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> Personally speaking I have no desire for touch on traditional MacBooks – I can only see it making sense on a dockable iPad-like MacBook. Yes, the fundamental

> Personally speaking I have no desire for touch on traditional MacBooks – I can only see it making sense on a dockable iPad-like MacBook. Yes, the fundamental premise is that the last 10 years would have been used differently to grow the touch space to where it fits in the lineup. Arguably a desktop and laptop are as far apart as a laptop and an iPad. That doesn’t mean they need different OSes. I shouldn’t have to use a completely different OS because I want to use the Apple Pencil. It’s just a peripheral. And yes, peripherals should influence the UI (like how scroll bars appear or disappear depending on whether you have a mouse with a scroll wheel attached). I imagine a “Touch Mac” as a laptop where you could spin the screen around to draw on the go for example. Forget complex touch uses, just being able to fold it back to read like a book or watch a movie is a killer feature. But even the Magic Keyboard for the iPad doesn’t support this transformation, you have to take the iPad out to use it… like an iPad. It’s silly. Similarly, opening up touch to the Mac to allow for things like the Surface Studio, for those who need it, would be great! Instead touch is locked in a tiny screen on Apple’s least-used OS (well, after tvOS I guess).

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac, but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors. The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop… when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well. > Instead touch is locked in a tiny screen on Apple’s least-used OS (well, after tvOS I guess). If sales figures are any indicator, it's macOS that likely takes the position second-least-used OS. Apple sold 19.1 million iPads in 2021 and only 10 million Macs[0]. Lots of users who'd never consider buying a Mac are in the market for some form of iPad. [0]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/23/apples-ipad-dominates-shrinking-tablet-market-mac-creeping-up-on-rivals https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/23/apples-ipad-domin...
- tolmasky 4y ago
  > but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors. But the last 10 years have been Apple repeatedly disproving this. iPadOS started radically different from macOS... only to have every major inflection point be defined by it moving closer to desktop/macOS. Whether it was giving up on the single-app model to one that recognized that apps needed to run in parallel (first in a "managed window manager" like a tiling window manager you might find in Linux, and later to a more traditional "unmanaged" one like in normal macOS), to shunning away from keyboards and mice entirely, to then only being an accessibility feature, to now being a major add-on that they sell, and even finally adopting key-commands, etc. (I don't know if anyone ever shook an iPad to undo). I think this position was defensible at the start, but at the very least has had little supporting evidence since. It is indisputable that the evolution of iPadOS has been to move further and further from iOS and closer and closer to macOS. Perhaps there exists some third way (there probably does!), but Apple has proven to be stretched too thin to try anything other than "maybe it should work more like a phone" and "maybe it should work more like a laptop", and the latter has been the consistent, if begrudging, winner. > The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop… I think this has the line in the wrong place. It should be "between phone and tablet/laptop/desktop". The mistake was starting at iOS and having to trudge to macOS over 10 years vs. the other way around (although perhaps it made sense for marketing reasons). I mentioned this before, and Gruber wrote about my thoughts here [1], but the funny thing about the iPhone is that despite being more constrained than the iPad, I feel less frustrated with it. I am impressed with how much I can get done on my phone, I am understanding when it falls short. But the iPad makes it so clear to me all the time that all that's standing in the way of me getting something done is some designer's stubborn reluctance to allow me to do things the "old way". An easy example is writing long form text before there was a good keyboard you could attach. I get why the phone isn't a great place to type, the iPad feels unnecessary for that to always be the case. > I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac, I think the best way to think about this is from user workflows first, as I mentioned above it's not even just about the touch aspects. I think the YouTube experience is pretty great on the iPad. Touch here is kind of a bare necessity, I need to pause the video somehow, but it's not a fundamentally "touch experience", it's just a nice form factor for watching videos on the couch. But that experience immediately changes to frustration if I want to suggest the video to someone or have to quickly reply to an email. I'd love to be able to swivel the keyboard out, copy/paste the link, send it in Messages and type something out quickly. Or reply to an email that's longer than a sentence without thinking "ugh, I should really go to my computer for this". This is a point that is bizarrely absent in all these "the devices complement each other" discussions: they work worse separately. I often want to circle something in a picture and draw an arrow, which sucks with a mouse, then type something out, which sucks with a Pencil. The experience is frustrating on both devices, but would be better if I could do both things. And just like a device supporting all sorts of peripherals doesn't mean its a requirement, you could choose to use it as if it didn't have a Pencil or touch as well. There are tons of scenarios that would be way better even in the absolute worst implementation of this: a machine that when in flipped around in "iPad mode" gave you iPadOS, and when the keyboard was out, have it act like macOS (again, I'm not suggesting this is how it should work, but it represents a "floor" of what the experience could be like). Just the weight savings of not needing both devices is great. > when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well. I've never been impressed with pointing at Linux at Windows as proof that "the other way doesn't work". It is unfortunate that the cost-to-entry on this hardware means we get very little alternatives to compare. And frankly, Windows and Linux don't do that much great in any UI department, that doesn't mean "if Apple can't do it, it must be impossible." If you only had Windows and Linux, you might be convinced that desktop computing was an unsolvable UI problem too... 1. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/30/tolmasky-ipad-curve https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/30/tolmasky-ipad-c...
dkrich 4y ago
Conceptually Apple has to create the illusion that these devices are dissimilar enough to justify shelling out thousands for both. But at the end of the day (in my experience), users fall into one of two buckets- primary use case is productivity (coding, office, photo/movie editing, etc.) or primary use case is consuming content. While there is some overlap between the two users as evidenced by the fact that many people own both and do some of both on each device, it seems inevitable that the devices will continue to converge until a $900 iPad is fully capable of doing 95% of what a $2000 MBP can do and then Apple will have a real problem on its hands as people stop buying the more expensive devices and the cheaper ones last much longer. We are watching the innovator’s dilemma play out inside a single company. Interestingly one of the tell tale signs a disruption is underway is a hybrid use case where people use a costlier version of a product along side a cheaper version because the cheaper version does certain things better than the costly one.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac, but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors. The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop… when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well. > Instead touch is locked in a tiny screen on Apple’s least-used OS (well, after tvOS I guess). If sales figures are any indicator, it's macOS that likely takes the position second-least-used OS. Apple sold 19.1 million iPads in 2021 and only 10 million Macs[0]. Lots of users who'd never consider buying a Mac are in the market for some form of iPad. [0]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/23/apples-ipad-dominates-shrinking-tablet-market-mac-creeping-up-on-rivals https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/23/apples-ipad-domin...

