Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)

anishathalye.com

408 pointsHughParry234 comments

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible."

-Steve Jobs, 2010

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-touch-screen-mac-...

“Who wants a stylus? You have to get ’em and put ’em away, and you lose ’em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with—born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.”

— Steve Jobs, 2007

(8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)

When Steve Jobs said that, he was talking about a stylus as a main or even only input device. And he is still right about it. The Apple Pencil for the iPad never was a main input device but an alternative.

That wasn't the only time Jobs trashed a category Apple didn't currently have annon-sale model for, but was actively developing; he also slurred 6-inch Android phones as "Hummers", and mocked the 7-inch Android tablets as "too small" a little while before Apple launched its iPad Mini.

To be fair, 7.9 inches is quite a bit bigger than 7 inches. That's ~30% more screen area.

Exactly, but watch people leap into to defend how brilliant he supposedly was.

There’s no contradiction here. Jobs’ point was about the MAIN input method. A touchscreen that requires a stylus as main input method still is a terrible idea. The Apple Pencil is meant for alternative and creative input, something you can’t do well with your fingers.

Please, leave that reddit-esque “iSheep”-type of comment out of here.

I see no contradiction.

Touch input needn't be the main input to a laptop with a keyboard and a trackpad...

> (8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)

I have briefly used one of the old PDAs with Windows Mobile and a stylus, and i have an ipad with an apple pencil.

They are two completely different experiences.

A stylus is clunky, particularly if you consider styluses as they were back in the day: pieces of dumb plastic with a specific shape to fit in the PDA itself, to be used on dumb resistive touch screens.

the apple pencil (as well as other modern styluses) are completely different, and work on capacitive touch screens.

The Pencil isn’t a stylus. At least not primarily. It’s designed for freehand. This is probably why they insisted on it charging via Lightning by removing its end cap. They didn’t want people getting ideas.

For a device that fits in your hand I understand his argument, for something that takes more than one hand to hold, I can see the usefulness of a different "pointer" device, but also, artists use things like the Apple Pencil, it makes way more sense.

And here we are, and the Pencil STILL doesn't work on the defectively oversized trackpads on Apple laptops.

So... we're talking about more than one blunder here.

> And here we are, and the Pencil STILL doesn't work on the defectively oversized trackpads on Apple laptops.

Many (including me) argue that Apple sells the best trackpads ever made, the size being a key attribute.

That and the excellent palm rejection. Probably why other manufactures didn't make track pads as large

It's just like Apple to create a problem and then have to implement an overly-complicated and flawed "solution."

Then they're not paying attention to how little of the pad they actually use, and the irritating-as-hell spurious presses that can cost you several minutes (or more) of work.

There's nothing like filling out a form (or comment) on a Web page to have it suddenly reload or back-page, deleting everything you entered.

I've literally never had a "spurious press" on a modern Apple trackpad.

I absolutely loathed non-Apple ones when I had to use them, the palm detection was completely useless and the cursor just swooshed around. I usually disabled the touchpad in the BIOS and just used the red nipple-mouse on Lenovos instead.

I love the Mac trackpad but would love it more if the pencil worked with it

A larger and, more importantly, taller trackpad that also functions like a Wacom with Apple Pencil, which would compel Apple to adopt a more square display, 3:2 or 4:3, capable of showing more lines of code. Too bad that would cannibalize the iPad line, so Apple would never do it.

Calling Apple’s trackpad defective and/oversized has got to be one of the most tone-deaf and uninformed things I’ve seen this year.

Please.

Then you obviously don't do much work with it.

8 hours a day every work day for the last 15+ years, plus whatever I do at home with just a laptop (I have an external touchpad for most use).

You must have some weirdly conductive palms or something.

The original "gorilla arm" UX research is much older. However, Microsoft surface was something of a niche hit, and spawned a number of clones. PC laptops with touchscreens are quite prevalent even if they're not in the full-hinge form factor. They work a lot better if you can lay the screen flat or at a low angle in your lap.

Re: the stylus sub-thread, I've actually used cheap Android resistive+stylus phones and a Compaq Palm Pilot clone and .. yes, they were really bad compared to modern phone interfaces. The stylus has a niche market for artists, who need a high quality pressure sensitive version.

(edit: attempting to find the original citation for "gorilla arm" takes me to the Jargon File and the early 1980s. Along the way I found the delightful existence of a UX researcher with the name Sebastian Boring, though)

I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era, and I'd largely agree with Jobs. It's great for some niche cases, but sits unused 99% of the time. Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch, but that also hasn't lead to an appreciable portion of Windows laptops selling with touchscreens.

