Get Ready for Touch on Mac | Hacker News Reader

Get Ready for Touch on Mac

developer.apple.com

33 pointsnojs75 comments

I can't think of a feature I care less about on a laptop. I have owned several laptops with touchscreens, and literally the only thing it's ever done is misclick something when I inadvertently touched my screen. I have a tablet and a phone if I want to tap a screen.

Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.

Anecdotally I think the launch submissions have been a lot less popular for this device than normal:

- it did top the Mac subreddit (700 upvotes) but ranks as the 12th-most popular post in the last month

- it didn't top HN (491 upvotes)

- it didn't top Reddit's main Apple subreddit (1000-1200 upvotes)

I might be remembering wrong but I think this kind of news usually gets thousands of upvotes.

> I can't think of a feature I care less about on a laptop

This is how I feel too, but at 49, a Mac user since we bought our 128k, I'm no longer certain I am the market - fairly sure I am not. I have two kids, 10 and 7, and we've had a handful of cheap Chromebook laptops, some with touch and some without, and I can say that my kids always prefer the ones with. I don't get it, objectively it doesn't make sense to me, but it does to them. They would absolutely prefer a touchscreen, even in laptop form factor.

Kids preferring the touch screen seems more and more like letting kids in a typing class continue to hunt and peck rather than go through the work to learn a method that is faster and will ultimately benefit them by making their life easier.

I might change my mind on this later but right now I'm having a hard time seeing it any other way.

I think it comes from early exposure to phones and tablets and getting used to it. My 2 year old tried to swipe on my computer screen.

And I agree, watching kids swipe feels, to me, like passive consumer induced computer illiteracy.

As long as you can’t fundamentally reprogram the device with your input method, you are at the mercy of other people. (And yeah, sometimes a keyboard is not enough, either.)

I feel like that might be due to the fact that it is not a Pro/Max model and that they are skipping on to M7 next year.

It is a Pro/Max model.

Oh that is hilarious. I had assumed this was the M6 which they are skipping Pro/Max on. It's just an M5...

My 2018 (maybe 2017?) 13" 2-in-1 HP Spectre x360 was one of the nicest pieces of hardware I've ever owned (albeit not that powerful by today's standards), it's just a shame that Windows was so inadequately designed to support the hardware.

I definitely think that a distinct mode is needed though, the inverse of attaching a keyboard to an iPad to make it more desktop-y.

The surface book had what you mention, it's a laptop with a detachable keyboard, and it can be attached to the keyboard in normal laptop orientation or reversed just like a tablet on a stand. Can be used as a standalone tablet with pen/touch input, or a normal laptop.

Pretty great device, it's unfortunate Microsoft discontinued it.

I never had such a laptop but I'm very curious to see how this can work in practice. I really don't see what could be done on efficiently on the screen. In regular computer use, my wrists lay on the computer or desk and move very little. On the other hand, lifting the arm requires some non-negligible effort and break the flow.

I've been using touchscreen laptops for more than a decade now. It's been really useful when working on mobile stuff and occasionally handy in some games or when sketching something, but other than that - it just stays unused.

I agree with you 100%, however I think this will be a game changer in productivity for device testing (ipad/iphone etc and all different screen sizes) no longer need to do device testing till the last step for touch based features. other than that its not great imo.

Agreed, I love pen-supported laptops - but I'm told the mac won't support the apple pencil :(

Who uses finger touch on a laptop? I've never actually seen people use it in the wild so I'm just confused where the demand comes from.

> Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.

Yes! Thank you. Maybe marketing is trying to normalize that appearance after the Duo-bacle.

What was the duo-bacle?

iPhone duo screens cracking

It took me fifteen minutes to figure out that the screen reads "PRO". At first I thought it was PBN and couldn't make head or tail of it.

I didn’t even see letters until reading your comment…

It feels like Apples out of ideas, they should lean more into Vision Pro than a Mac with a touch screen or iPhone Duo.

An agentic OS, that you can speak to a majority of the time to get stuff done, also seems like an interesting direction

Lots of comments saying the target audience for this is kids and very casual "Insta and Email" users. But they're not releasing it on the Neo or Air. This is, for now, the "proLED" model only. The base model is $2800 and if you max out the options it goes up to $14,000 (though $7,000 of that is storage).

I really don't understand who they think is going to buy this.

This is not for me, since I agree with Steve Jobs’s take that it will be painful to use a touchscreen laptop. But I do see it being useful for the touchscreen generation and for artists. The first thing I do on my company provided Windows laptop is to open Device Manager and disable the touchscreen because I don’t want to deal with accidental touch inputs.

Controversial and snarky take:

I think macOS is going to transform more and more into iOS, and not in a good way…losing all the advantages of a keyboard and mouse driven interface. The lowest common denominator with lesser Apple developer effort will win over.

