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Comment by zxzax | Hacker News Reader

Touchscreen laptops and convertible laptops are becoming increasingly common, they can't just ignore this market segment.

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increasingly common but still a tiny minority of their user base. others shouldn't suffer for that

I don't think so, the studies I've seen actually show the number of touchscreen devices is growing, and desktop PCs are shrinking.

but how are their sales doing? given the kind of apps that run on a PC, i think the touchscreen is just a gimmick that is barely used. Windows programs are just not made for tablets, and will never be

The sales seem to be increasing, I wouldn't say it's a gimmick. Also touch support is not just for touchscreens, most laptops now have multi-touch touchpads where you can do gestures. Making a program support those already puts it significantly closer to having real touchscreen support, so it's not as hard or difficult as you'd imagine for older Windows programs to gain good tablet support.

maybe, but windows programs are so heterogeneous that i dont see how i will be able to use blender, browser, word, excel etc on a touchscreen .

Besides, this "touch-first" approach has been tried with win8 and in my experience it was atrocious

The point with those laptops is, you use the keyboard when it makes sense, and you use the touchscreen when that makes sense. I think you're confusing "touch-first" with "having any support for touchscreens at all," some concessions need to be made if you don't want it to be totally unusable on a device like that which has an optional touchscreen.

> i think the touchscreen is just a gimmick that is barely used.

I'll just say that my laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga) has a touchscreen and I love it. Every laptop I buy from here out will be a touchscreen merely because the ability to reach up while I type and just tap where i want my mouse to go next is such a better system than working with a nipple or trackpad.

I think as laptops with touchscreens become more affordable lots of people will change across. When i'm forced to work on my work laptop without KB&M, I really miss the ability to touch my screen instead of working with the god awful trackpad.

I would assume part of this is due to the trackpad. The only trackpads (of those I have used) that I would describe as better than "decent" have been on mac laptops.

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