I no longer have it but for quite a while I used a touch screen Windows laptop. I found touch useful and natural for some actions. I never expected to use it for everything. No worries about gorilla-arm.

For me it was about having a mix of interaction methods. Sometimes would use touch, sometimes mouse or trackpad, and sometimes keyboard. It was all very situational. Actions like scrolling, dragging, and tapping buttons lend themselves to touch. Fiddling with forms or small UI elements may need a pointing device. Editing text works best with a keyboard. It's about options.

In addition, I felt that being able to switch methods meant less RSI as I wan't using the same movements as much. I was never bothered that some UI elements were too small for touch because I was always ready to switch to a pointer when it was called for.

I do the same now on an iPad Pro that almost all the time sits in a keyboard case next to a mouse. I am constantly switching between those and sometimes picking up the pencil, too.

it might not be for everyone but I would like the option to do that on Mac OS as well.

A friend of mine has owned Windows laptops for years. She's constantly trying to do pinch-to-zoom on the screen of my MBP when I'm showing her something. She gets super frustrated at how backwards my computer is. I can see how that feature would be nice to have.

But yeah, an entirely touch-first laptop experience would be terrible. At the same time a no-touch laptop experience seems to be suboptimal these days. Philosophical design extremes usually aren't the best.

I have a Dell with that, wasting power and forcing glossy on me—there was no other option. Hands on keyboard more efficient, so have used it twice in five years maybe. A waste imho.

Dell Inspiron with 4k Screen? I had a work provided one and I kept forgetting it was a touch screen. The screen was nice, but I never found a use for the touch part. A pen (Microsoft Surface laptops) is a better idea. as you can keep the same UI.

And yet, with a touch screen laptop I did use it extensively without needing to change the UI as I never used it exclusively. People use different features differently. Not particularly profound but still pertinent.

I think being forced to buy a thing that degrades the experience in some way (battery/reflection) is worse than not allowing it for folks that might use it.

Would be great if we all had options, but perhaps not economical.

My understanding is that what most people want out of a MacPad is not necessarily the Mac UI on iPad form factor, but Mac capabilities. iPad has a Pro model but iOS doesn't have a Pro edition that lets one use their iPad as a fully capable computing device like any other PC.

Basically an iPad that is not just a big iPhone but a capable computer in iPad form factor, not necessarily one that uses MacOS even.

Exactly my feelings. I have an IPad Pro M2. Why shouldn't I be able to run software that works on my M2 MBP?

I would even accept having to hook up KB/mouse for input. But carrying around a MacBook AND an iPad is a lot of weight.

> Why shouldn't I be able to run software that works on my M2 MBP?

Well, there's the technical reason which is that the userland of MacOS and iPadOS aren't the same.

But there's also the ideological reason which is that the iPad is strictly sold as a device for consumption, not creation. They don't want you to run any code on it that they haven't authorized.

>But there's also the ideological reason which is that the iPad is strictly sold as a device for consumption, not creation. They don't want you to run any code on it that they haven't authorized.

The iPad Pro is heavily marketed as a device to create things.

It does, just not the same workflow you use on the mac. I use my iPad Air, for drawing, writing and it's great. But can't imagine having something like Swinsian, Audacity, or Calibre on it without heavily modifying their UIs.

Yep, an ipad w/ a *nix OS and fileystem where I can run arbitrary code

Performant MacOS VM instead of iSH.

Well you just a sweeter your own question. They may not want the UI, but to function the same you need the UI. Do this only strengthens the argument you replied to

I don't think people want to fudge the different interaction styles together. I think they just want to have both experiences out of the same hardware.

I carry an M1 MacBook Air, and a iPad Air 5th-gen. They both have identical fanless M1 Apple ARM silicon, both have identical ram (8GB) and identical storage (256gb), it's practically the same device. I even also carry the iPad Magic Keyboard. I have to carry two sets of everything, just because Apple artificially prevents any of their own software from working on any of their own hardware.

It makes perfect sense to me that, when in tablet/touchscreen interaction, I get a traditional iPad experience.

It makes zero sense, that when I attach the $300 traditional keyboard/trackpad to that iPad Air, I get thrown into a weird iPad-kinda-pretending-to-be-a-laptop-but-failing mode, where you "kinda" have a mouse cursor, and "kinda" have windows (but only 2 or 3!) and you can "kinda" resize them, and you can "kinda" have an external display (but despite being huge, you still can't have more than 3 windows!).

macOS already works great, "iPad Stage Manager" feels like a bunch of people trying desperately to justify breaking macOS conventions and UI/UX, mostly for no good reason.

There's no reason I couldn't be put into normal macOS, and even have my existing iPad apps still running (the software portion of this already works on macOS today, iPad apps run on macOS right now! You just cant experience this on any of the devices that have touchscreens -- you can't do this on the devices that would most benefit from it.)

