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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
Unrelated: I find it amusing that the screen they showcase looks like a very broken display panel.
- 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.
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.
I might change my mind on this later but right now I'm having a hard time seeing it any other way.
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 definitely think that a distinct mode is needed though, the inverse of attaching a keyboard to an iPad to make it more desktop-y.
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.
Yes! Thank you. Maybe marketing is trying to normalize that appearance after the Duo-bacle.
An agentic OS, that you can speak to a majority of the time to get stuff done, also seems like an interesting direction
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.
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 really don't understand who they think is going to buy this.
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.
If you don’t like it don’t use it - you’re likely not the target audience.
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.
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.
Useless feature for laptops unless it’s a flip around convertible or something.
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.
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 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.
We have, by accident, rediscovered the touch feature multiple times because every time we stop using it and forget it’s there.
Also, what on earth is that wallpaper?
That's about as good a sign as we'll get that it'll be a smashing success.
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.
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