The Surface devices are a bit of an exception. For the tablets it works great. The convertibles that were a laptop with a screen that can turn into a tablet (or just be attached in reverse, so you have a very heavy but powerful tablet) were also great presentation laptops. Though apparently that niche was too small to support the exotic hardware. I don't quite get the appeal of the current surface laptops. But the ones I see in the wild are almost all the tablet surface devices.

It's great for some niche cases

With my left hand, I poke the required bits of my corporate training modules. With my right hand, I rest my fingers behind the right side of my display and quickly click the "next" button. I get through training in record time.

This is the only time I use the touchscreen on my (non-convertible) laptop. It seems like touchscreen is most useful when you have big enough targets spread out over the page. Most software I use isn't designed like that. Aiming for the restore button may result in hitting the close button...

> I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era

To be fair, the point at which Microsoft rewrote their UI to be touch-friendly was Windows 8, inspired by Windows Phone (RIP).

> Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch

That's only an argument against using it as the primary interface. There have been many, many times for me where it was so much easier to reach for the screen and touch a button, than to reach for the mouse and maneuver the cursor over the button to click it.

It shouldn't be the only way to interact, but as an option, it's awesome.

Yeah, as I noted elsethread, I use a proprietary drawing program thus, and it allowed the program to work w/o keyboard shortcuts for years....

I wonder what people will say when Apple releases the touch screen MacBook later this year then.

They'll say it sucks ass, and they'll be right.

Touchscreen computers have failed for a reason.

Then again... so did "transparent" UI, which Apple just exhumed.

I have a touchscreen laptop and I love it.

Mainly for stuff like quickly moving windows or highlighting.

But also I'm shocked Slay the Spire 2 on KDE is just working perfectly with the touch screen. Card games feel pretty natural with touch screens.

Average users won't, like the sibling comment notes, and that's who Apple generally targets; only power users complain. And not sure where you are getting the idea that touchscreen computers failed, many models with touchscreens have great sales figures, Surface for one notable example, Lenovo's for another.

The Surface is a tablet.

I don't know one person who has a touchscreen computer. It's a dumb way to work: not only impractical because your finger is too crude of a pointing device and your hand blocks your view of what you're trying to manipulate, but also uncomfortable to wave your arms around in front of you all day... pushing the lid of your laptop away to boot.

The Surface is a computer. Just because you don't like touchscreens doesn't mean other people don't.

> They'll say it sucks ass, and they'll be right.

And yet my wife will disagree hard with you, as all her fingerprints on my laptop screen will attest to. She always defaults to trying to swipe the screen instead of going to the mouse.

> Touchscreen computers have failed for a reason.

The only people who think touch screens have failed are people who actually use computers, and we are a tiny minority of the population these days. The majority of people live on touchscreen devices already.

Your wife actually swipes at a non touch screen thinking it is a touch screen?

Some people actually do do that, yes. It's a force of habit especially if they have another touch screen computer.

That it’s a silly idea, mostly. But some people will love it. As with anything Apple does.

(Longtime Apple user.)

And then everyone will realize that it's stupid shit, like the embarrassing emoji bar on Jony Ive's MacBook "Pro."

I had several PCs with touch screen and this absolutely true. Even intermittent use is not something I did, it’s just too inconvenient to ever become a habit, so the few times it’d be great, I don’t think about it being there because it’s not in my active list of affordances.

The problem with touchscreen laptops is you have to reach over the keyboard and trackpad to actually touch the screen to make it work, and that's physically uncomfortable and kind of inconvenient.

The answer is to make them fold flat so you're just looking at the screen with the keyboard facing away from you (and, ideally, disabled by a switch in the hinge so when you put it down you don't zkjltohtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrolkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Then, of course, it becomes annoying and inconvenient to use in a different way, but at least you get really really good at replacing the little flexi PCB ribbon that connects the screen through the hinge.

Spurious keyboard inputs and broken ribbon cables may have been issues in 2003, but tablet-mode laptops made in the last 15 years face no such issues; e.g. the many generations of the Lenovo Yoga series in that period. In 2026, even 7mm-thick phones can have reliable 180°/-180° folding screens - laptops have a lot more volume to play with and fewer lifetime open/close events.

Apple's problems with touchscreen laptops are not mechanical; if Apple were to make a decent touchscreen laptop - say a 12" MacBook Air, it'd have a 360° hinge and cannibalize iPad sales, so they don't make that device to preserve the segmentation motivating people to buy both devices.

