-Steve Jobs, 2010
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-touch-screen-mac-...
I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want to start clicking on my screen?
If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.
Scrolling/controlling checkboxes and switches feels GREAT. Depends entirely what you're using it for.
Apple has apparently being going to put a touchscreen in a laptop every year since the iPad came out, and it's never materialized.
It looks like those leaks aren't too far off what I'm saying. Deadlines slipping by 1-2 years isn't way off especially for such a new/different product direction. And the rumor also said "could" which means even internally, it wasn't a strong claim.
> Based on current internal deliberations, the company could launch its first touch-screen Mac in 2025
Even if it didn't come to pass, just a few years ago is a more relevant leak than the every-year-since-the-iPad-released "rumors."
Copy text in terminal
Mac: command+c
Linux/windows: ctrl+shift+c (unless you want to cripple proper ctrl+c functionality in which case you can (maybe) activate it from a UI menu)
The command key on Mac is somewhat magical and engages in all sorts of productivity and finger efficiency related context switching so that you can do more with less physical movement.
I’m genuinely curious who you think does it better
And then there's the bonkers window manager which can't move focus directionally (e.g. Super + left) and so you have to fall back to Cmd + tab tab tab tab but even then there's no consistency about whether you're switching between app instances or windows instances within the same app...
It’s actually more intuitive to use a magic keyboard on the iPad than on the desktop OS.
I've been using macs since the 90s so I'm quite used to it, so I'd love to know what I've been missing out on.
- Window navigation within (rather than between) open programs. Mainly if one is on an external monitor, this is just a nightmare and I end up using expose and clicking the window instead.
- Window positioning (I installed 3rd party software called Rectangle for this last year so it’s kind of solved but if we’re talking about the vanilla experience this is a big one)
- Having to switch focus to the dock and navigate one by one through shortcuts to open them instead of the Super+Dock position shortcuts that Windows and KDE expose
Command-` works for window switching as I expect, probably simply due to being used to it so I know exactly how It works.
Window positioning is an interesting one. I can't stand windows being positioned through tools, I stack them like you would with papers and shuffle through so the edge overlap is really important. Probably showing my age there!
And I never use the dock. Spotlight gets me everything I'd need from there.
The keyboard (physically) is also just very pleasant to type on.
(This also made me realize the impending obsolescence of the Studio Monitor XDR: no touch support.)
Use a Surface Pro some time. If you are just casually browsing or reading a website. I find it much nicer to just tap on a link or swipe to scroll.
You can try it on an iPad with Magic Keyboard attached, it's very good to be able to do precision through the trackpad and then casually move large things on the screen with your fingers.
Trackpad is nice for a device you can lay flat on a table or keep on one hand while sitting on the sofa, not too much when the device has a keyboard permanently attached to it and it cannot fold. I know I have a thinkpad like that and I never use the touchscreen.
Two keys rather than one, but makes up for it by not being way off in some oddball part of the keyboard. You can one-hand it pretty easily, since there's an "option" right next to the arrow keys.
However, like on Windows, I suspect macOS would increase the tap target size on lots of the touchable elements. Even if I don't use the touchscreen, I would still have to pay the touch target real estate tax in my applications.
> Filter for skin colors and binary threshold
Skin has an extremely broad range of colors that are also lighting dependent. I'd have gone with background subtraction.
I can also definitely see this kind of thing being used in things budget outdoor displays, specially if the UI is made to accommodate the lack of accuracy, and the camera is positioned on the side (since these displays are usually vertical).
This looks like a neat option for retrofitting, and I suspect it'd work for some non-screen glass applications too. A combined IR/visible light solution would be interesting too, since I suspect those are complimentary (IR touch has issues with radiant light, while this wouldn't; this would have issues with low/no light, while IR wouldn't).
But I did love my Toshiba Satellite. It was like writing on paper!
Down with capacitive screens and long live Active Digitizers!
Some brands offer coating you can DIY yourself (eg ProofTech OLEOPEL) but these seem mostly designed for phone screens. I don’t know whether they’d be as effective on laptop screens
I do carefully clean the nosepads with soapy water, however.
I then wonder how much recalibration I would have to do when one of them broke and I was poking directly at the screen.
At that time, I was quite interested in adversarial examples and ML security.
I'm not sure, but bare in mind that the iPad is almost as large of a market as the Mac at this point, and the iPhone has long surpassed Mac revenue. Touching your computer is a very popular sentiment among the grimy-handed public.