Hacker News

points by hexapus 1 day ago | 0 comments

I can't think of a feature I care less about on a laptop. I have owned several laptops with touchscreens, and literally the only thing it's ever done is misclick something when I inadvertently touched my screen. I have a tablet and a phone if I want to tap a screen.

Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.

[–] benoau 1 day ago

Anecdotally I think the launch submissions have been a lot less popular for this device than normal:

- it did top the Mac subreddit (700 upvotes) but ranks as the 12th-most popular post in the last month

- it didn't top HN (491 upvotes)

- it didn't top Reddit's main Apple subreddit (1000-1200 upvotes)

I might be remembering wrong but I think this kind of news usually gets thousands of upvotes.

[–] rogerhoward 1 day ago

> I can't think of a feature I care less about on a laptop

This is how I feel too, but at 49, a Mac user since we bought our 128k, I'm no longer certain I am the market - fairly sure I am not. I have two kids, 10 and 7, and we've had a handful of cheap Chromebook laptops, some with touch and some without, and I can say that my kids always prefer the ones with. I don't get it, objectively it doesn't make sense to me, but it does to them. They would absolutely prefer a touchscreen, even in laptop form factor.

[–] AppleBananaPie 1 day ago

Kids preferring the touch screen seems more and more like letting kids in a typing class continue to hunt and peck rather than go through the work to learn a method that is faster and will ultimately benefit them by making their life easier.

I might change my mind on this later but right now I'm having a hard time seeing it any other way.

[–] sshine 1 day ago

I think it comes from early exposure to phones and tablets and getting used to it. My 2 year old tried to swipe on my computer screen.

And I agree, watching kids swipe feels, to me, like passive consumer induced computer illiteracy.

As long as you can’t fundamentally reprogram the device with your input method, you are at the mercy of other people. (And yeah, sometimes a keyboard is not enough, either.)

[–] nightski 1 day ago

I feel like that might be due to the fact that it is not a Pro/Max model and that they are skipping on to M7 next year.

[–] klausa 1 day ago

It is a Pro/Max model.

[–] nightski 1 day ago

Oh that is hilarious. I had assumed this was the M6 which they are skipping Pro/Max on. It's just an M5...

[–] chrysoprace 1 day ago

My 2018 (maybe 2017?) 13" 2-in-1 HP Spectre x360 was one of the nicest pieces of hardware I've ever owned (albeit not that powerful by today's standards), it's just a shame that Windows was so inadequately designed to support the hardware.

I definitely think that a distinct mode is needed though, the inverse of attaching a keyboard to an iPad to make it more desktop-y.

[–] jfim 13 hours ago

The surface book had what you mention, it's a laptop with a detachable keyboard, and it can be attached to the keyboard in normal laptop orientation or reversed just like a tablet on a stand. Can be used as a standalone tablet with pen/touch input, or a normal laptop.

Pretty great device, it's unfortunate Microsoft discontinued it.

[–] yodsanklai 1 day ago

I never had such a laptop but I'm very curious to see how this can work in practice. I really don't see what could be done on efficiently on the screen. In regular computer use, my wrists lay on the computer or desk and move very little. On the other hand, lifting the arm requires some non-negligible effort and break the flow.

[–] seba_dos1 1 day ago

I've been using touchscreen laptops for more than a decade now. It's been really useful when working on mobile stuff and occasionally handy in some games or when sketching something, but other than that - it just stays unused.

[–] wizzledonker 1 day ago

Agreed, I love pen-supported laptops - but I'm told the mac won't support the apple pencil :(

Who uses finger touch on a laptop? I've never actually seen people use it in the wild so I'm just confused where the demand comes from.

[–] xattt 1 day ago

> Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.

Yes! Thank you. Maybe marketing is trying to normalize that appearance after the Duo-bacle.

[–] kyleee 1 day ago

What was the duo-bacle?

[–] fzzzy 15 hours ago

iPhone duo screens cracking

[–] The_suffocated 1 day ago

It took me fifteen minutes to figure out that the screen reads "PRO". At first I thought it was PBN and couldn't make head or tail of it.

[–] etrautmann 1 day ago

I didn’t even see letters until reading your comment…

[–] throwaway69123 1 day ago

I agree with you 100%, however I think this will be a game changer in productivity for device testing (ipad/iphone etc and all different screen sizes) no longer need to do device testing till the last step for touch based features. other than that its not great imo.

[–] sashank_1509 1 day ago

It feels like Apples out of ideas, they should lean more into Vision Pro than a Mac with a touch screen or iPhone Duo.

An agentic OS, that you can speak to a majority of the time to get stuff done, also seems like an interesting direction