tolmasky 4y ago
> but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors. But the last 10 years have been Apple repeatedly disproving this. iPadOS started radically different from macOS... only to have every major inflection point be defined by it moving closer to desktop/macOS. Whether it was giving up on the single-app model to one that recognized that apps needed to run in parallel (first in a "managed window manager" like a tiling window manager you might find in Linux, and later to a more traditional "unmanaged" one like in normal macOS), to shunning away from keyboards and mice entirely, to then only being an accessibility feature, to now being a major add-on that they sell, and even finally adopting key-commands, etc. (I don't know if anyone ever shook an iPad to undo). I think this position was defensible at the start, but at the very least has had little supporting evidence since. It is indisputable that the evolution of iPadOS has been to move further and further from iOS and closer and closer to macOS. Perhaps there exists some third way (there probably does!), but Apple has proven to be stretched too thin to try anything other than "maybe it should work more like a phone" and "maybe it should work more like a laptop", and the latter has been the consistent, if begrudging, winner. > The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop… I think this has the line in the wrong place. It should be "between phone and tablet/laptop/desktop". The mistake was starting at iOS and having to trudge to macOS over 10 years vs. the other way around (although perhaps it made sense for marketing reasons). I mentioned this before, and Gruber wrote about my thoughts here [1], but the funny thing about the iPhone is that despite being more constrained than the iPad, I feel less frustrated with it. I am impressed with how much I can get done on my phone, I am understanding when it falls short. But the iPad makes it so clear to me all the time that all that's standing in the way of me getting something done is some designer's stubborn reluctance to allow me to do things the "old way". An easy example is writing long form text before there was a good keyboard you could attach. I get why the phone isn't a great place to type, the iPad feels unnecessary for that to always be the case. > I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac, I think the best way to think about this is from user workflows first, as I mentioned above it's not even just about the touch aspects. I think the YouTube experience is pretty great on the iPad. Touch here is kind of a bare necessity, I need to pause the video somehow, but it's not a fundamentally "touch experience", it's just a nice form factor for watching videos on the couch. But that experience immediately changes to frustration if I want to suggest the video to someone or have to quickly reply to an email. I'd love to be able to swivel the keyboard out, copy/paste the link, send it in Messages and type something out quickly. Or reply to an email that's longer than a sentence without thinking "ugh, I should really go to my computer for this". This is a point that is bizarrely absent in all these "the devices complement each other" discussions: they work worse separately. I often want to circle something in a picture and draw an arrow, which sucks with a mouse, then type something out, which sucks with a Pencil. The experience is frustrating on both devices, but would be better if I could do both things. And just like a device supporting all sorts of peripherals doesn't mean its a requirement, you could choose to use it as if it didn't have a Pencil or touch as well. There are tons of scenarios that would be way better even in the absolute worst implementation of this: a machine that when in flipped around in "iPad mode" gave you iPadOS, and when the keyboard was out, have it act like macOS (again, I'm not suggesting this is how it should work, but it represents a "floor" of what the experience could be like). Just the weight savings of not needing both devices is great. > when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well. I've never been impressed with pointing at Linux at Windows as proof that "the other way doesn't work". It is unfortunate that the cost-to-entry on this hardware means we get very little alternatives to compare. And frankly, Windows and Linux don't do that much great in any UI department, that doesn't mean "if Apple can't do it, it must be impossible." If you only had Windows and Linux, you might be convinced that desktop computing was an unsolvable UI problem too... 1. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/30/tolmasky-ipad-curve https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/30/tolmasky-ipad-c...

dkrich 4y ago

Conceptually Apple has to create the illusion that these devices are dissimilar enough to justify shelling out thousands for both. But at the end of the day (in my experience), users fall into one of two buckets- primary use case is productivity (coding, office, photo/movie editing, etc.) or primary use case is consuming content. While there is some overlap between the two users as evidenced by the fact that many people own both and do some of both on each device, it seems inevitable that the devices will continue to converge until a $900 iPad is fully capable of doing 95% of what a $2000 MBP can do and then Apple will have a real problem on its hands as people stop buying the more expensive devices and the cheaper ones last much longer. We are watching the innovator’s dilemma play out inside a single company. Interestingly one of the tell tale signs a disruption is underway is a hybrid use case where people use a costlier version of a product along side a cheaper version because the cheaper version does certain things better than the costly one.