It's not uncomfortable and inconvenient. There are many times when it's much more convenient to reach for the screen than to reach for the mouse or touchpad and carefully move the cursor. Touching the screen directly is much more natural for the occasional interaction. For prolonged use, nothing beats the mouse (and yet laptops still come with a touchpad and sometimes a clitmouse).

Carefully move the cursor? Come on. It is a subconcious action. How do you think people play fps games? Do you even use a mouse yourself or maybe have some physical disability that impairs you?

It's totally pointless, because the trackpad is already a touch device... and you use it to manipulate a precise cursor that doesn't block your view of what you're working on.

Except that the trackpad has to be used to get the cursor all the way over to the control --- it's often faster to just reach out and touch, and if using a stylus, then the cursor goes right back to where the other hand was working as soon as one lowers it back into hover range.

I can move my cursor across my entire screen without lifting my wrist with the trackpad. It is vastly easier than tapping at a screen.

And requires a LOT less effort too. There simply is no real benefit to a touchscreen on a laptop. It’s ridiculous. It’s the phablet of laptops. Insane.

I find it lends a lot to the flexibility of the device --- but I'm using a touchscreen on a convertible which I can flatten out into a tablet w/ keyboard to one side or the other, or fully reverse into an expansive tablet.

Flexibility in what way?

Then, on the rare occasion where you do use it, you end up with a single finger smudge that lasts until you find the will to clean it.

I work for a company which has developed a special purpose drawing (well, entry-level CAD) app, and for a long while, it didn't have keyboard shortcuts, and that was probably because I mostly used it on my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10/Samsung Galaxy Book 12/Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, so would use it w/ touch and stylus, which was quick/natural enough that I never felt the need for keyboard shortcuts.

Such usages pretty much want a very flexible device though --- I'll often use mine fully flat on a lap desk and will rotate it in various ways depending on what I'm doing, and will then further mix in using my Kindle Scribe and Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (which use the same stylus tech as the GB12/GB3Pro360).

Sometimes I'll add my MacBook into the mix by way of a Wacom One display, but I have a 1st gen unit, so no touch, so every so often I'll find myself dragging at it to scroll or tapping a control with my left hand to no effect.

I'd like to try Apple Sidecar on an iPad (which arguably is Apple's touch interface), but can't justify the expense, esp. for yet another stylus (I couldn't easily count how many I own, and carry a spare Lamy Wacom EMR in my sling bag), esp. a stylus which only works on one device.

Still waiting on Apple to make a replacement for the Newton --- the smallest size iPad which supports the Apple Pencil is close, but I need something daylight viewable, hence the Kindle Scribe (which I'm going to be replacing w/ the KS Colorsoft presently).

I have never owned a touchscreen laptop and I agree with most of the criticism in comments here against it. But after just briefly using one from my father I have to say there is some thing in our brain that makes it kinda more satisfying, if that is the right word, to touch on things that appear on a screen. Even as a power user being used to just using keyboard most of the time, after 10 minutes with a touchscreen my mind prefers to touch on screen instead of touchpad.

...wait until you see Munority Report.

Nobody forces you to use touchscreen exclusively?

If that's the case then the interface will remain a compromise that has to work for both point and touch, and ends up being suboptimal for both. Touch input necessitates bigger hit targets, lots of additional negative space around important buttons rather than groups, and a much lower information density on anything that has a click/touch handler like a list in order to avoid accidental presses. Apps need to be written with a touch UI in mind to work well.

The line of thinking here applies to accessibility features as well. Luckily, it is uncool to say those things against the accessibility features, and there are even many good preemptive positive arguments, such as “a good design with accessibility in mind benefits everyone”. And those same arguments do apply for touch-enabled design as well; a good design with touch input in mind can benefit all.

It will likely compromise anti-glare performance too, since an oleophobic treatment will be required for the screen to not instantly be covered in a haze of fingerprints. For someone who has no use for touch this is a strict downgrade.

The only way touch on MacBooks can make a shred of sense is if it’s a non-default option in the configurator, much like the current nanotexture matte option.

You say that now. And yet Apple now forces you to use shitty Bluetooth headphones to listen to its most popular music player.

What product are you referring to? One where you can’t use USB-C headphones or an adapter?

Not while you're charging.

Not while you’re charging via USB-C

I’ve got a MagSafe nightstand and powerbank that both leave the port free. I do use Bluetooth for audio so I don’t actually ever use the USB-C port at all.

Yeah, because I want to junk up my car with all that crap. You're just admitting that your "thin, elegant" Apple product becomes a Christmas tree of dongles to make it practical.

lol, it seems like you got out of the wrong side of the bed. My car (Tesla) has in-built Qi charging and a place to put both the driver and passenger phones, along with Bluetooth. I literally never use a cable with my phone.

