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Comment by themodelplumber | Hacker News Reader

My wife has a Dell touch screen that's running Ubuntu. Every time we're looking at memes or family photos together on some social platform, she reaches out to the screen and pinch-zooms and it just works. The utility is obvious. I just think, I can't believe this is possible.

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.

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I do the exact same pinch-zoom gesture with my touchpad, though. Without leaving oily fingerprints all over my screen.

Not sure how oily your fingerprints are or what the screen is like, but I don't think we have that problem here. Heck, I have to rub my nose for quite a while just to keep the trackball going :-) I do dislike the feeling of gestures on most trackpads though.

I live in a warm and humid region. Perhaps you live somewhere more cold or arid.

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.

> 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.

To be clear, that's two different people, my wife and I. We do file jointly though :-)

There is precisely one scenario in which I find a touchscreen useful: If I'm opening a long series of links, I'll hold control and rapidly touch them each in sequence. This is much, much faster than using a mouse, let alone a touchpad.

This however is so useful, it's almost worth it on its own.

That's only a problem if your laptop manufacturer chooses to ship a glossy display, god forbid.

When my daughters came home with Chromebooks provided by the school last year, I too was blown away when they had touch screen. Instant jealousy.

I like the idea of the nipple in the home row, but it always feels like too much work. Too much pressure etc. So I have resorted to the touchpad on the Thinkpad. But you could do pinch gestures on that, and it isn't too far away.

Perhaps joycon style keys on F and J?

I tend to prefer alt-scrollwheel myself. Not sure if that's available in Ubuntu though.

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.

Damn I'm missing a scroll wheel.

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.

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