The work on this machine also possibly explains why Apple has not spent any time improving its own Catalyst apps like Reminders, Notes and others on the Mac. These apps ported from iOS do not understand keyboard navigation and rely heavily on the trackpad or mouse. With the introduction of this machine, Apple has no (financial) reason to improve these apps anymore.

A detachable switching to iPadOS would have been a lot better for artists I think (I produce music and draw and own iPads), but Apple wants to sell you on iPads AND Macs plus their iCloud syncing service so they won't do that and merge it into one device.

I also think both Touch and the new Duo phone size are vehicles to lock in devs into native frameworks and make native development more exclusive.

The M-series Macbooks have been some of the best machines I've ever used. Why do they seem so intent on ruining that streak?

My popcorn is out in amusement watching all the insulated macOS users’ world come crashing down now that Apple suddenly discovered touch screens on laptops.

Windows has had this in competent form since Windows 10, a full decade ago. It’s fine. It works great. You can even turn it off.

Arguably some Linux desktop environments are even better than Windows for touch screen use.

This phenomenon seems to happen a lot when Apple avoids common technology for a painfully long time.

I don't necessarily need macOS, though I do prefer it to just about everything else when it comes to getting work done. That said, I have plenty of experience with Linux and can easily go back without much friction if needed.

As long as they keep making desktop workstations, perhaps that's where macOS will fit into my stack in the future, if they haven't tanked the OS by then as well.

Even longer than that. I had been doing work with touchscreen oriented interfaces on Windows XP. But officially with Windows 8's Metro UI, touch was the whole point.

Better screens. Significantly lighter weight. Same performance. Same battery life. Same keyboard feel. In what way are you worried about these "ruining" the streak?

Can't believe Apple has finally invented touchscreens on laptops.

Right. Can’t wait to see what all their competitors do to catch up.

My wife has the first gen Microsoft Surface laptop.

We have, by accident, rediscovered the touch feature multiple times because every time we stop using it and forget it’s there.

I can barely stand getting my hands off the keyboard to grab the mouse - lifting them off the keyboard to touch the screen is not something I’d ever use

In fact, I do everything I can to avoid having to move my hands off the keyboard - I have a stream deck that touches my keyboard so that I can quickly press a button with my hand barely moving for “advanced” shortcuts that I don’t feel like contorting my hand for, on top of all the usual shortcuts

I wish they’d devote resources to figuring out a better keyboard experience vs this also ran feature that I know for a fact almost no one uses

I enjoy building apps for macOS in my spare time. Most recently, a little one-off app for making macOS (mostly) usable without reaching for the mouse or trackpad (keyboard-driven).

I am no macOS expert, but I already have a handful of questions about how touch input is going to work.

How will hiding/showing hidden menu bars and docks work? What about all the various UI elements that display based on conditionally hovering the mouse? How does one move a window from one space to another via touch input -- hot corners, I guess?

Needless to say, I doubt I am the target audience for this device.

One question is how do you get to the context menu with touch. Tap and hold?

Nothing I love more than fingerprints on a laptop screen.

Useless feature for laptops unless it’s a flip around convertible or something.

Every MacBook Pro I've owned in the last decade ends up with a keyboard-shaped outline of finger oils on the screen from the lack of clearance between the screen and keyboard when closed, so I guess they're just leaning into that now.

Even if you don’t use it, there’s literally no downside to having it. The touch hardware costs basically noting to add to an existing panel.

There are literal downsides: - Higher cost - More complexity/things to break - Apple fucking up the UI to accommodate a feature you’ll never use

The cost is just literally not higher in any significant way and the complexity is also not higher in any significant way. Framework even lets you install their new touch screen part on any of their old non-touch screen mainboards with the same connector. It’s just a drop-in replacement even with old hardware that never had a touch screen.

Doesn’t the $450 iPad debunk that idea completely? Or the $230 Apple Watch? Or the $699 iPhone 17e? The cheapest computers Apple sells have a touch screen.

A computer that survives being banged around on your wrist and swimming underwater has a touchscreen.

Fucking up the UI is not an inevitability. KDE didn’t fuck up the UI, works great on my touch screen. Windows 11 for all its faults handles touch screens very well, as well as non-touch environments.

I see your points and your various comments on this topic.

But I must ask; are you a regular user of macOS? Do you depend on Macs daily? Are you actually invested in that platform as a developer or user?

I use a macOS for work daily. My last laptop was an M2 MacBook Pro and I’ve now moved over to Linux on Framework 13 then the 13 Pro when that came out.

I switched because didn’t like Liquid Glass, I didn’t like the Photos app redesign for macOS 26, and I liked what Framework was doing. I also wanted more storage and of course that means I was going laptop shopping with the soldered storage of the Mac.

Now I’d say Apple fixed most of their sins for those pain points but I still like Linux better and really like being able to play more games on Steam.

My desktop was a Windows 11 gaming system, and I switched that to Linux due to GPU issues with my AMD card that Linux solved.

My overarching feeling is that all 3 operating systems are relatively competent and that I think none of this touch screen issue is a big deal. macOS isn’t going to go to shit just because it has a touch screen.

