When I first saw the Touch Bar, I thought it was pretty cool. The truth is, I enjoyed it every day on my 15-inch MacBook Pro until I replaced the computer, recently purchased after its presentation, with the 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 I’m writing from. genius for several reasons, and one of them was make Macs a little more tactilesomething I’ve always loved on iPad.
Now we’re hearing rumors from fairly reliable sources about a touchscreen Mac and the eternal dichotomy between traditional laptops and those that include a touch layer for closer interaction with the software. A confrontation from which we can comment on various points of view and arguments to try, more than anything else, to have a clear picture of the situation and what may be to come.
Touchscreen Macs make all the sense (or not)
In a touch product, two factors must be taken into account, mainly: the software and the position of the hardware. On the first, rivers of ink have literally flowed (even though it’s electronic) and the summary of the situation is that the precision of a pointer is very different from the precision we have with our finger
Larger and more spaced out interfaces for touch devices and more precise and cluttered on pointing devices. This is where we find another point of confrontation: iPadOS and macOS. Two systems similar in some aspects and radically different in others. The the same actions are different on iPad and Mac by how we interact with them.
Before going into the ergonomics of the equipment, we can stretch the subject that we have just approached a little more. Integrating two systems as different as touch and pointer into the same software can only represent one thing: compromises. we want to see less information on the Mac screen or having to press a button twice with our finger because we lack precision to find him? Certainly, the balance could be found, but for what?
What trade-offs are we willing to make if we unify devices or operating systems?
Can you use just one device? It can benefit us when we are packing for travel or shopping, but not when we are working. And I’m not talking about using the devices, whether it’s an iPad or a Mac, to watch videos or surf the internet for a while, I’m talking about work, eight hours a day in the same flows and processes. Ergonomics is paramount and anyone who’s tried moving their fingers around the screen (in a vertical position) for eight hours will agree that you’ll be screwed, if ever. On the other hand, a flat screen on the table (perhaps slightly tilted) forces us either to force the eye muscles to look down, or to bend the whole head with the consequent fatigue of all the muscles of the neck.
Of course, a touchscreen Mac can have use cases. Of course, at some point, touching the screen is more intuitive, but like something temporary. Temporary both in the use itself that we could give it and in the solution that Apple should offer for the interface. An adaptive method that when we connect the keyboard behaves one way and when we disconnect it another? It could be a solution, yes. Synthesis is good, but so is specialization. Different devices for very different workflows
A touchscreen Mac with a keyboard like the one we just described is…an iPad with a keyboard case. Was that what Gurman was aiming for when he talked about a touchscreen Mac? So we’re talking about the disappearance of the Mac itself and we’re back to basics: what operating system do we put on it? Will macOS arrive on the iPad? And there we enter again and fully into the first contradiction that we mentioned at the beginning of the article. What sacrifices are we willing to make? Because, I think we’re clear on this, an all-in-one device won’t be as versatile as the combination of an iPad and a Mac.
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