Apple Execs Talk M1 Chip, Touchscreen Macs and More in New Interview

[boss.king]

I couldn't work anymore as I had no mouse or keyboard with me on my trip. Are you telling me I should travel with my keyboard and mouse too? Kinda defeats the purpose of a touchscreen device...

A touchscreen laptop would have a trackpad and keyboard built in, why would you have to bring extras?

Can't ignore a touchscreen if Apple decides to make it mandatory (for developers to implement and for users to buy). Unless it's optional in which case you can't ignore the complexity of choosing what Mac and Mac apps to buy. Can easily ignore touchbar.

Sure you can. Your trackpad and keyboard and voice commands aren't going away, all you have to do is not touch the screen. Is that really so hard to figure out? MacOS is surprisingly good when it comes to full useability from any input method.

It's not as simple as increasing the thickness to accommodate the touch layer. Likely there will be a thicker glass so that your finger doesn't easily distort the display. There's the weight of both the touch layer and thicker glass. There's the repairability/warranty (another point of failure in the product). There's the cost. There's adjustments to the hinge to make it either tighter for vertical touch use or to make it loose for 360 degree movement (which changes the design). And on and on...

No, the screen is fine. Go on, reach up and tap it, nothing happens. No warping or colour weirdness. They could choose reinforce it if they wanted to, but if anything I'd think the hinge would be where they might actually need to focus their efforts. Butt again, this is largely a solved problem.

Like I said, the iPad mouse support is janky. I tried swiping on things in the ESPN app with a trackpad and it wouldn't work. Imagine if half the apps on the Mac App Store didn't work with touch even though you bought a touch Mac. What a bad user experience.

Let's see...the big NO shown on stage, quote from the interview: " ‘Oh my God, look, Apple is preparing for touch’. I was thinking like, ‘Whoa, why?’", many more mentions of not bringing iPad or touch to the Mac, yet you're telling me I'm ignoring obvious signs? JFC, please take a look at what you're saying here.

It's literally 90% of the way there already. You can Hackintosh it onto a touch-enabled laptop right now and it mostly works.

But yeah, they said no to merging the two operating systems (not to touch on Macs) so that's definitive I guess. Lol.

Yeah sounds like we're done here. Congrats.

Thanks, I knew you'd come around eventually.

 

[amartinez1660]

Interesting, does Big Sur stiill offer Boot Camp compatibility with Intel Macs? Maybe they removed the Boot Camp even from Intel Macs. We will find it soon.

As for M1 chip, I'm impressed so far. Imagine 4 or 6 such chips in future 16-inch MBP (32 ot 48 cores! Which will altogether consume just 40-60W like current Intel chips in MBPs).

And that’s how it could get 16GBx4 (64GB) to 16GBx6 (96GB) of unified memory. Except that it wouldn’t be unified anymore... I think that herein lies one of the limitations, part of why it works is that it’s all craftily tied together.

I’m no expert and probably Apple has some magic up their sleeves (the whole anandtech article related to this is just a lot of them saying how crazy the gap is architecture wise between Apple chips and competing products), but it looks like just sandwiching chips together might not cut it as for example one chip wouldn’t have “direct” access to memory of another one and would beat the purpose of the architecture.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Until Apple requires Mac apps to be optimized for touch, a touchscreen Mac will not exist. It's that simple, folks.

And based on Apple's stance on the merging of the two OSes (iPadOS and macOS), this is NEVER going to happen.

Bringing iPadOS Apps to the Mac is as far as they'll go because an app designed for touch is already functional in a more precise, cursor-based OS.

Apple is (and has been since the creation of iOS) saying "no" to doing the "other-direction" work of bringing Mac apps to the iPad/iPhone.

Microsoft DOESN"T CARE about this separation. And the user experience shows this (personally, I hate using touch on Windows).

 

[thingstoponder]

I know, right. Imagine if they had made some sort of disgusting keyboard and trackpad case that essentially turned their tablet into a touchscreen laptop. There's nothing worse than versatility and options when it comes to computing if you ask me, each device should stick to doing one thing and we should all have to buy a bunch of devices and piece them together to get the functionality we want.

There’s a huge difference between a true convertible and a touchscreen laptop. iPad keyboard is completely optional and doesn’t make the tablet experience worse in any way.

 

[boss.king]

There’s a huge difference between a true convertible and a touchscreen laptop. iPad keyboard is completely optional and doesn’t make the tablet experience worse in any way.

And using the touchscreen would be optional too. Like I’ve said a dozen times now, you wouldn’t be forced to use it, but it would be great to have in certain situations.

 

[kumar muthaiah]

There will be no touch screen Mac's using macOS! Now Apple taken over CPU, GPU and memory! macOS will be retired later on! The iPadOS will mature into a desktop class OS with all applications in macOS moving to iPadOS (universal applications)! You already seeing hardware keyboard, mouse and trackpad moving to iPadOS! Something missing in iPad hardware like ethernet network, etc.,. Some things are missing in iPadOS like third party applications support, multiple user, time machine backup, advanced file management, encrypted ssd, etc.,! Later will be added to iPad OS and its hardware! Following are possible: 1) Two or more iPhone connected magnetically to get a touchscreen tablet 2) Two or more iPad connected magnetically to get a touch screen laptop or desktop 3) A wall mountable or custom size touch screen connected to a iDesktopOS/iServerOS (extended version of iPadOS) pro system (wired or wireless) will server as future pro desktop PC or custom PC 4) One or more custom size touch screen connected to a CarOS (extended version of iPadOS or new OS with iPad OS features) system 5) A Robot (normal, micro and nano) with RobotOS (extended version of iPadOS or new OS with iPad OS features) designed by apple or Robot SDK's provided by robot vendors. No more memory limitation for robots! 6) Similarly, Reality OS for AR/VR 7) HealthOS for health industry. 8) IoT OS for IoT industry! All phone, tablet, watch, health device, fitness device, desktop, car, robot, spectacle, HMD, IoT will be using single universal application or separate application but same API! Apple will take over other hardwares and softwares! This world be full of apple products and no more competitors, but only cooperation! No more money! Due to money and no cooperation we have competitors like Google, Samsung, etc., People need a humanly product and Apple leads in it!

 

[StellarVixen]

if they do not wish to bring touch input to Mac OS, then Big Sur UI is the biggest waste of space that I have ever seen on desktop OS.

 

[kumar muthaiah]

if they do not wish to bring touch input to Mac OS, then Big Sur UI is the biggest waste of space that I have ever seen on desktop OS.

The extra spaces i feel just to spread the touch screen rumours for a while or just for ease of use! Apple's future os is a touch screen OS (iPadOS or iOS or whatever)! The macOS is too much dependent on mouse and trackpad like devices!

 

[Megahump6000]

Why not have a touch screen, but allow the user to disable it?

Because it’s an ergonomic nightmare and adds cost to the product for no benefit.

 

[Tech198]

Gotta like it when Apple "overshoots"

In fact, that's the ONLY area they have not explored yet "Touchscreen Macs' I guess there's some truth in that..

WHy would you wanna carry a big (but light-ish) arund, when an iPad/iPhone is thinner? Most would probably just ant touchsceen Mac's because iPad's have it. or Microsoft does, so the trasition would be "I want it here" as well.