7 ms·

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short peri

• trash_cat 6mo ago
  Nobody forces you to use touchscreen exclusively?
  • onion2k 6mo ago
    If that's the case then the interface will remain a compromise that has to work for both point and touch, and ends up being suboptimal for both. Touch input necessitates bigger hit targets, lots of additional negative space around important buttons rather than groups, and a much lower information density on anything that has a click/touch handler like a list in order to avoid accidental presses. Apps need to be written with a touch UI in mind to work well.
    • cosmic_cheese 6mo ago
      It will likely compromise anti-glare performance too, since an oleophobic treatment will be required for the screen to not instantly be covered in a haze of fingerprints. For someone who has no use for touch this is a strict downgrade. The only way touch on MacBooks can make a shred of sense is if it’s a non-default option in the configurator, much like the current nanotexture matte option.
    • ThoAppelsin 6mo ago
      The line of thinking here applies to accessibility features as well. Luckily, it is uncool to say those things against the accessibility features, and there are even many good preemptive positive arguments, such as “a good design with accessibility in mind benefits everyone”. And those same arguments do apply for touch-enabled design as well; a good design with touch input in mind can benefit all.
  • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
    You say that now. And yet Apple now forces you to use shitty Bluetooth headphones to listen to its most popular music player.
    • thebruce87m 6mo ago
      What product are you referring to? One where you can’t use USB-C headphones or an adapter?
      • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
        Not while you're charging.
        • thebruce87m 6mo ago
          Not while you’re charging via USB-C I’ve got a MagSafe nightstand and powerbank that both leave the port free. I do use Bluetooth for audio so I don’t actually ever use the USB-C port at all.
          • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
            Yeah, because I want to junk up my car with all that crap. You're just admitting that your "thin, elegant" Apple product becomes a Christmas tree of dongles to make it practical.
            • thebruce87m 6mo ago
              lol, it seems like you got out of the wrong side of the bed. My car (Tesla) has in-built Qi charging and a place to put both the driver and passenger phones, along with Bluetooth. I literally never use a cable with my phone.
              • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
                "Getting up on the wrong side of the bed" replaces your car? What a world you live in.
• roboy 6mo ago
  I had several PCs with touch screen and this absolutely true. Even intermittent use is not something I did, it’s just too inconvenient to ever become a habit, so the few times it’d be great, I don’t think about it being there because it’s not in my active list of affordances.
  • ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
    The problem with touchscreen laptops is you have to reach over the keyboard and trackpad to actually touch the screen to make it work, and that's physically uncomfortable and kind of inconvenient. The answer is to make them fold flat so you're just looking at the screen with the keyboard facing away from you (and, ideally, disabled by a switch in the hinge so when you put it down you don't zkjltohtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrolkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Then, of course, it becomes annoying and inconvenient to use in a different way, but at least you get really really good at replacing the little flexi PCB ribbon that connects the screen through the hinge.
    • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
      It's totally pointless, because the trackpad is already a touch device... and you use it to manipulate a precise cursor that doesn't block your view of what you're working on.
      • WillAdams 6mo ago
        Except that the trackpad has to be used to get the cursor all the way over to the control --- it's often faster to just reach out and touch, and if using a stylus, then the cursor goes right back to where the other hand was working as soon as one lowers it back into hover range.
        • kjkjadksj 6mo ago
          I can move my cursor across my entire screen without lifting my wrist with the trackpad. It is vastly easier than tapping at a screen.
• neya 6mo ago
  Yeah, but this was also strategically in Apple's interest to sell the iPads with nerfed up iPad OS as a separate line up. I love Steve Jobs and all, but this did NOT age well. The millions of people using Surface and Surface Pro will absolutely disagree with this take.
  • MiddleEndian 6mo ago
    Yeah I have a Surface Laptop Studio. Windows 11 is generally awful to the point where I have switched to Bazzite for my desktop, but the form factor with touch support (and pen support) is great. Easel mode is great for drawing, tablet mode is pretty good for drawing as well and also for casual browsing or for displaying DND character sheet info. Even in laptop mode sometimes I find myself using it to scroll a bit on pages.
