My wife has a Dell touch screen that's running Ubuntu. Every time we're looking at memes or family photos together on some social platform, she reaches out to the screen and pinch-zooms and it just works. The utility is obvious. I just think, I can't believe this is possible.

But also, I'm a home-row person and I feel naturally annoyed by the additional touch interface at the same time, just out of ergonomic idealism. For example, there's no home row for touch screens that I'm aware of, which means the resting position is effectively going to mandate either contortion and body leverage, or some amount of strain. I feel like we'll all laugh about how bad touch screens were, someday. But until then, her laptop also does something cool (and not exactly strain-inducing, really) that mine doesn't.

I do the exact same pinch-zoom gesture with my touchpad, though. Without leaving oily fingerprints all over my screen.

Not sure how oily your fingerprints are or what the screen is like, but I don't think we have that problem here. Heck, I have to rub my nose for quite a while just to keep the trackball going :-) I do dislike the feeling of gestures on most trackpads though.

I live in a warm and humid region. Perhaps you live somewhere more cold or arid.

At any rate, I'm amazed that one would find pinch-zoom awkward on a trackpad, yet find it perfectly natural to lift their hands off the keyboard area altogether and reach up to paw at the screen.

I don't so much care if Apple ever chose to equip MacBooks with touchscreens, so long as:

1. The quality and brilliance of the screen did not diminish in any way.

2. Cost did not rise.

3. Developers did not start writing features that presume universal touchscreen use, thereby effectively forcing everyone to paw at their screens.

However:

1. I cannot imagine it NOT being used as an excuse to raise prices. Which would suck, as this is a "feature" that I very much do not want in a MacBook.

2. The fact that you DON'T really see desktop developers writing features for touchscreens suggests that perhaps Apple was correct, and this is just a gimmick.

> At any rate, I'm amazed that one would find pinch-zoom awkward on a trackpad, yet find it perfectly natural to lift their hands off the keyboard area altogether and reach up to paw at the screen.

To be clear, that's two different people, my wife and I. We do file jointly though :-)

There is precisely one scenario in which I find a touchscreen useful: If I'm opening a long series of links, I'll hold control and rapidly touch them each in sequence. This is much, much faster than using a mouse, let alone a touchpad.

This however is so useful, it's almost worth it on its own.

That's only a problem if your laptop manufacturer chooses to ship a glossy display, god forbid.

When my daughters came home with Chromebooks provided by the school last year, I too was blown away when they had touch screen. Instant jealousy.

I like the idea of the nipple in the home row, but it always feels like too much work. Too much pressure etc. So I have resorted to the touchpad on the Thinkpad. But you could do pinch gestures on that, and it isn't too far away.

Perhaps joycon style keys on F and J?

I tend to prefer alt-scrollwheel myself. Not sure if that's available in Ubuntu though.

Joycon keys are an interesting idea. I had an idea for a keyboard-mashing library that would map all keys into groups of several directional zones e.g. up down right left, and you could mash generally in the zone of your choice to steer a flight sim or paint or modify paint dynamics. Anyway.

Damn I'm missing a scroll wheel.

Found myself an old school Kensington trackball. With no scroll wheel. Which is a pain. But I quite like the ball. Shame it's not in the middle of the keyboard.

I don’t get it either. That my MacBook and ThinkPad don’t have touch screens is a selling point for me… no possibility of fumble-clicking things accidentally, and a good trackpad (and/or trackpoint) do everything a touchscreen does exactly as well as a touchscreen does. Personally touchscreens on laptops feel like compensation for bad/mediocre trackpads.

Also in the case of the ThinkPad, lack of touch support lets it have a matte screen which I definitely wouldn’t trade away for the average glossy laptop screen — Apple’s glossy screens have decent antiglare but those from most other manufacturers are almost mirrors.

I don't use my touchscreen heavily, but I do use it regularly for scrolling.

If I was into virtual desktops, I'd probably use it to swipe between them.

When using non-touchscreen laptops, my wife and I do often have the urge to touch the screens, so there is definitely some muscle memory built up from using touchscreen laptops.

I used to use a Chromebook running Ubuntu that had a built-in touchscreen, and it was nice. A lot of websites build with touch in mind now, so having access to that kind of interaction ends up being a pleasant add-on.

Instead of thinking of it as a screen upgrade, think of it as a trackpad upgrade. The touchscreen on this Chromebook wasn't even that good, and I still really appreciate it having it. I'm sure one on a MacBook pro would be a really nice experience.

When I get frustrated with a laptop's glitchy touchpad, it's satisfying to be able to violently poke the screen and have it actually respond the way I want.

The last touchscreen laptop I had had a glitchy touchscreen as well, so all you can really do is swear at Alexa (just kidding, I've never tried to use it.) Of course, if you put Linux on it then work in a terminal, all your problems are solved.