that gap somehow. But then I think they should do a MacBook Magic version where they slap screens on every key, the trackpad, and the Apple on the back just to see what people do with it.

[–] microtonal 1 day ago

And the first iteration did not have a physical Esc key (which they brought back later).

[–] code_duck 23 hours ago

I didn't like it for the same reasons people dislike touch controls in cars. The selection and placement of buttons is constantly changing, and I have to take my eyes off the screen to see what I can do on the TB at the time. I had an MBP with one for 5 years and barely ever used any of the features. The only thing I really found useful was the scroll bar for videos, which is useful on abysmal video players like Instagram which otherwise don't have that function.

[–] __david__ 1 day ago

The first iteration of the touch bar didn't have a physical escape key. I'm not even a VI user but that was my main complaint. I barely use function keys so I was ok with them being virtual (they showed up when I was in the terminal). But I did love adding a custom screenshot button to it and I loved the way the volume and brightness controls worked.

[–] justinator 1 day ago

I tend to rest my left hand on the keyboard while reading, etc. Sometimes my fingers move up to the touch bar and that causes some sort of action I didn't intend. That's very annoying. All the other buttons on the keyboard act buttons you have to press.

The top of the keyboard is literally the worst location I can think there to be a short, long touchscreen.

Maybe it's not a problem for people with tiny hands but I'm bordering on, "palm a basketball" size.

[–] DocTomoe 21 hours ago

I'm seconding this. I am on my M2, and the lack of the touch bar is one of the reasons I am holding off on upgrading it. The keyboard goes the path of all apple keyboards, but right now I prefer it to no touchbar.

[–] Exoristos 1 day ago

I liked the idea, and found it useful (but I have smaller fingers). The biggest issue was how buggy it was, especially in earlier laptops. If it doesn't respond (common bug), then you now have no function keys, screen brightness keys, etc.

[–] naravara 13 hours ago

I always thought the ideal version of that technology would have been as an overlay on top of the trackpad that can be invoked by pressing or holding a button. They’d have even been able to fake button presses with the haptics in there so you could do things like fake a num pad, set up a macro pad, or use it like a stream deck.

[–] prymitive 1 day ago

My work laptop has a touch screen, I only ever remember about that when it gets too dusty and I start to wipe it.

[–] ghostghostghost 20 hours ago

Same, I randomly scroll through a word document every few months when I remember it's a touch screen, only to never do it again for another few months,.

[–] Eric_WVGG 1 day ago

I don't think it's quite that bad, but I’m already in the habit of swatting the hands of people who point too closely at things on my laptop screen with their greasy fingers. gtfo

[–] dangoodmanUT 1 day ago

One of the many reasons i preferred mac is because they never tried to force touchscreens on to people

ive never seen someone use a laptop touch screen effectively

just get an ipad

[–] QuarterReptile 19 hours ago

Windows 8.1 was a great OS. Touchscreen seems to have driven movement toward low-anination, so the start menu opened instantly. Touch forced big-ness on the start menu, so it wasn't so damned cluttered when you opened it up. If you started looking at lists, though, the text was pretty close together and somehow a great font and shape for looking through lots of text.

[–] MomsAVoxell 9 hours ago

I look forward to being able to plug my iPad into my non-touch MacBook, though, and using its touch screen as an external MacOS-touch enabled peripheral.

That’ll hold me over until the next generation of touchscreen MBP’s, or at least until touch is just a normal feature in the Apple world, whichever comes first ..

[–] herpdyderp 1 day ago

I've been an Apple die hard ever since the OG iMac (still love those things). Never before have I so strongly felt the pull to Linux.

[–] kccqzy 1 day ago

Judging by the Apple marketing page, touch is used for (1) scroll; (2) zoom; (3) draw. I hope that’s all the ways touch can be used. It’s a bad idea to expect touch to be used instead of the cursor to click on buttons.

[–] akersten 1 day ago

Do you really think Apple would make a product advertising a touch screen where you aren't able to actually touch buttons on the screen?

The marketing material shows a person playing a virtual piano with their fingers..

[–] 72deluxe 21 hours ago

Yes, and that looks the most ridiculous interaction with the computer I've ever seen.

