Does anyone actually use touchscreens on laptops? They've always seemed pretty awkward to me. OTOH, being able to use a tablet as an extension to a desktop seems as if it would let you have effectively a couple different interaction mechanisms. I'm looking forward to checking it out.

My GF and I both have ThinkPad X1 Yogas. I rarely use the touchscreen, but I do like the digitizer pen for sketching out design ideas and such.

OTOH, she uses the touchscreen all the time. Even when something would be easier with the keyboard, like filling in a form field and just hitting Enter, she finishes typing and reaches up to touch the button on the screen. If anything can be done by touching the screen, that's how she does it.

It seems a bit strange to me, but she loves the touchscreen!

I can definitely see the digitizer pen. That's mostly why I like the idea of being able to use an iPad Pro as a secondary display. Sketching something with a mouse or trackpad makes my barely legible chicken scratch that much worse. I usually end up doing it on paper and taking a picture.

But different folks, different strokes. I have a ChromeBook with a touch screen that I never use. But I have a friend who, if I hand over the ChromeBook to look at something, their natural reaction is to swipe the screen to scroll, which is something I almost never do.

The boss likes his Surface Pro as much as it’s possible for a Unix guy to like Windows. Flipping to touch mode on the plane and churning through emails — mostly read & delete — is a favourite.

I’m in the ‘get your fingers off my screen’ camp but there are undeniable benefits.

My issue is mostly with using tablets as laptop replacements. Not so much because of capabilities (I often travel with a ChromeBook) but because nothing out there is great for just grabbing and typing on my lap--which I admit I do a lot even at home or in the office.

IMO, there needs to be a detachable keyboard with trackpad that really locks to a tablet so the screen doesn't need to be propped up in some manner. Some things out there get close but not quite.

Surface Book?

It’s certainly the idea although I’m not in the Microsoft ecosystem any longer. But yeah, that’s probably the closest thing to what I have in mind these days.

Also pretty heavy and pricey.

I'm not adjacent to that at all, so I'm completely in the dark. What are the migrating to?

Windows and Linux. Mac is becoming less attractive.

You believe this, despite them just announcing a tower Mac Pro. I'd say the very fact that they are even producing it precludes that they have 'abandoned' the pro market and customers doing high end design. If they had truly abandoned the segment they wouldn't bother.

I've talked to multiple audio / graphics studios and they are actively planning/executing their Apple exit strategy. Phasing out over several years. Started about 2-3 years go for most of them. Apple don't care about them because they can't even see them on their bottom line.

I am someone who dabbles in audio and video production. I was set on buying Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro for my use.

But in the current environment we are in, I am seriously considering using cross-platform software like Ableton Live and DaVinci Resolve. This is due to the fear of being locked-in hardware wise.

I'd also give pretty good odds that we're seeing the beginnings of a convergence between Apple's tablets and laptops/desktops which is probably (mostly) not good for pro users given--probably including a shift away from x86.

Likely. Macs running only ARM is a definite possibility. I doubt anyone would doubt Apple could make 100% ARM based Mac Pro given a reasonable timeframe. Just a matter of time.

Only need higher performance ARM cores. And this isn't in the "impossible" or "silly pie-in-the-sky" bucket either.

Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users. Go ahead and Google “has apple abandoned pro market” and see for yourself whether anyone else thinks so, and why. The hardware isn’t the main problem, the software is, as @mondoshawan pointed out up-thread. Apple’s made lots of moves that frustrate pro users in recent years. Canceling Shake was a big one in the pro film industry. Apple preventing use of nvidia GPUs is an ongoing issue a lot of people I know care about. Personally, as a programmer who moved to macOS for it’s unix environment and needs some ability to maintain cross-platform compatibility, I am not able to continue because Apple has moved strongly toward Apple-only development, and the unix environment is frozen with decade-old licenses that will never resolve.

> Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users.

The new Mac Pro caters almost exclusively to pro users. Normal people (at this time) have little use for a computer and monitor that cost 5 figures with the specs on offer. The “pros” I know that benefit from this level of power are chomping at the bit to get the new Mac Pros and the monitors. Just the capabilities of Logic and Final Cut with the Mac Pro are astounding.

Totally fair point. Apple is catering to some pro users.