This comment section is fascinating. Some people are arguing that they don’t need the technological bloat of a touchscreen on their laptops. Others are specifically arguing that Apple doesn’t need to add touchscreens to its laptops, despite the fact that Apple consumers have been asking for this feature for years.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with having a touchscreen on a laptop. Six years ago, I bought an Acer laptop on sale at Costco, and it came with one. It has proven to be a genuinely useful feature, not some unnecessary gimmick or bloatware. You don’t have to use it, but having the option is certainly nice.
The primary issue, of course, is how late Apple is to the party. Apple has a long history of adopting existing technologies years after its competitors, then marketing them as though they’ve reinvented the wheel. While Apple certainly deserves credit for some of its innovations, particularly during its earlier years, the company’s reputation for innovation often seems to have more to do with its marketing than with being first to market.
Touchscreen laptops have existed for a very long time. Yet now that Apple is reportedly bringing the technology to its MacBooks, some people are acting as though it represents a revolutionary leap forward. It doesn’t. It’s an established feature that Apple is finally choosing to adopt.
The same argument applies to Apple’s rumored foldable iPhone. Foldable smartphones have been on the market for years, and the technology has matured considerably, even if issues such as the crease in the middle of the display remain. Apple entering the market might bring its own refinements, but it won’t be inventing the category.
The problem isn’t that Apple is adding unnecessary features. The problem is that the company has cultivated a brand culture in which ordinary product updates can be presented as groundbreaking innovations. Its exceptionally loyal customer base often seems willing to accept higher prices and fewer options simply because the product carries the Apple logo. And with the amount of competition in the technology market today, I find that level of brand loyalty difficult to justify.
In my opinion, consumers should stop rewarding Apple for charging premium prices while taking its time adopting features that competing manufacturers have offered for years. Lower the prices, deliver something genuinely compelling, and give people a real reason to upgrade beyond the logo and the ecosystem.
Or, better yet, bring back the iPod. I’d buy one of those in a heartbeat.
This mac will probably have the most useful touchscreen out of all touchscreen laptops because macs can run iOS apps
I love touchscreen laptops, it’s often so much easier than using the tracpad.
I love the touchscreen on my thinkpad. It’s an anti glare matte display and I typically use it for jotting down some math, it’s pretty useful when I need it. Also, been having fun using it for chess. However, I hate the reflective displays because it attracts so many fingerprints and I’ll just get blinded in my face by reflection of lights.
Y
I blame the iPad kids for this one. People are being raised on touch-based devices more and more, and with people using things like iPads and iPhones early on they learn technology is touch based. This is just the next step with that. I also think it reflects a larger concern with a lack of digital literacy for many people, where companies like Apple make their devices incredibly simple and locked down to trap the consumer, until they don’t know how to operate basic functions of the operating system like a file system. You already don’t have a real filesystem on an iOS device anyway. This is the next step in making the MacBooks like iPads and iPhones and making the consumers less technically skilled so that they can be exploited. After the hardware is basically the same (the same M-series chips that power MacOS now power iOS as well) then the software for MacBooks will be locked down over time, until there’s basically no escape from this walled garden, not that anyone would really be able to escape it, since people lack digital skills. (but that last part is just a theory)
“Blame”? Why is this a negative thing?
I wasn’t raised with touch stuff, but I definitely feel like a touch screen can be nice at times, when you want to quickly and accurately do something where the touchpad wouldn’t be so fast or accurate.
With a mouse, I never feel that way. But touchpads are so gosh darn garbage as a human input device.
The only downside I see with touch screens is the fingerprints. That part always prevents me from using touch more than I otherwise would on my laptop.
But touchpads are so gosh darn garbage as a human input device.
I have a strong preference for touchpads, but only when set up with tap-to-click and 3-finger dragging (which always requires digging in the preferences to find, but is worth it). I find other touchpad setups annoying to use. The push-harder-to-click (and especially to drag) default reduces speed and accuracy.
I mention this because I am forever hopeful that someday I will introduce this arrangement to someone else who otherwise hates touchpads and they will have the joy of discovering that they have simply been missing out on this setup for years.
Perhaps you are that person, perhaps not.
Your setup is really the bare minimum I require to use a touchpad, but that baseline is still garbage for me, sadly. A mouse is just so much more accurate, and can cover so much more screen real estate in a shorter amount of time and still be more accurate to the click target.
Of course, if I can do the same thing without moving my hand from the keyboard, I prefer that over anything else. 🤲⌨️
I appreciate you taking the time to give me those tips and hints though. Love you, buddy. 🫶
But touchpads are so gosh darn garbage as a human input device.
Anyone who’s used a Steam Deck or the modern Steam Controller knows this isn’t true.
I own one and used it extensively. What now? What happens to your statement now?
Reminds me of shitty Windows 8 laptops back in the day. I don’t want to touch the screen—it has a keyboard and a trackpad.
And the trackpads on MacBooks are arguably better than touchscreens anyway.
I definitely am a fan of NOT having a touchscreen. It was one of the pluses of the Macs, IMHO. When my parents or kids accidentally tap the screen pointing something on their touchscreen ThinkPad, it tends to screw things up and cause me to have to fix things for them.
I am also really worried they’re going to start making things “touch friendly” now… And we’re going to end up with the MacOS equivalent of Windows 8.
