Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)
anishathalye.com
anishathalye.com
We actually iterated a bit on the design since then and removed the dependencies on door hinges and paper plates. The revised^3 design involves scotch tape and a paperclip instead.
Selling an add-on/accessory that clips onto any macbook or even any laptop with similar screen properties as the macbook pro used will be a nice little business!
Edit: an iPhone fails to focus on the reflections in a Christmas bauble, maybe the warped reflection throws something off in the auto-focus method.
Edit 2: it works with a larger bauble, supposedly because the view is not as warped as in a small one that has a smaller radius of curvature.
https://www.brightfingers.com/mirrormethis
> MirrorMeThis is a specially-designed laptop mirror. Instead of your students seeing your face, they see the keyboard area where you can place anything you want to share and talk about.
So it's designed for the classroom, but I don't see why it couldn't work here.
I was one of the contract IC designers involved in the custom chip which is deployed all round the display to illuminate/measure. A little single-purpose DSP with an ARM on the side.
I don't care at all about a touchscreen macOS, I just want to be able to run the iOS Simulator on the laptop when I'm travelling and have touch like I would on an actual phone.
It's the portability of being able to do it directly on the laptop that I'm wanting.
And people who prefer computers should be very, very happy about that; because touchscreens on computers are stupid.
It's not like a touchscreen is great ergonomics on a conventional laptop but there are certain situations and applications where it's just convenient to have the option. And it's low cost these days, so it makes perfect sense to me for manufacturers to throw them in so you have the choice of a really easy, fast interaction when you're flipping pages or pausing videos.
What I really miss are pen digitizers which had been the basic minimum on convertible tablets for a long time in the '90s, but then everyone got rid of them. Only now they're slowly creeping back but mostly only on very high end tablets, although a few manufacturers like Lenovo have put them back on convertible laptops.
A mirror on the webcam reflecting the screen light back, and AI/ML watching the screen's reflection of the finger to see when it touches, can clearly see a touch event.
This idea was also re-invented by Carmen Castrejón, as a teaching aid during Zoom classes.
https://www.boredpanda.com/teacher-shares-screen-hack-zoom-c...
She uses a CD as a mirror to point at a pen and paper, with maths homework.
Likewise, we can use scrap CDs on the corners of the office, to help people see motion and not collide (bus contention) when turning sharp 90º angles walking out of the washrooms or kitchenette or lab, back into the grid squares of open-plan desks.
Buying an iPad alongisde my MBP to do this is more than I want to spend. Come on Apple, touchscreen MBPs please.
I imagine you want to run a windowed system on it ("real apps"), and are just not used to touch UIs. It's just a different paradigm.
Is there any other reason to own a particular computer?
Fashion? Because you like using it? Because it fits in your budget?
So... yes.
Honest question: What do you use a touchscreen on a classic laptop (like MBP, XPS, Surface Laptop) for?
But also, I'm a home-row person and I feel naturally annoyed by the additional touch interface at the same time, just out of ergonomic idealism. For example, there's no home row for touch screens that I'm aware of, which means the resting position is effectively going to mandate either contortion and body leverage, or some amount of strain. I feel like we'll all laugh about how bad touch screens were, someday. But until then, her laptop also does something cool (and not exactly strain-inducing, really) that mine doesn't.
Perhaps joycon style keys on F and J?
Joycon keys are an interesting idea. I had an idea for a keyboard-mashing library that would map all keys into groups of several directional zones e.g. up down right left, and you could mash generally in the zone of your choice to steer a flight sim or paint or modify paint dynamics. Anyway.
Found myself an old school Kensington trackball. With no scroll wheel. Which is a pain. But I quite like the ball. Shame it's not in the middle of the keyboard.
At any rate, I'm amazed that one would find pinch-zoom awkward on a trackpad, yet find it perfectly natural to lift their hands off the keyboard area altogether and reach up to paw at the screen.
I don't so much care if Apple ever chose to equip MacBooks with touchscreens, so long as:
1. The quality and brilliance of the screen did not diminish in any way.
2. Cost did not rise.
3. Developers did not start writing features that presume universal touchscreen use, thereby effectively forcing everyone to paw at their screens.
However:
1. I cannot imagine it NOT being used as an excuse to raise prices. Which would suck, as this is a "feature" that I very much do not want in a MacBook.
2. The fact that you DON'T really see desktop developers writing features for touchscreens suggests that perhaps Apple was correct, and this is just a gimmick.
To be clear, that's two different people, my wife and I. We do file jointly though :-)
This however is so useful, it's almost worth it on its own.
Instead of thinking of it as a screen upgrade, think of it as a trackpad upgrade. The touchscreen on this Chromebook wasn't even that good, and I still really appreciate it having it. I'm sure one on a MacBook pro would be a really nice experience.
If I was into virtual desktops, I'd probably use it to swipe between them.
When using non-touchscreen laptops, my wife and I do often have the urge to touch the screens, so there is definitely some muscle memory built up from using touchscreen laptops.
