There's no touch, no pen, no direct drawing or manipulation on any Mac laptop or desktop screen, and Apple says there never will be, because nobody wants it.
Sure, but Apple also said that no one wanted a stylus on a tablet. If the technology and market exist to do it well and make it a success, they'll make it. Touch and pen manipulation on laptop and desktop screens so far have done little to show that this is something any significant portion of the market actually wants.
Personally, I have two touch-enabled laptops and the only time I interact with the touch screen is when I try to point at something in conversation and am unpleasantly surprised when it moves the cursor.
If you need to do some heavy work, do it on a laptop. You can buy tons of different laptops now that are very thin and don't take up much more room in your backpack than a tablet would. If you need any more power, then rent a compile server. There is always going to be a cost for having a portable device, it's that you won't be able to get all of your work done on it.
The real issue is when OS developers try to push this simple, tablet environment to devices that shouldn't need it.