• satvikpendem 6mo ago
  I wonder what people will say when Apple releases the touch screen MacBook later this year then.
  • alsetmusic 6mo ago
    That it’s a silly idea, mostly. But some people will love it. As with anything Apple does. (Longtime Apple user.)
    • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
      And then everyone will realize that it's stupid shit, like the embarrassing emoji bar on Jony Ive's MacBook "Pro."
  • VerifiedReports 6mo ago
    They'll say it sucks ass, and they'll be right. Touchscreen computers have failed for a reason. Then again... so did "transparent" UI, which Apple just exhumed.
    • oarsinsync 6mo ago
      > They'll say it sucks ass, and they'll be right. And yet my wife will disagree hard with you, as all her fingerprints on my laptop screen will attest to. She always defaults to trying to swipe the screen instead of going to the mouse. > Touchscreen computers have failed for a reason. The only people who think touch screens have failed are people who actually use computers, and we are a tiny minority of the population these days. The majority of people live on touchscreen devices already.
      • kjkjadksj 6mo ago
        Your wife actually swipes at a non touch screen thinking it is a touch screen?
        • 6mo ago
• divbzero 6mo ago
  “Who wants a stylus? You have to get ’em and put ’em away, and you lose ’em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with—born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.” — Steve Jobs, 2007 (8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
  • nunez 6mo ago
    The Pencil isn’t a stylus. At least not primarily. It’s designed for freehand. This is probably why they insisted on it charging via Lightning by removing its end cap. They didn’t want people getting ideas.
  • zuhsetaqi 6mo ago
    When Steve Jobs said that, he was talking about a stylus as a main or even only input device. And he is still right about it. The Apple Pencil for the iPad never was a main input device but an alternative.
    • overfeed 6mo ago
      That wasn't the only time Jobs trashed a category Apple didn't currently have annon-sale model for, but was actively developing; he also slurred 6-inch Android phones as "Hummers", and mocked the 7-inch Android tablets as "too small" a little while before Apple launched its iPad Mini.
      • fennecbutt 6mo ago
        Exactly, but watch people leap into to defend how brilliant he supposedly was.
        • eru 6mo ago
          I see no contradiction.
        • isidusjdjsu 6mo ago
• ekinertac 6mo ago
  I have used a couple of laptops with touchscreens, and the experience was awful, even with the latest technology. If Apple gave us an iPhone or iPad-quality touchscreen on MacBooks, I am 100% sure the experience would be perfect.
  • cbsks 6mo ago
    I have a laptop with a touchscreen that I regularly forget is a touchscreen until I accidentally touch it.
    • Fezzik 6mo ago
      Same. My work laptop has a touch screen and every now and then, when I remember that fact, I’ll use it to scroll through a few pages of a PDF. It gives me a chuckle because it’s so inefficient and inaccurate… then I immediately revert to my click-wheel mouse.
• ulfw 6mo ago
  Yea but now they're selling $400+ Magic Keyboards for iPads which then function exactly in this vertical way. No difference. I've typed this on one.
• MaXtreeM 6mo ago
  I have never owned a touchscreen laptop and I agree with most of the criticism in comments here against it. But after just briefly using one from my father I have to say there is some thing in our brain that makes it kinda more satisfying, if that is the right word, to touch on things that appear on a screen. Even as a power user being used to just using keyboard most of the time, after 10 minutes with a touchscreen my mind prefers to touch on screen instead of touchpad.
  • Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    ...wait until you see Munority Report.
