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Smeaton1724

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2011
836
806
Leeds, UK
There's been a lot of rumours regarding the future of the MBP and MBA lines. There has never been a time where the product lines were so similar, leading to some coming up to a logical conclusion of products converging.

I see it that Apple 'could' go another route - keeping the MBA and MBP lines. Give the MBA retina and add touch to the MBP.

Think of it like this:
11 and 13 MBA with retina - £100 cheaper for the base model. No touch.
13 MBP, with Touch.
15 MBP discrete GPU, with Touch.

It would allow developers native testing of apps on the MBP, providing a massive 'pro' feature.

This would lead to full iOS apps to be run on OS 11.0 by 2015.

Probably a crackpot thought but anyone else remotely agree this may be possible?
 

pgiguere1

macrumors 68020
May 28, 2009
2,167
1,200
Montreal, Canada
Only a fraction of Mac users are iOS developers, and most of them already have at least one iOS device to test their app (which is better than using emulation anyway).

Apple doesn't believe in touch on a laptop. Steve Jobs said it and Tim Cook reiterated it again.

tch.jpg

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technol...ws-8-converging-a-toaster-and-a-refrigerator/

All useful gestures that could be made on the screen can also be made on the trackpad. That way it's more comfortable (horizontal), closer to your regular input, doesn't put grease on your screen and avoid the usability mess of having two redundant input methods.

The only things I can think of that couldn't be done on the trackpad are stuff like games or drawing. Both of those would be terrible to do on a vertical surface anyway, and Apple would rather you buy an iPad for that kind of stuff.

If Apple wanted touch on Macs they've had done it already years ago.
 
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r2shyyou

macrumors 68000
Oct 3, 2010
1,758
13
Paris, France
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I remotely agree that this may be possible. :p

Seriously though, it sounds plausible and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had this in prototype/testing even right now. However, they likely have lots of stuff that they prototype that we never see or even hear about so whether or not something like this ends up on store shelves is a different story and is impossible to say right now, at least for me. But I'd agree that there's at least a small likelihood that this could happen.
 

Arpetee

macrumors newbie
Feb 10, 2013
21
0
I think a touchscreen would be great. I know many people on here poo-poo the idea because Windows machines now have it so its automatically a bad idea, but I would get a decent amount of use out of it. When the laptop is on my lap, its awkward to reach the trackpad, and when I am laying in bed with my laptop on my chest I would love to be able to touch just the screen to navigate. Hugely important? No. Would I use it? At times, certainly. I think it will happen at some point. Wouldn't be the first time Apple did something they said they wouldn't.
 

jclardy

macrumors 601
Oct 6, 2008
4,138
4,319
I wouldn't mind it, as an iOS developer. As long as they put a nice screen coating to prevent fingerprints...my current retina 13" is a fingerprint magnet and I never touch the screen. I guess it is just accidental touches when opening/closing the lid.

Yes, you can do pretty much all touch gestures on the trackpad - but the trackpad is still an abstraction from directly interacting with your content on screen (Your movements are translated into mouse cursor movements.)

The big problem though would be button sizes - I run my 13" at 1680x1050...so all system/application buttons are incredibly small - way too small to accurately touch at an arms length.
 

karpich1

macrumors regular
Dec 18, 2007
170
0
Touch Screens have their uses

If demoing something to a colleague, it would sometimes be nice to show something by clicking on the screen with your finger.

Likewise, it might make certain things a little easier (IMO) to develop iPhone apps directly on the MacBook Pro and touch that screen instead of loading it onto the iPhone and testing there.


Some of my friends think that "liking a touch screen" means that "I'd rather use a touch screen 8+ hours a day instead of a mouse / trackpad." But, no. That's silly. It would strain your arm too much.

But it has its uses.

But, while I like it enough that I would mind having one... I don't know if I like it enough that I'd want Apple to incorporate it.
 

Stetrain

macrumors 68040
Feb 6, 2009
3,550
20
If Apple wanted to do something like this for developers, I would see it being a stand-alone display product.

Imagine a future retina cinema display with a touch screen that could bend down to more of an easel angle on your desk. If they partnered with Wacom to provide pressure pen functionality it would also be useful for Photoshop work etc.

I've played with a lot of Windows 8 devices and the only ones that I see as truly being useful to have a touchscreen on are the ones that are primarily tablets (ie Surface) and the ones that are laptops with a true swivel hinge (Thinkpad Twist).

It's also pretty clear that OSX is not finger-touch friendly nor is it moving in that direction. Menus, window controls, textboxes, toolbar buttons, etc. are all way too small to be used with your finger.

Adding touch screens to any Macs that are remotely consumer-oriented would give a false expectation of how usable they would be with touch and I think would cause a lot of frustration for customers.

The only thing that they could do right now would be to do a dual-mode OS like Windows 8 where you can switch to a full screen view that runs iPad apps. With the reception that Windows 8 is getting I don't see that happening for a while.
 
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