No, you don't get it. She wants the keyboard, she wants a first class desktop experience, and she wants a touch screen.
Watching her work is... different. She mostly uses her laptop on her lap, on the couch, scrolling and "clicking" with touch... and when she needs to type something she slides it back slightly, and types. Almost never uses the track pad.
If I'd never used a laptop before I'd probably do the exact same thing as the kids!
and your observation is not at all universal. moving a vehicle is much easier via a mapping to a more abstract control, as opposed to controls resembling the effector. this abstract control also fits many vehicles. the same is true for all sorts of controls.
Keyboard and mouse don't give you any more autonomy over the application developers state machine.
I'm not sure I understand the claim of "being in control". The UX is different, sure, often. But that's not "control" over the design of the application.
On a touchscreen, I can tap. That's it. Select? Tap. Move? Tap. Highlight? Tap. The only one that makes sense is draging for moving, but even that's a pain in the butt because it often misinterprets the tap+hold duration that's necessary before it works. When I'm editing text (navigating, cut-n-paste, etc.), it gets what I want wrong more often than it gets it right, I mean like 80/20.
With the phone, they had a green field to design an entirely new UX for touch interfaces, so there's no legacy to blame.
Some people don't intuitively use trackpads so they'll use a mouse and if they discover touchscreens that becomes a feature that needs to come with any laptop after that.
It's pretty eye opening really. If it weren't for seeing someone close to me do it, I'd be in the same camp, wondering who in their right mind would use their laptop like that.