Apple is the only major notebook manufacturer which still doesn't offer touch on any of their notebooks.
Yes, Windows 8 was a failure, but Windows 10 and 11 are successful products and they are also built around touch + m&k.
GNOME and KDE on Linux also support touch input.
Take a look at this device:
https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-2025/
In terms of practicality, ergonomics etc., I think it's a much better proposition than either a MacBook or an iPad.
Yeh I think there's this weird stigma that stuck after Windows 8 was a bit iffy but 8.1 was fine.
I preferred Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 (and MUCH preferred it to 11) because at least it still had all the old core Windows control panel stuff under the hood. Windows 10 feels like a way more awkward mismash of things because they seem to have simply just taken a bunch of stuff away.
The zillions of different UI paradigms smooshed together started in Win8 but Win10 is where they really seemed to pile it on.
Anyway, I'm not a Mac user. But I absolutely see why they want to keep touch interface separate from keyboard & mouse. It's hard.
7 started the regression in earnest, especially in the GUI.
They also started obscuring the color-scheme editor, the eventual removal of which was a major blunder. By the time people finally realized that inverse color schemes are dumb, the color-scheme editor was gone and they had to wait for Microsoft and everyone else to implement hard-coded "dark mode" all over the place.
From Windows 3.1 through XP, I had simply created a "dark mode" color scheme at the system level; all properly-written applications inherited the system color scheme in Windows. Such an obvious, useful mechanism that Microsoft "forgot" and Apple to this day has never learned.
Even '90s Unix GUIs let you set up a color scheme, if I remember correctly.
But how they handle touch input is not one of them.
Is that a feature people actually use? My last laptop had it, but I eventually disabled it in the BIOS because I never really used it, except by accident. I didn't find it comfortable holding my arm out at that angle, and I didn't like having all the fingerprints on my screen.
The reason why it didn't work for microsoft is because adobe, valve, and aren't going to whatever framework just because microsoft wants them to. But in the linux world you can just fork and fix. Even apple has a lot of leverage to force developers to act in a certain way if they want that app store $$$.
Obviously the hardware isn't all there yet in the open source world (the pinephones are pretty underpowered), but in terms of software all of the right stuff is there. And don't tell me the UX is too complicated for new users. Gnome's design is literally a ripoff of MacOS and KDE's interface is pretty much Windows.
And I don’t even use KDE (but I still like it and it was my first DE on Linux like 20 years ago).
Two totally seperate UIs that can run at the same time, a desktop one and a phone one.. it worked shockingly well imho.
Maybe an additional case where you can use the tablet as an extra screen, but honestly that could probably manifest as an app in the mobile UI.
What happened?
(I've seen them. Thought that they were pretty cool as hardware, pity about the OS. I'm not aware of what's transpired, though obviously it hasn't dominated the mobile/tablet market.)
I would love to be able to run a linux VM on my iPad though, it would make travel so much simpler for me. I know there are hacks to get it going with UTM etc. but there are too many compromises for my use case.
I also don't really disagree with your basic point. And I don't write it off (just) to Apple wants to sell more hardware. A lot of people like essentially a plus-sized iPhone and don't want a laptop. Probably hard to believe for many people on this forum but I heard people at work tell me that they have kids that don't want a laptop and are fine with just using their phones, much less a tablet.
Microsoft really tried to converge the different form factors from an operating system perspective and it never really clicked with people. Would I like a device that really a converged a 13-14" laptop and a tablet in the same general size range? Probably, in part because I wouldn't travel by air with both. But I don't think we're really there today outside of very casual tablet use outside of a browser or watching media.
Have the iPad run macOS, but instead of the desktop, always show LaunchPad, and force the use of Stage Manager or full screen apps. Have developers optimize their full screen view for touch. That’s basically the iPadOS experience without the limits.
They don’t because it would hurt macbook sales.