Also in the case of the ThinkPad, lack of touch support lets it have a matte screen which I definitely wouldn’t trade away for the average glossy laptop screen — Apple’s glossy screens have decent antiglare but those from most other manufacturers are almost mirrors.
The last touchscreen laptop I had had a glitchy touchscreen as well, so all you can really do is swear at Alexa (just kidding, I've never tried to use it.) Of course, if you put Linux on it then work in a terminal, all your problems are solved.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16745998 (16 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20624576 (216 comments)
Edit:
I also find that the keyboards are often neglected in 'touch screen laptops'
Avoid random Chinese Celeron based 2in1 and you should be fine.
Asus, windows 7 and 10.
Laptop is 7 years old.
My biggest surprise is how often I use the touch screen. I'm typically a mouse and keyboard guy, but when I'm on an airplane it's sooo easy to tap.
Didn't know Apple doesn't offer touch screens, kind of shocked given how Essential they are to me.
The downside is that it’s not as feature packed because they’re literally reinventing a new computer UI from the ground up. The iPad really is a paradigm shift. MacOS has been around for 40 years. IPadOS only 10. It takes time.
I could develop software on it, but Apple won't let me run arbitrary code on it, even in a sandbox. I get why, and I really appreciate that for everything else I would use it for, but even getting a Linux container running similar to ChromeOS would be something.
It's a surprisingly pleasant experience with the magic keyboard.
Apart from purely political/commercial reasons, I don't see why.
Sandbox and App Store are mutually exclusive reasons for this situation.
Option A: you have good security architecture, so running arbitrary code is safe because all the data is well-isolated and programs cannot mess with each other's data. There is no need to have humans reviewing apps, apart from optional parental controls that people may opt into.
Option B: you don't have good security, so you need to micro-manage app publication and have ability to revoke them, in case an exploit is discovered.
Also, for a development machine, when you run arbitrary 3rd party open source dependencies, build scripts etc, you really want iPad-like security model where each project lives in its own sandbox. But the Unix permission system is an unusable mess, so even if you put your project in a container, your build script can still push to git repo and do other fun stuff outside build folder.
A sandbox can not protect against things like user tracking or crypto mining and can give no guarantees about what an app is going to do with the private data you are entrusting to it.
* I can't send a picture from Android to iPad OS when I don't have internet: iPad can't receive images over Bluetooth.
* I can't send videos from my Windows10 to the iPad with a simple USB cable without installing iTunes or some other bloated software that I don't (or shouldn't) need. I am not sure how to easily send +100GBs of video otherwise (suggestions appreciated).
It is so sad that this hostile lack of features are an intended thing for such an expensive and "advanced" device, and that my only hope is that EU will threaten with some anti-competitive fine for Apple to do the sane things that would benefit consumers.
If you want that kind of experience, get an Android tablet. Or a Surface tablet. You can, because there is competition.
However, similar to how EU started requiring all smartphones to have the same connector, I would be nice if all smartphones / tables / "generic media devices" were required to support simple file transfer via cable with major OS, without requiring additional vendor specific software.
It's possible that I'm unaware of technical aspects of storage systems today that would make this impossible, but I'd be happy to learn more about this.
I also was completely unaware that iPad didn't allow for such simple file transfers when I bought it, nor the Bluetooth limitation. I don't know up to which point is the user expected to verify basic features that have been widely available for decades before buying a product because the vendor decided not to add it.
There’s an app for that ;)
> I can't send videos from my Windows10 to the iPad with a simple USB cable without installing iTunes or some other bloated software
There’s simple apps for that too ;)
In the same amount of time it took you type up this comment you could’ve found solutions using your favorite search engine.
Here’s a “free” search term to try:
‘copying videos to ipad without itunes’
My specific case was that I didn't have access to internet at that moment, but I hoped that I could transfer with Bluetooth just like I did many years ago with simpler devices.
> In the same amount of time it took you type up this comment you could’ve found solutions using your favorite search engine.
>Here’s a “free” search term to try:
>‘copying videos to ipad without itunes’
I remember trying and not finding anything meaningful. I will for sure try again if you're saying there are ways, but just telling me to search online instead of giving some solution brings me back to the same starting point that I was the first time I tried.
Christ. We were sharing images over Bluetooth between mobile phones when I was a teenager in about 2005.
That’s why people share their pictures on WhatsApp, Snapchat or whatever.
Apple isn’t going to implement a service if the experience sucks, they’ll implement an alternative that doesn’t suck. Sometimes it’s limited to their ecosystem and sometimes it isn’t. If you don’t like it, use one of the alternatives.
But you’re still using applications with tiny touch targets. Plus all the parts of Windows that don’t even work with the on screen keyboard. Try typing a password in the privilege elevation prompt for a laugh.
People with Windows tablets use them with a separate keyboard and mouse in the cover, and then they use the touch screen to draw on pdfs.