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Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

The touch screen is such a silly idea here. It even looks ridiculous in their own marketing photos. [1] The keyboard and track pad are already a great combo for getting things done.

I don't get why they're doing this other than making another step towards unifying iOS and macOS (and visionOS?).

[1] https://mastodon.social/@allenu/117519656286195439

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Here's the official launch video, where it looks silly to me, but I know very casual users who love their touchscreen laptops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZI5uUSdEo

Casual users should not be buying the most expensive MacBook Pro unless they have so much money that $3000 (or more) means little to them.

I think you'd be surprised how many people have a lot more money than you and me, and how they buy expensive things and never use them to their "full". Eg. people buy expensive cars and yet aren't racing drivers, and they also buy expensive computers and use them merely for browsing the web.

I could see it with tablet but reaching out to touch my laptop, or worse desktop, screen would get very tiring, very quickly.

I agree. The ergonomics of using a touch screen on a laptop screen aren't great. It only really works if you convert it to a tablet so that the screen is closer to you and angled up a bit for comfort, but it's no longer a laptop, so why bother?

I mean it seems like a good idea to me for mobile app development, being able to touchscreen the simulator.

That seems like a great use case for it.

How many Macbook Pro owners are mobile app developers though?

Not sure, but I bet most mobile app developers are MacBook users haha.

I mean it's a $400 up-charge over the same model without touchscreen. Not that unreasonable if you are a heavy app developer IMO.

They sell other equally capable MacBook pros if this isn’t your use case?

But without the new screen, which is genuinely impressive and a noticeable upgrade.

And nicer new screens cost more money!

You don’t have to touch it?

Conceivably there were considerable technical challenges in bringing touch functionality to market, an R&D cost that gets passed onto consumers. It's not like the touch screen is just being given to us for free.

My point is I'm not sure why everyone needs to pay the premium for a touchscreen in order to get the screen upgrade when touch functionality on a laptop screen is clearly a polarizing feature (judging from the comments on this thread alone) that a minority of consumers actually want or need.

This is not just a Mac-specific thing. On a lot (dare I say most?) Windows devices if you upgrade the screen (OLED, higher res, high refresh etc) it generally also comes along with touch whether you want it to or not.

There’s only so many levels of customization manufacturers are willing or able to offer.

Is it really that useful if you need to test on real hardware anyway?

It would be useful. You do need to test on real devices but the vast majority of dev time I run the apps in simulator.

Simulation is already great, and one can (and should) test their app on device.

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