> "kinda" have windows (but only 2 or 3!)

Historically, that was basically coping with the fact that mobile devices would ship with low amounts of RAM and crappy, bottom-of-the-barrel eMMC storage, so they couldn't really have swap space. One would think that the latter factor is a lot less important nowadays, since storage size and quality has improved with things like UFS.

I thought Apple had the perfect groundwork, at least from UI elements, to make the single device work.

My thought was when a keyboard/mouse were connected it would be in macOS mode, with a normal desktop, windows, and the dock. Without these input devices, it would switch to touch mode, forcing all the apps to full screen (or now Stage Manager as an option) and forcing LaunchPad in place is the normal desktop/dock. Developers would be instructed to use larger touch-friendly UI elements for full screen mode, which would be used in the touch mode.

It seemed like Apple was laying a lot of ground work, and it made so much sense to me that they’d do this. This was many, many years ago. I’ve since given up thinking they’ll do this.

I thought the same thing about the iPhone, even before the iPad. Once it got fast enough, allow it to plugin to a dock and use a normal desktop with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Some Android devices have since come out that do this, but I think Apple is in a much better position to make something happen.

> My thought was when a keyboard/mouse were connected it would be in macOS mode, with a normal desktop, windows, and the dock. Without these input devices, it would switch to touch mode, forcing all the apps to full screen (or now Stage Manager as an option) and forcing LaunchPad in place is the normal desktop/dock. Developers would be instructed to use larger touch-friendly UI elements for full screen mode, which would be used in the touch mode.

AKA Windows 8.

That's how you got the worst of both worlds. First thermal issues. Then a whole slew of conditional statements. And one of the things I like about desktop apps is having multiple windows because you don't have to make everything big for touch interaction.

Windows 8 seemed to force it more with the full screen start menu and all the other stuff, even when the user didn't have a touch screen.

I rarely, if ever, use full screen apps in macOS, so in the model I described, I wouldn't notice any changes (in theory). Similarly, someone who only used a touch device shouldn't see any major differences vs normal iPadOS. Though I'm sure when fulling vetting this out and looking into all the edge cases, there would likely be a lot of little issues that would need to be solved or lead to compromises.

Windows 8 went overboard and tried to force the touch idea, even when it didn't make sense... like removing the start button from Windows Server and relying on hot corners, which was hell with RDP.

That was probably thought about at some point but the thing is that Apple makes way too much money as it is to try anything, because they don't have to, at least for now. I'm pretty sure Apple's leadership knows about this possibility and there are even some prototypes most likely but they conveniently rejected the idea because it would mean selling less devices. Even if they price the combo higher than their laptops current it would still make less money overall (especially since they already got the prices so high there is very little room to push for more, as falling mac sales attest). This is basically the same reason the iPad never got a multi-user mode even though it should be relatively easy to implement since they have all the basics in macOS already.

I think Apple is blinded with money and is being way too complacent, ignoring that they are in fact losing customers to more modern 2/3-in-1 devices, especially in the young/students demographics, just like they lost customers because of their lack of interest in PC gaming. And since they make it extremely hard to integrate their stuff with other products, people won't renew their Apple hardware overtime, since it's an easy decision considering for how much they sell their stuff.

And I think they are way too proud to admit that Microsoft was actually right with their Surface, for most people it is actually a much better device since a tablet isn't that useful in the end. If all you want is entertainment, a cheap Android tablet with a decent screen is all you need. The iPad Pros as they exist, are way too overpriced for their real capabilities and at this point are terrible value.

If Intel or AMD successfully make a competent power efficient chip in the near future, they will be only Apps left as an "advantage". Considering many of the powerful iPad apps are stripped down versions of the fully featured versions available on "legacy" computing platforms, that's not saying much.

  competent power efficient chip in the near future

2024 HP/Dell/Lenovo Windows+Linux Arm laptops, with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, by ex-Apple Silicon team members.

I’m not sold on the idea of touch on laptops either, particularly since it often comes with compromises that make the display worse at its traditional job — large touch-sensitive screens are typically glossy and have some of the worst antiglare coating I’ve ever encountered, to which the iPad is not exempt (treating glass to be both oleophobic and antiglare must be cost prohibitive beyond smartphone sizes or something), as well as visible touch sensitive wire matrices which is commonly seen on touchscreen PC laptops.

I think the idea would be better implemented by a second screen on a swiveling laptop lid. This allows the user to signal to the OS to toggle touch specializations by way of closing or swiveling the lid and lets the main display remain a great no-compromises traditional laptop display.

I found touch really useful for taking notes (OneNote) and for drawing (Clip Studio Pro) - and that's it. I could try to build some Star Trek-like giant touch UI, but never found it useful to use touch for apps that work better with keyboard/mouse.

So yeah, I agree that I wouldn't want a Windows or macOS device that uses touch for the primary UI, I just want touch-enabled apps that make good use of a pen, on a device that has a proper keyboard/trackpad for everything else.