[–] jmspring 1 day ago

I think this can easily be seen in the introduction of windows into iPad OS. I hate when the wrong motion creates a window from what I was working with. And this is on the 11" pro.

[–] tannhaeuser 1 day ago

Introducing features nobody asked for with clever bs gestures, then forcing the user to undo their effect using obscure keyboard sequences or settings one has to lookup on the web is absolutely terrible UI, and something that would've never passed under Jobs' reign. It's not just the iPad windows misfeature, Mac OS' full screen mode has that problem as well. Whoever is responsible for that should seriously consider their career choices. There are PLENTY ergonomic problems to take care of, such as the error-prone keyboard entry on iOS, the Finder not showing full paths in Info details, broken window focus management (clicking a window tops ALL windows of the app), Spotlight, Expose refactored into uselessness (is it even there still?), the list goes on.

[–] ToucanLoucan 1 day ago

You can turn that off, by the way. Settings -> Multitasking and Gestures -> select Full Screen Apps. Just turns all that off. I honestly don't mind it on my Air but on the Mini is just fucking useless as a feature so I know this lol

[–] jmspring 1 day ago

And they turn it on by default. If Steve Jobs were around, it would have either worked better or it would have been sold better and those in charge kicked in the nuts. Apple's UX team SUCKS these days.

[–] ToucanLoucan 17 hours ago

Or at the very least, it would've defaulted to off on the 7-inch model where again, I cannot overemphasize, it is worthless.

[–] dnlosx 1 day ago

I think they introduced this feature for the 'Pro' macbook for some reason (and I don't mean the price).

But for example, as iOS Developer, this is something I could use to test apps in different simulators.

So, it seems Apple is not promoting the touch screen as the main control, but just as something additional to the trackpad and keyboard. Like 'This will be useful in specific scenarios'.

[–] elyobo 23 hours ago

OK, yeah, that would be handy. Hated touch on the last laptop (Dell XPS of some sort), only ever touched it by accident or had _other_ people touch it by accident but this would be handy.

[–] bradknowles 1 day ago

Apple has focused on making touch a useful additional input method in certain situations, and avoided redesigning the entire experience around touch. The latter is what iPhones and iPads are all about, and we have learned more over time about how that does not scale well to a laptop.

But there is an intermediate point somewhere between “no touch” and “all touch” that I think could make sense for a modern laptop that is created for a generation of people who are brought up with iPhones and iPads. I can’t imagine this feature being useful for me, but I would appreciate the better OLED screen on my regular MacBook Pro. And a lighter machine to boot. And if I can turn off the touch features, then I’d be pretty happy with the hardware — if not the price.

[–] tgv 19 hours ago

There seem to be two paths for the Mac: integration, aka subject to the iphone, and become less appealing, or being split off into a separate company, and probably going extinct. Not saying that are the only two sensible outcomes, but shareholders and bonus vying execs always want to stir things up, so may choose one of these two easy paths for short-term profit, and there's no turning back.

[–] gniv 19 hours ago

When the updates are boring people complain that they don't change anything. When they take risks (touchscreen on laptop, foldable phone) people complain about the new stuff.

I like that they do this. If it doesn't catch on, they will change back, like with the touch bar.

[–] CountSessine 1 day ago

I mean, if this is what you've been waiting for forever and it changes your life for the better, then congrats. But I think this will wind up being a huge net-negative for most Mac users as macOS is made to look and feel more and more like iPadOS.

[–] harrouet 1 day ago

Totally agreed.

With the difference that Apple has got a near monopoly on tablets.

I don't like touch screens, they are a counter-pattern for a laptop. Yet I don't mind people liking it and using it. But I am in fear that the UI will get impacted also for non-users.

[–] catoc 17 hours ago

Exactly

What I want is a do-not Touch-screen

Trackpad is enough, and closer to where I am already busy touching the keyboard

[–] swat535 15 hours ago

It's already too late, the UX already adjusts on touch as we witnessed in the demo. I don't think we'll be going back once people get used to it.

All the apps will likely have to be compatible with both modes as well moving forward.

[–] catoc 13 hours ago

My kids have touch-screen Windows laptops. I absolutely hate the experience. It adds so little over a good trackpad.

And now Apple may force UI components to be big enough for touch control….