• pjc50 6mo ago
  The original "gorilla arm" UX research is much older. However, Microsoft surface was something of a niche hit, and spawned a number of clones. PC laptops with touchscreens are quite prevalent even if they're not in the full-hinge form factor. They work a lot better if you can lay the screen flat or at a low angle in your lap. Re: the stylus sub-thread, I've actually used cheap Android resistive+stylus phones and a Compaq Palm Pilot clone and .. yes, they were really bad compared to modern phone interfaces. The stylus has a niche market for artists, who need a high quality pressure sensitive version. (edit: attempting to find the original citation for "gorilla arm" takes me to the Jargon File and the early 1980s. Along the way I found the delightful existence of a UX researcher with the name Sebastian Boring, though)
  • wongarsu 6mo ago
    I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era, and I'd largely agree with Jobs. It's great for some niche cases, but sits unused 99% of the time. Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch, but that also hasn't lead to an appreciable portion of Windows laptops selling with touchscreens. The Surface devices are a bit of an exception. For the tablets it works great. The convertibles that were a laptop with a screen that can turn into a tablet (or just be attached in reverse, so you have a very heavy but powerful tablet) were also great presentation laptops. Though apparently that niche was too small to support the exotic hardware. I don't quite get the appeal of the current surface laptops. But the ones I see in the wild are almost all the tablet surface devices.
    • pjc50 6mo ago
      > I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era To be fair, the point at which Microsoft rewrote their UI to be touch-friendly was Windows 8, inspired by Windows Phone (RIP).
      • echelon_musk 6mo ago
        > Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch
• mcv 6mo ago
  That's only an argument against using it as the primary interface. There have been many, many times for me where it was so much easier to reach for the screen and touch a button, than to reach for the mouse and maneuver the cursor over the button to click it. It shouldn't be the only way to interact, but as an option, it's awesome.
  • WillAdams 6mo ago
    Yeah, as I noted elsethread, I use a proprietary drawing program thus, and it allowed the program to work w/o keyboard shortcuts for years....
• tambourine_man 6mo ago
  I know I don't want, nor do I want anyone else, touching my Mac screen. Steve Jobs quote notwithstanding. They are pretty good at getting dirty on their own.
• WillAdams 6mo ago
  I work for a company which has developed a special purpose drawing (well, entry-level CAD) app, and for a long while, it didn't have keyboard shortcuts, and that was probably because I mostly used it on my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10/Samsung Galaxy Book 12/Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, so would use it w/ touch and stylus, which was quick/natural enough that I never felt the need for keyboard shortcuts. Such usages pretty much want a very flexible device though --- I'll often use mine fully flat on a lap desk and will rotate it in various ways depending on what I'm doing, and will then further mix in using my Kindle Scribe and Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (which use the same stylus tech as the GB12/GB3Pro360). Sometimes I'll add my MacBook into the mix by way of a Wacom One display, but I have a 1st gen unit, so no touch, so every so often I'll find myself dragging at it to scroll or tapping a control with my left hand to no effect. I'd like to try Apple Sidecar on an iPad (which arguably is Apple's touch interface), but can't justify the expense, esp. for yet another stylus (I couldn't easily count how many I own, and carry a spare Lamy Wacom EMR in my sling bag), esp. a stylus which only works on one device. Still waiting on Apple to make a replacement for the Newton --- the smallest size iPad which supports the Apple Pencil is close, but I need something daylight viewable, hence the Kindle Scribe (which I'm going to be replacing w/ the KS Colorsoft presently).
• dudefeliciano 6mo ago
  did steve jobs ever see an easel?
• amadeuspagel 6mo ago
  The reason you want a touchscreen on a laptop isn't so that you can use it for "an extended period of time" but rather so that you can use it to do the few things that are painful with a touchpad, like drag and drop.
  • kjkjadksj 6mo ago
    That is painful for you on a touchpad?
    • amadeuspagel 6mo ago
      Are you asking about my sensitivity to pain here or disagreeing that this is easier with a touchscreen?
      • kjkjadksj 6mo ago
        Both.
    • phatskat 6mo ago
      There’s been plenty of times where I would rather drag an item on the screen than fiddle with the sometimes flaky responsiveness and range of a touchpad. I’m usually fussy about my Asus laptop’s pad - the MacBook _usually_ does fine in the touchpad area. The best was my old ThinkPad’s nipple - preferable in most ways to what I use touchpads for at all.