IMO it's important to maintain a clear separation and not blur the line between desktops and tablets. Desktop UIs are dense, they're your tools to get your job done as efficiently as possible. You can position the mouse pointer quickly and with great precision, so there is no need for ample spacing between the controls.
It's okay when a professional tool has some learning curve to it, but after you're past that, it's a joy to use.
And no, desktop UI design shouldn't be informed by phones and tablets. When designing a desktop UI, you should pretend touchscreens were never invented.
That being said, I do know one person who has a Windows laptop with a touchscreen and does occasionally tap or scroll something on it. Myself, as someone who has never owned one of these, I maintain this clear separation between mobile and desktop in my head and have never had the thought of touching my laptop screen except to clean it.
The current trend in user interfaces is not to design for desktop but for mobile first, because that's where the large majority of users are.
Of course you have exceptions, when a company develops an application only for desktop for example or when a company can afford developing and maintaining many versions of one user interface.
Already today it's very fine to use a laptop with a touchscreen on most websites. And actually most of desktop apps are also possible to use while not always super nice. The screens are quite large so it's not that bad to hit a specific area.
I agree the mouse is a lot more precise when you are good with a mouse, but a mouse also needs more training than a touch screen to be used fast and accurately.
It will always be a market for old fashioned desktop apps, maybe Apple is going for it, perhaps some GNU/Linux folks too, but I think the industry is not targeting devices without touch interfaces.
If someone is making a desktop app, how could it possibly be mobile first? Even if you're using the cancer that is Electron, that design with a lot of whitespace is always deliberate.
I'm not saying that it's not fine to use a touchscreen laptop for something. I'm saying that no one uses them like that with any kind of seriousness because it's awkward and physically inconvenient to poke your fingers into a vertical surface in front of you for any extended period of time. There are laptops capable of folding such that the screen faces outward, but these are as rare as they were 8 years ago, so this has never caught on either.
> I'm saying that no one uses them like that with any kind of seriousness because it's awkward and physically inconvenient to poke your fingers into a vertical surface in front of you for any extended period of time.
I think users of Windows laptops have embraced touchscreens in spite of these downsides, because a touchscreen is still less bad than the touchpads on those laptops. But Apple doesn't have the problem of bad touchpads, so they have no reason to compensate with touchscreens.
I have no problem with the touchpad on my XPS, but I find the touchscreen quite useful.
* Have to log kid into Teams classroom in the morning: pick up laptop, tap calendar, tap meeting, tap join, done. Much quicker than dragging a pointer around everywhere.
* Cooking dinner, greasy fingertips, want to skip songs: tap Skip with my knuckle.
* Looking at pictures, maps, reading a website, etc with family or looking through numbers with coworker: quicker and more engaging to zoom in on something with a touchscreen than a touchpad.
* Perusing Netflix at night, I find it nicer to keep my laptop in my lap and swipe though things.
There's no awkward "gorilla arm" thing involved: you pull the laptop in closer for a bit and your elbows stay on the table. When you're done you move back.
I mean, it's not a game changer, not something I use more than a couple times a day, short durations each, but there's lots of times when it's super convenient to have a laptop with a touchscreen. I think Apple really missed the ball on this one, and continues to do so.
None of your points seem at all convincing to me. It's like you haven't used a good touchpad. If you say things like "Much quicker than dragging a pointer around everywhere", then your current touchpad sucks. If it ever feels like you're dragging the cursor around, then you're dealing with a touchpad that has inadequate sensitivity and precision that forces the cursor speed to be set unreasonably slow. Likewise for your complaint about zooming. A good touchpad is every bit as responsive as a touchscreen, and you're not blocking half the screen with your opaque hand.
And on top of the touchscreen offering almost no advantages over a truly good touchpad, Apple's touchpads have haptic feedback that isn't really possible with a laptop-sized touchscreen. They also support a wider array of multi-touch gestures than most touchscreen software can recognize, and that's before getting into third-party software that adds more gestures, such that touchpad gestures can replace about half of the keyboard shortcuts I use.
I use an MBP for work. If I had a macbook for my personal laptop, I'd still prefer touchscreen for all the use cases above. I wouldn't think I'm the only one either, but maybe I'm wrong.
I don't see what Apple gains by not at least offering it as an option. That way people who didn't want one wouldn't have to get it. I'd pay maybe $150 extra for it. I'd also bet it would outsell the non-touchscreens ten to one.
I feel the same about Apple laptops not having a TrackPoint which is why they need to compensate with a good trackpad. ;)
But seriously, I think the larger advantage I see of touchscreens on Windows devices and potentially future MacBooks is pen support (with pressure-sensitivity) and a 360° foldable display so you can write on it for taking notes or annotating documents. Apple has already started down this road with the iPad and Pencil, so I think it's conceivable to see a full convergence at some point.
It's okay when a professional tool has some learning curve to it, but after you're past that, it's a joy to use.
And no, desktop UI design shouldn't be informed by phones and tablets. When designing a desktop UI, you should pretend touchscreens were never invented.
That being said, I do know one person who has a Windows laptop with a touchscreen and does occasionally tap or scroll something on it. Myself, as someone who has never owned one of these, I maintain this clear separation between mobile and desktop in my head and have never had the thought of touching my laptop screen except to clean it.