With this report, I no longer fear the touchscreen Mac

We know from Steve Jobs that Apple’s experiments with touchscreen Macs date back to at least 2008. At the time he said it was a “bad” idea.

A lot has changed since then, and reports that we’ll finally see a touchscreen Mac have grown in credibility to the point where it seems more likely than not. Until now I was a little worried about the idea, but the latest report gives me confidence…

Prototype touchscreen Macs ‘scary’

Steve said at the 2010 event that Apple has done tons of user testing over the years. The large number of years in 2010 means that the company has been experimenting with touchscreen Macs since at least 2008, and probably much earlier.

At the time he described it as a bad idea.

Turns out it doesn’t work. The touch points don’t want to be vertical. It gives a good demo, but after a short time you start to get tired, and after a long time your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically bad. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal.

But the iPad changed things

Of course, a lot has changed since 2010, especially the iPad from a touch device to something that can be used as a laptop.

When attached to a keyboard, people can choose between a trackpad and a touch interface, and it seems that most people prefer a combination of the two. I don’t use an iPad these days, but when I use it as a laptop, I find that I use the trackpad for most interactions, but touch to scroll.

My two steps

I said a few years ago that I had two criteria for being OK with a touchscreen Mac.

First, I didn’t want to pay a premium for a feature I would never use. Either Apple needs to offer a choice of touchscreen and non-touchscreen models, or find a way to make them more affordable than existing non-touchscreen models.

Second, and more importantly, I don’t want to see macOS compromised by the touchscreen.

Sure, if people want to do certain things on the Mac’s touchscreen, let them. But don’t, whatever you do, Apple, turn macOS into iPadOS. We also left our menus well put together; an almost equally sized dock option; our ability to position and size windows with pixel-level precision; and so on. It’s not the static, space-wasting UI that is iPadOS.

This was the reason why the idea scared me a little at the time: I wasn’t sure how much Apple would be willing to compromise in the name of touch support.

I’m not scared of the touch screen Mac anymore

The latest Bloomberg The report gives me hope that Apple seems to have got a solid job when it comes to supporting touch without making the UI features childish.

When users touch a button or control, the interface will display a new type of menu around their finger that provides the most appropriate options for touch commands. The software will also display the most relevant set of controls based on previous user interactions. And when one taps an item in the menu bar at the top of the screen, a set of controls will expand for easy finger selection.

That to me sounds like the default look of macOS will be the same as it is today – unless we even touch the screen. Only if we do so will the UI adapt to a user-friendly scale.

That way, I think it’s done well, I won’t have any complaints. What about you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo by Karen Grigorean on Unsplash