[–] tonymet 1 day ago

I agree with the doomerism, and I expect the end goal would be merging MacOS UI with iPadOS. so the Mac will be an iPad with a keyboard. Clumsy , low-resolution controls that depend on clumsy touch experiences instead of lightning fast keyboard shortcuts.

The end result will be akin to taking keyboards away from Platinum league top tier Korean pro RTS players. 500+ operations per minute down to 10

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

It’s funny how disconnected macOS users are from reality when it comes to laptop touch screens.

That just hasn’t happened with Windows touch screens.

Yes, Microsoft did fuck around and find out with Windows 8, but by the time Windows 10 landed an entire decade ago, this whole issue has been completely settled. That’s right, your Windows/Linux user friends have been using touchscreens (or no touch screens) without issue for a decade. No UX sky has fallen in this regard.

There’s absolutely zero downside to having a touch screen on Windows and you also absolutely don’t need a touch screen to use it.

I’m using a touch screen on my Linux laptop right now and it’s great. I don’t have to use it. The screen being touch didn’t cost me extra money. It’s just there if I want it.

The Apple camp seems to believe that every technology included with a product must have some kind of intentional holistic value. Apple removed the USB-A port because USB-C is the future. Apple removed the escape key and the function keys because the Touch Bar would replace it.

But the truth of the matter is, sometimes the option to just include both isn’t some kind of magical barrier that Apple can’t do.

You go out and buy a ThinkPad X9 15p and it has 3x thunderbolt, HDMI, SD card, and USB-A. Why doesn’t a MacBook Pro include USB-A? Well, remember, USB-A is the past! It’s legacy!

But the thing about it being unnecessary doesn’t change the fact that it remains trivially expensive to include, and it comes in handy for a bunch of peripherals that aren’t even that old.

So, I think this is why everyone assumes that Apple is going to destroy the OS because of some new thing they add to the hardware. Because the Apple cult is all about the mythical finely crafted experience. If you don’t do things the Apple way you’re holding it wrong. but in Microsoft/Linux-land, they don’t really care. Linux is fully free, and Microsoft knows their demographic net is too wide and their marketshare is too high that they can’t dictate form factor, choice of peripherals, etc. Their whole philosophy is that Windows is suitable for anything and everything.

The Apple culture can’t contemplate a technology company just including an extra option for users with no specific intended use case. PC manufacturers include a touch screen because, screw it, it only costs a few cents extra and maybe someone might like it, software integration be damned/that’s not our problem.

[–] ndiddy 1 day ago

Windows 10 reversed a lot of the controversial UI changes from Windows 8, but the mouse/keyboard UX was still largely a regression from Windows 7 due to the introduction of giant padding regions on any new/redesigned software so people could use their fingers. Maybe people haven't noticed this as much because the economics have worked out such that most software is now designed for web/mobile first, so having giant padding regions on desktop is more normal.

Macs had managed to avoid this degradation for a while because they didn't have touchscreens, but Apple put in the giant finger-friendly padding regions as part of the UI changes in Tahoe, which got a lot of negative feedback. Now that they're introducing touchscreen laptops, it's unlikely that they'll ever fully revert those changes since it will make the touch experience worse.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Padding is also there because screens got a lot bigger and higher resolution in the 17 years since Windows 7 came out.

This is even true with laptops since bezels have dramatically shrunk in size.

[–] wolrah 1 day ago

That's not a justification for padding, it's a justification for scalable UI. A lot of those "classic" windows dialogs do not scale well on high DPI screens but they still work great with a mouse even if their scaling is ugly. The padding is just there for touch-friendliness.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

I don't even agree with the premise in the first place if I'll be honest. Windows 11 is almost the same scale as Windows 7. The taskbar is the same size, the tray icons are the same size. Most of Microsoft's applications seem to all be roughly the same scale.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the Settings app being a downgrade from Control Panel and being too padded or whatnot, but let's not forget that the old Windows XP era Control Panel couldn't even be maximized. It was just one size no matter what.

[–] CountSessine 1 day ago

I really strongly disagree. I've been using Windows since the 2.x 286/386 days. Windows 10 and 11 are still less functional, UI-wise, than Windows 7 was. They're still not capable of the information-density that Windows 7 was. They still have larger and less space-efficient widgets than Windows 7 did.

