Now, it isn’t surprising in the least that Apple’s senior management would have positive feelings about touchscreens, which were absolutely fundamental to the appeal and success of the iPhone (and later the iPad and Apple Watch) and are thus largely responsible for the company’s current wealth. But touchscreens are not the answer to every problem. They don’t work in every context.
Nobody suggests Apple should put a tiny touchscreen on the stem of your AirPods for the obvious reason that you wouldn’t be able to see it. Nobody thinks the Apple TV needs a touchscreen, or the HomePod a touchscreen that does anything more than turn it on and change the volume, because in both cases you’d have to get up and go over to the thing; far better to control it from your seat via a dedicated remote and your voice, respectively. But the MacBook, whose unsuitability for a touchscreen seems just as obvious to me, is in line to get one against all logic and reason.
The touchscreen on the iPhone works because you’re holding it. The device is held in a comfortable position for one hand, which (unless you have mismatched arms like the bodybuilder in The Lady In The Water) automatically means it’s at a level and angle where it’s comfortable for the other arm to touch and interact with the screen. But the MacBook, with a few rare exceptions, is supported by either a desk or the user’s lap, which also supports your wrists while your hands use the keyboard and trackpad. Reaching up to touch the screen is an extra effort, tiring after virtually any time at all (just try it) and completely alien to the way laptops are used. I just don’t get the appeal at all.
And that’s just the physical, ergonomic side. There’s also the software aspect to consider: the way apps and the operating system would need to be reappraised for touch compatibility. Icons that are big enough to click are not necessarily big enough to tap, while design best practices for menus and buttons are drastically different in touch and non-touch contexts. Apple has up to now resisted the urge to combine macOS and iPadOS for good reason, which is that the two need to be different because they serve different needs. But if the MacBook gains a touchscreen display, macOS alone would need to serve both types of user interaction, which is a huge and unnecessary headache for the UX team, and likely users.
Ultimately, there are only two contexts in which a touchscreen MacBook makes any sense at all. One, proposed by my colleague Michael Simon in last week’s podcast, is that the product isn’t really a MacBook at all, but rather another new form factor for Apple: a laptop/tablet convertible. You’d only use the touchscreen when the keyboard is detached (or folded behind the screen), and it’s acting as a tablet; when it’s behaving as a laptop you’d revert to keyboard and trackpad. That could work, but I’m not convinced there’s a huge appetite for a touchscreen tablet with an optional keyboard when the iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard already exist and don’t exactly sell in earth-shattering quantities.
The other way it could work is to have touchscreen controls be 100 percent optional. Just build it as a normal MacBook that works exactly the way other MacBooks do, except that if you ever get the urge to touch the screen, like a confused toddler, then you can. Every now and then you’ll find a situation where the touchscreen option is better. Entering a digital signature, say, or selecting all the boxes containing a motorbike on a CAPTCHA test. The rest of the time, that entire facility may as well not be there.