I’ve really ended up on Linux because Linux is so good now, not because macOS or Windows are intolerably bad.

Agree 100%. I used the touchscreen when I had a Surface Book when working at microsoft but the touchscreen on the Surface laptop is useless

I'm so confused why they didn't make this a 2-in-1. I would love to see an Apple iteration on a Surface Book or Yoga.

I seem to be the only person here who’s glad to see it. I use the touchscreen on my windows machine frequently to scroll, zoom, and freehand draw. When you’re just browsing content it makes it very simple to move around.

If you don’t like it don’t use it - you’re likely not the target audience.

Does your Windows device fold, or do you actually reach up across the keyboard to touch the screen? If these things folded into a tablet mode I might consider it, but stretching your arm out across the desk and keyboard at an awkward angle seems like it would get uncomfortable pretty quickly.

If I'm using my laptop at my desk the lid is always closed. The only time I have access to the touchscreen is when it's portable, which means it's right in front of me on the desk and reaching it is trivial.

I think the thing for me is that Mac trackpads have always been so good and so far ahead of those in the Win/PC space that I’ve never wanted for a touch screen for the types of interactions you’re describing (aside from freehand drawing).

I'm waiting for the touchscreen to catch up to Wacom and include a stylus + high pressure sensitivity.

Explains why the UX got shittier over the past 1.5 years.

I got a touchscreen laptop in 2013 or 2014. It was cool for a couple days, then just annoying when I accidentally clicked on stuff. My new work laptop has a touchscreen and I occasionally use it to scroll. I mostly forget about the touch feature until I'm showing a colleague something and they accidentally click it. Kind of surprising how many people touch laptop screens

Touch on Mac OS is pretty cool news. It's not that useful in the current form factor, but hopefuly iPads running MacOS is next on the list of their products (i.e. basically an Apple version of Surface Pro).

On a side note, I hope this makes Linux distros follow suit with good touchscreen support. On a lot of them Firefox webpages don't even scroll properly on first install.

I only watched like five minutes of the first video, and I already found it weird for a touch interface to do tap to select and double tap to open. It also seems perfectly natural that single click selects and double click opens. I wonder if I will eventually get used to this, or this is just another way Apple is shoehorning touch on the Mac.

This is how it works with voice over on ios devices, and it’s pretty natural after you use it for awhile.

But VoiceOver is a niche accessibility feature. This just confuses people who switch between the macOS touchscreen and the iOS touchscreen.

That's true. Usually apple is more consistent with UX. I wonder what advantages they saw to voice over touch style of interaction.

This was 16 years overdue.

Steve Jobs going on that weird unhinged rant about touch being "unergonomic" in 2010 when introducing the revamped Macbook Air was one the most misguided speeches I've ever seen.

Touch on computers (laptops, namely), is a net good. I loved my Surface, and will love it on a Macbook.

Absolute banger as an X-mass gift to yourself. I'm applying for a loan to afford it.

My mother 66 never got comfortable with using computers but loves her iPad.

She reaches out to touch my MacBook display every so often when I show her stuff.

This is the lowest common denominator that Apple is designing for lately.

That targeting would make sense if it were a cheaper consumer-focused device like the Neo or Air. Leading with the $2,800 high-end device makes it seem more like they're hoping professionals will make use of it. I'm not sure how well that'll pan out.

Have the three videos been modified by AI? They (esp. the second one) look like having voice-overs with lip-sync. Feel very unnatural.

Get ready for MacOS to turn into iOS ...

i'm a fan of the macbook pro line but this seems really stupid, at least as dumb as the touchbar

I personally hate touch and can't see myself using it. At the same time, my daughter who is used to Chromebooks, keeps touching the screen on my Macbook. Maybe the target audience is different here.

This is really what it's about. At this point it's awkward for the people who are used to every screen they have reacting to touch for MacBooks to be the only ones that don't, so Apple felt like they had to add it.

That was my thought, too. If I ever get one myself, I’m likely to forget about the touch feature and just keep using the trackpad and keyboard.

But whenever my adult daughter shows my six-year-old grandson something on her Macbook, he immediately tries touching the screen and is confused when it doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have any devices of his own yet, so his defaulting to touch is the result of very occasionally being allowed to use an adult’s smartphone or tablet.

Plot twist: Apple will regret this decision and fully remove in a year.

Is this why UI elements have gotten bigger and rounder?

Hope they add the option to turn it off.

Well, this should be interesting...

Oof.

Also, what on earth is that wallpaper?

I know, right? Anyone who's ever had a cracked display will instantly associate that look with being broken.

Even without a cracked screen experience, that was my first impression - broken out of the box. I don't think HN is the target market for these devices though.

It says PRO

Yeah, no. I’m not jumping through any hoops to make my apps work on anything I don’t need to until Apple starts treating developers like people.

Hacker News hates this - myself included.

That's about as good a sign as we'll get that it'll be a smashing success.

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