The author is definitely the first person I've seen who described raising your hand to touch your display from the keyboard as "natural".
It's definitely not faster than clicking, and it looks strange and feels strange extending yourself over a laptop (imo)
My Spectre's touchscreen was great, I even shelled out for the active stylus to go with it because of how well the folded form factor worked for me.
The Zenbook I got after only folds as much as a traditional laptop, meaning all touching is done with the monitor more or less 90 degrees to you. I've plain never felt the urge to use that touchscreen.
I don't assume a touch friendly Mac would be in its current form, that would be bad. But it doesn't mean it's infeasible.
My entire point isn't whether or not the Mac should be touch friendly, it's that touch friendly laptops can and do exist.