Someone touching my perfectly clean screen and leaving a fingerprint deeply angers me in a way that almost nothing else does. I don’t know why but it’s infuriating.
I am also really worried they’re going to start making things “touch friendly” now… And we’re going to end up with the MacOS equivalent of Windows 8.
You mean iPadOS?
It was one of the pluses of Macs
This was never a common thing in regular laptops though, it was always a special overpriced model.
I have had to purchase or aid in purchasing laptops for my family and extended family (being the tech go to) for years. For at least the last 15, even entry level laptops have had touchscreens. I feel like they throw it in as a cheap-ish “feature” to make it seem more premium.
What??? I have literally never seen this, and I have also looked at plenty of laptops in the past 15 years (although not a lot in recent years)
Maybe its less of a thing now? I had the same experience as the other commenter where every random cheap laptop had a touchscreen but it was back in the Windows 8 era
Every business laptop I’ve had the last 10 years or so has had a touch screen and it’s pointless. The only times I click anything is when I try to adjust the screen.
What is this saying? You’re leaving Linux to crawl up to Apple’s feet?
Love the random Minecraft background btw, wtf 😂
He says it’s about meow to meow Linux
Makes sense, thanks
My wife had a Samsung laptop with a touch screen like 10 years ago. Big woop.
Apple typically do not do completely new ideas - they are however pretty proficient at refining existing ideas, and charging an arguably unwarranted premium for it.
And the MS Surface Laptops
My Dell Inspiron with an 8th gen core i7 has a touch screen.
Microsoft Surface laptops had it too…
Yeah Samsung has never copied anything.
Wait, are you the dude who keeps buying Facebook ads hoping that Tim Apple will let you jerk him off under the table?
If he was interested he would have responded to your letter writing campaign.
Quite a leap you took there.
Welcome to the Internet?
That’s beside the point. The point is that it took Apple that fucking long to implement it, and Apple users will start acting as if it’s something new, even though it’s absolutely not.
Eh. It‘s more like Apple pretends it‘s new after they pretended to be better than the rest. Just to fold years later anyway. Always amusing to see them lagging behind silly trends and I doubt Apple users care. Especially when it’s something so unnecessary.
Honestly, most Apple users I know are well aware of touch screen laptops, and don’t want one 😅
Me I’m one of them. That’s what an iPad is for if you want that honestly. I despise shy modicum of cruft on my laptop screens
Yes… if only iPad had MacOS then you’d be at least partially right
That’s before being told that Apple released one, then it’s new.
as logical as a touchscreen blackberry with a physical keyboard and nipple, imho.
Lighter is helpful. The bigger screen models are great until you slip it in a bag and it morphs into lead.
Lit Apple logo is back to basics.
Touch screen - I guess enough degrees of separation between this team and Steve Jobs; I heard he was the reason it never happened. I have a touch laptop for work and never use it. It just gets manky with fingerprints. I’m sorta moderate on the greasy fingers scale, but I’ve see what happens if the user is a hand lotion type of person. Eww
I imagine an OLED screen and an OLED touchscreen of that size cost the same to produce so they just went „what the heck“ and choose the touchscreen.
I’m the same. Never use the touchscreen on my laptop. Much easier to use the trackpad, especially on macs where it is so well implemented.
Seems like Apple is hitting its downfall era.
Hell, I remember my colleague’s non-touch CRT monitor that was just caked with grease from him touching it over the years to “point” out things to other people. Also, it was set for 59.9 Hz refresh and flickered insanely (until I changed it to 85Hz when they weren’t looking, and they noticed it didn’t look so “strange” anymore).
This doesn’t make sense to me. Apple spent the last few years blurring the MacBook and iPad range, they’re even sticking the same SoCs in both and now this? What’s the killer feature here, the OLED?
They brought back the glowing Apple logo, though, just as everyone got used to not having it.
Edit: Just thought of the biggest problem I have with my MacBook; the fucking screen is so fucking hard to clean! I swear this move is a ploy to get people to buy their proprietary screen cloth.
There is no killer feature here, theyre just building up to assimilating one line into another so they can stop selling macbooks entirely in a few release cycles
You can buy regular cheap glass wipe individual packets and clean with, shouldnt be an issue at all if youre not sticking god knows what on the screen?
I’ve found that grease and dirt sticks the anti-glare coating almost like glue and honestly, I’m afraid of using anything more than distilled water to clean it because I’ve seen too many MacBook screens with horrible blotchy coatings caused by incorrect cleaning…
Anything you use to clean glasses with should be safe on your screen, products like that works for plastic glasses as well, so your screen would be safe
Does anyone have a layer I can apply to my screen that gives an electric shock to anyone that tries to smudge up my screen?
That screenshot legit looks like the screen is broken to hell
An iPadBook, huh? Its a bold move, Cotton…
I had a work laptop with a touchscreen and used that functionality exactly 0 times (after trying it out). If it had the ability to fold back into a Lenovo Yoga-style tablet form factor, it would have been a completely different story, though.
No, no. You don’t two in one with apple. You get one, and you will be thankful.
I had a surface book at work about a decade ago. Honestly if apple came out with something like that I would maybe consider it. But compared to an iPad this will just feel bulky. And compared to a MacBook does the touchscreen even add anything?
