With there being so many touchscreen laptops and desktops out there today, safe to say many surprised that Apple chose to go with something of an in-between with the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pros. So does that mean we’ll never see a full touchscreen Mac computer? Probably not because according to Apple’s SVP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, it would be absurd.Speaking in an interview with Backchannel, he was quoted as saying, “We think of the whole platform. If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn’t be enough — then the desktop wouldn’t work that way. Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd.”
He goes on to say that it would be impossible to optimize for both touch and other input devices, like a mouse. Schiller said, “You can’t optimize for both. It’s the lowest common denominator thinking.” To a certain extent he is right because as you can tell, websites and apps designed for mobile tend to feature larger buttons for touch, whereas apps for desktops are designed to fill larger displays.
Perhaps one day someone could come up with a happy middle, but for now don’t expect Apple to embrace full touchscreen computers just yet. This isn’t the first time that the company has shot down the idea, so maybe don’t hold your breath just yet.
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