We forget this because Windows 7 was ugly and Windows 10 and 11 are nicer looking and that feels like progress, somehow. But you don't get nearly the functional information density with Windows 11 that you did with 7.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

I’m confused, this isn’t true at all, and Windows 11 has full display scaling adjustment. Make the whole thing smaller if you want to.

The taskbar icons are the exact same size. The tray icons are the exact same size. I’m struggling to figure out what’s different.

I personally use KDE which you can fully customize in terms of sizing, it’s great on a touch screen.

[–] kbolino 1 day ago

Display scaling 100%: 12px font, 48px button

Display scaling 75%: 9px font, 36px button

Where's the setting for 12px font, 24px button?

[–] troupo 1 day ago

The problem isn't "make whole thing smaller". The problem is information density and controls. Windows wastes large areas of screen on huge white empty spaces, showing significantly less info in 100x more display area than win 95

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

And when Windows 95 came out we didn’t exactly have 27” 4K monitors at our desks.

I still don’t really see the information density problem. You can fully customize the OS scaling way more than you ever could with older OS versions. Again, things like windows task bar icons and tray icons are the exact same size as Windows 7. Yeah they’re bigger than Windows 95 but I only had 800x600 to work with in those days.

[–] troupo 1 day ago

> And when Windows 95 came out we didn’t exactly have 27” 4K monitors at our desks.

No, we didn't. And yet we didn't have to scroll through a settings list with 10 elements.

And no, information density isn't "make everything smaller". It's "use space on screen efficiently".

For example, "modern" startup menu shows fewer items on an area 10x larger than the entire screen available to win95. And no amount of scaling can fix that. And this permeates the entire OS: https://www.buildwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/4-4.... vs https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HBTFbzlXwAA5OwD.jpg

[–] rfrey 1 day ago

One difference is that Apple has always considered it their job and divine right to tell you how to use your computer, where Windows a d Linux never have.

[–] jaffa2 1 day ago

best analysis of this I have seen.

[–] internet2000 1 day ago

Focus is about saying no.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

Is it reasonable to be focused when your brand is expanding in marketshare and needs to satisfy the desires of an increasingly diverse userbase?

Back in the day, if 1% of Apple users wanted a touch screen, Steve Jobs could say "we're not focusing on that."

Today, 1% of Apple's install base (if we include iOS and iPadOS) is hundreds of millions of people.

[–] kccqzy 1 day ago

Microsoft produces an OS. Linux is an OS. When a hardware partner of Microsoft wants to introduce touchscreen laptops Microsoft has to support them. Is it realistic that Microsoft tells them to pound sand and the partner ships the hardware with Linux? No. Whereas Apple is supposed to have an overarching design team. Someone that currently occupies the role Jony Ive occupied should have the power to tell the hardware team not to ship touchscreens in Macs.

[–] tonymet 1 day ago

the concern rests on the likely trajectory for the mac laptop.

Windows laptops never expected tough screen adoption to hit 90% and still touch degraded the experience.

The worry here is that with Apple's e2e design control over the Mac, that this pivot will mean our MacOS UX will be removed in lieu of a more iPad-like experience.

Just look at other developer-friendly features like unlocked bootloaders, background jobs, unsigned software that Apple has removed from their hardware .

So this is a big deal and significant. It's different than you running Linux on your Windows laptop because the touch experience there never had a chance to push out the traditional UX.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Maybe you are right in some non-zero way, but there are still some bits to consider:

Windows laptops have been majority touch screen for a long time, so in theory this touch experience could have pushed out the traditional windows experience more. With the exception of the repressed memories of Windows 8, it just hasn’t happened. Despite most Windows laptops coming with touch screens, the interface is very much mouse and keyboard oriented.

But also, Apple still can’t make Mac mini or Mac Studio users use a touch screen.

In theory the iMac could gain a touch screen, the Studio Display could gain one, but I think that’s very fundamentally different ergonomic situation than a laptop.

When I’m at a desk like a coffee shop I can rest my arm on the table and scroll the browser with my thumb at the lowest part of the screen very easily on a laptop. A desktop computer screen is a lot different than that, usually sitting higher and further away, so I still think every desktop Apple sells will stick with non-touch for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps the strongest indicator is just that Apple has Microsoft as a case study. Everyone saw what happened with Windows 8 and knows not to repeat that sort of debacle.