Arguably, the Wacom Cintiq already solved that issue completely. I did think that the Surface Studio were the most interesting Surface products, though the price wasn't attractive.

The GNOME built-in apps seem to work just fine in touchscreen mode. Yes the buttons and window titlebar are larger, but not too much. (And there are ongoing 'tweaks' that allow for a better use of the resulting space; e.g. the large, touch-usable titlebar now has a room for a subtitle and a few app-specific buttons.) The clearest issue with GNOME on touchscreens right now is that it ships with a crappy on-screen keyboard, missing many of the PC keys (which leads to usability issues with many apps) and a lot less usable than what you can get on AOSP.

I've been using a laptop/tablet with Windows 11 and touchscreen for a while now. It has many problems and is so janky and is really annoying sometimes and it's also so much better than being without it.

I have a touch enabled Chromebooks and when you change to a tablet mode the interface changes in front of your eyes to be more tablety. It is actually quite nice.

I had a touchscreen laptop in one work environment, and like others, very rarely used the touch interface. It's actually surprisingly tiring to use for more than touching a button or scrolling, and I only use it for that over a mouse if I wasn't at the keyboard (if I was off to the side writing in a notebook or something). I have certainly never missed having the feature.

I think this project is cool but it looks like a lot of annoyances compared to just having a macbook plus ipad, and doesn't really seem more portable than a normal macbook plus ipad.

It's surprising how often people advocate for interfaces that require more muscle movement to do the same thing. I regularly use a pen display for drawing, and even with a tool that is more precise than finger touch input and optimized ergonomically for long art sessions I still regularly switch back to a mouse or even laptop touchpad when interacting with anything outside of a purpose-built art program.

I agree with you, but interestingly everything wrong with touch Macs is present in the Vision Pro, and without the benefit of touching glass.

Oh wow, I wrote that before even reading the article.

Just add zoom function so old apps can work somewhat with touch. Works well enough for mobile phones and old.reddit.com.

I really think this is the big issue. No disrespect to people who feel differently, but I do not use the touchscreens on laptops for anything substantial. I had one, for years, and I used it probably a handful of times for actual tasks, and the vast majority of the time, it was to like... dismiss a dialog box when I wasn't actually using the machine and was standing over it to where the mouse was out of reach.

A mouse is fast, precise, and most importantly, does not block the screen with itself while in use. Your hand is none of those things, and unless you use the screen in the exact same orientation in the exact same place day after day, you'll find it markedly harder to develop muscle memory with regard to it. And, if your software updates, all that could go out the window anyway. A mouse feels like a mouse, barring some hardware change. Once you have your settings dialed in, you know on an instinctual, unconscious level how far it takes to get from here to there.

Add to it, even the most basic mouse has two discreet actions- left and right click- out of the box. The shittiest mouse you can find has those two buttons, and these days, probably a third too with the mouse wheel click. A touch is a touch, unless it's a long-press (but don't move your hand by mistake, or it's now a drag) or if you touch with two or more fingers (but that might also mean you want to touch two things? And if you add any lateral movement at all the software will struggle even more.)

And all of that happens with zero feedback to the user. Touch screens have a much harder time implementing haptics, and you could use sound but not everyone is going to be comfortable with that.

Don't get me wrong, I love my phones and my tablets. But I have no desire at all for touch features on any of my computers, Mac or Windows or Linux. It's just not a good interface for when I need to Get Shit Done.

> And all of that happens with zero feedback to the user. Touch screens have a much harder time implementing haptics

AOSP has a feature which shows every tap the system registers as a fading circle. It's part of the dev-mode options but it really should be included in the display- or accessibility- features, it makes the system a whole lot more usable than the default of showing no feedback whatsoever. Knowing instantly where the tap has registered makes for a huge increase in accuracy and overall confidence with the UI.

Besides, the best implementation of advanced "discreet actions" on touchscreens probably involves gestures (like the secret unlock pattern on AOSP) or radial/pie menus.

I use a convertible laptop for taking handwritten notes, annotating PDFs, "prototyping" plots, and occasional drawing. I tried navigating the OS using touch, but it is pretty inconvenient and, in my case, not very ergonomic.

Oh yeah, I have a Kindle Scribe my wife got me for my birthday and it's bloody amazing for taking quick notes and making doodles, diagrams, that sort of thing. But I have no desire to use that interface on my entire machine. It's a specific tool good for specific things.

> I doubt we are ever going to truly see an OS that can handle both

Many users would be okay with dual booting if they can safe on money and weight

Touchscreen is great, touchscreen first UIs are not. I use a touchscreen laptop and the number of times I subconsciously try and tap/scroll/pinch the screen when I use macbooks is frustrating. It is such an improvement over trackpad and a nice compliment to keyboard+mouse