Ask HN: Why are laptop companies moving to touch screen?

Apple introduced the touchbar. MS is supposedly seeing a lot more people buying their surface lineup. I'm trying to purchase a laptop but, stepping back for a moment, a thought came across my mind: Just how useful is the touch screen really? What's so good about them that a lot of companies are willing to do it?

In places where I need portability, such as in bed or during commute, I can simply pull out my laptop and get stuff done much quicker. If that's not possible, I almost always reach for my phone. A tablet feels awkward to use in settings like this.

For touch-based shortcuts, it will be extremely challenging to be proficient at it. I'm talking second nature of pro gamers or digital artists. Imagine replacing your keyboard with a touch-only keyboard. The lack of reference forces you to look down, especially when the keys are far away from each other. Another example: Emoji touchbar. What's the point when you can simply "ctrl+cmd+space"? It requires less movement and provides a quicker way to browse them.

One advantage would be for doing creative work. However, I feel like there still needs improvements to complete with something like a cintiq. The pressure sensitivity is worse, and doing detailed work requires me to zoom in farther than usual. I'm optimistic that it will be much better in a few years, but for now, I'm hesitant to purchase something that will become outdated soon. It's not like I can just replace the touch screen portion of the laptop.

New technologies fascinate me. Whenever something different comes out, instead of lashing out because it's outside of my comfort zone, I always try to adapt. But this is one of the few things that I can't seem to understand. At first I thought the benefit of a touch-screen was accessibility over speed and proficiency. However, I'm beginning to think that it's more redundant than accessible.