Finally, I have to imagine that software development tools are much better now where it’s easier to make dynamic interfaces where user preference can rule the day.

[–] tonymet 15 hours ago

The tools yes, the aesthetics, not so much.

[–] artk42 1 day ago

100% agree We should assume that new engineering leadership that came - it was too late. Let’s pray that MacBook pro team will leave apple sooner or later to build alternative laptop. This touchscreen seems to be bifurcation point with no return. I hope we also get alternative for M-class cpu, this might be the biggest dealbreaker

[–] joshspankit 1 day ago

> Touch-screen Macs is kind of a terrible development for anyone who loves the Mac

Agreed. There has been a long history of the clarity and usability of teams having a single focus. I mean we’re still feeling the negative downstream effects of the “3D touch” last seen on the XS.

For those who are too young to know what I’m talking about: you missed out on a level of elegance and refinement that probably won’t be replicated

[–] indymike 21 hours ago

> That means Apple will begin imposing all sorts of UI dreck on all of us, whether we want to use our screens as touch surfaces or not.

Since we can run ios apps on mac now, touch makes sense as the mouse experience is very meh for some apps.

Also, I would have loved a touch screen mac when my job involved building mobile apps.

Finally, I suspect apple will execute UI well on touch, they get to learn from everyone's early mistakes... Vista especially.

[–] s3p 1 day ago

Hahahaha have you even used macOS starting with tahoe? the liquid glass ui was made for touch! it is literally the antithesis of mouse-driven design. the buttons are large and circular, with huge corner radii. huge gaps in between them as well.

[–] joshspankit 1 day ago

You make an interesting point, but I still shudder at the idea of multitasking on a 14” screen with the 40-50 elements I need being finger sized + aesthetic padding

[–] selicos 1 day ago

And Mac OS is built adjacent to iOS which shares most themes and design principles. The ecosystem is already designed around touch.

[–] arghwhat 1 day ago

ecosystem != UI

Buttons sized to be hit by your physical thumb and buttons sized to be hit by a tiny high-precision cursor are very different things.

I am sitting on a macbook pro with the vertical tab pane open in chrome, with 12 tabs. The outer joint of my thumb covers the entire list, in both width and height. A touch-friendly version of that would be humongous in comparison.

[–] Spooky23 1 day ago

I disagree. One of the key differentiators is that technology is being introduced in the highest cost, highest capability sku in their product lineup. This laptop costs more than my first car, although I’m old :)

What Microsoft introduced touch surfaces, they came out of the train wreck of Longhorn and they were under the belief that they could push windows down to phones. Reality was that they pushed touch surfaces in a barbell distribution… ultra high end and ultra low end. Mostly low end as screen costs were super high.

With Apple, look at the pencil and the iPad. They’ve had a lot of fits and starts, but the Apple Pencil didn’t fundamentally change the iPad, but it did open the door for a very high value use cases for things like procreate.

[–] tiahura 1 day ago

The MacOS UI is about 25 years overdue for a redesign.

[–] baoooooooooooo 1 day ago

Perhaps it is with a heavy dose of copium that I say: I hope the extremely tentative development and release of this product (after having been on the record as fervently against touchscreen laptops), along with the eye-watering price point indicates that this isn't being viewed as the future of the MacOS experience. I hope this remains framed as a true pro-focused experience that unlocks specific apps without greatly impacting the central MacOS design philosophy.

[–] angoragoats 18 hours ago

I don’t think there is a “central MacOS design philosophy,” at least not anymore.

[–] FireBeyond 1 day ago

> along with the eye-watering price point

I mean the entry level price for this is $2,899, "only" $400 more than the comparable non-touch MBP.

[–] duxup 1 day ago

Nobody cares about my windows touch screens / apps.

[–] ericmay 1 day ago

Probably not because at the end of the day the employees and engineers at Apple have to use the Mac and macOS to write software so there's a concrete floor that they can't break through in terms of usability. They may make some mistakes or something but the OS has basically been the same thing for like 20 years. I wouldn't worry about it too much.