"Getting up on the wrong side of the bed" replaces your car?

What a world you live in.

You seem to be angry at something and I’m not sure what. You don’t need to replace your car to add Bluetooth support or Qi charging to it but I think you know that there are cheap ways to do that already. It sounds like you don’t have to or want to and that’s ok too.

But you're sure I'm "angry?" Maybe your point of view is skewed toward apathy.

When a manufacturer deliberately creates a perpetual pain in the ass with anti-consumer actions such as deleting the headphone jacks from media-centric devices, it should be no surprise that self-respecting consumers will condemn that move. If you find it surprising that people are annoyed by such actions, I don't know what to tell you.

> But you're sure I'm "angry?"

Yes, by the way you come across whether you mean to or not.

I guess I’m not self respecting by your definition, in my wire-free existence.

The reason you want a touchscreen on a laptop isn't so that you can use it for "an extended period of time" but rather so that you can use it to do the few things that are painful with a touchpad, like drag and drop.

That is painful for you on a touchpad?

There’s been plenty of times where I would rather drag an item on the screen than fiddle with the sometimes flaky responsiveness and range of a touchpad. I’m usually fussy about my Asus laptop’s pad - the MacBook _usually_ does fine in the touchpad area. The best was my old ThinkPad’s nipple - preferable in most ways to what I use touchpads for at all.

Are you asking about my sensitivity to pain here or disagreeing that this is easier with a touchscreen?

Both.

I know I don't want, nor do I want anyone else, touching my Mac screen. Steve Jobs quote notwithstanding. They are pretty good at getting dirty on their own.

Yea but now they're selling $400+ Magic Keyboards for iPads which then function exactly in this vertical way. No difference. I've typed this on one.

I have used a couple of laptops with touchscreens, and the experience was awful, even with the latest technology. If Apple gave us an iPhone or iPad-quality touchscreen on MacBooks, I am 100% sure the experience would be perfect.

I have a laptop with a touchscreen that I regularly forget is a touchscreen until I accidentally touch it.

Same. My work laptop has a touch screen and every now and then, when I remember that fact, I’ll use it to scroll through a few pages of a PDF. It gives me a chuckle because it’s so inefficient and inaccurate… then I immediately revert to my click-wheel mouse.

Yeah, but this was also strategically in Apple's interest to sell the iPads with nerfed up iPad OS as a separate line up. I love Steve Jobs and all, but this did NOT age well. The millions of people using Surface and Surface Pro will absolutely disagree with this take.

Yeah I have a Surface Laptop Studio. Windows 11 is generally awful to the point where I have switched to Bazzite for my desktop, but the form factor with touch support (and pen support) is great. Easel mode is great for drawing, tablet mode is pretty good for drawing as well and also for casual browsing or for displaying DND character sheet info. Even in laptop mode sometimes I find myself using it to scroll a bit on pages.

did steve jobs ever see an easel?

I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?

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.

I feel like the point isn't "there should be a touch screen MacBook" but more "holy shit we simulated a working touch screen by looking at reflections coming off the glass, isn't that cool".

Sometimes, if I’ve been using my iPad for awhile and switch over to my MBP, I might reach out and touch the screen out of habit. I can’t be the only one.

I had the opposite problem when work issued me a ThinkPad - I would accidentally brush my screen with my caveman knuckles once a day and somehow nuke a dozen lines of code.

My kids do this all the time. They also use the touchscreen in conventional laptop configuration (not folded-flat tablet mode) on their Chromebooks all the time. It's bizarre to me. I'm always trying to get them to use the keyboard, but they don't care. Example: enter password on the keyboard, then tap the log in button on the screen with their finger, rather than just pressing enter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My 3 year-old never had access to tablets or phones but sees us using phones all the time. So when he gets curious and touches the laptop screen (something he does with our phones occasionally as well), he's shocked to see it doesn't react.

I do this on my iPad with Magic keyboard and I'm a die hard command line user otherwise.

I think the reason I started doing it on the iPad is that the keyboard focus is sometimes inconsistent, so clicking or tab-tab-tab-enter is slower and less reliable vs. just touching the screen. Definitely feel the gorilla arm though.

My father did within six months of owning an iPhone.

I don’t understand touchscreens on laptops that aren’t designed to fold flat. It’s got the feel of finger painting an unconstrained birthday balloon.

I had a laptop that folded to 180, without touch screen, and had a webcam hidden under F7 so it either looked straight up your nose or showed your huge fingers

You're essentially holding a large tablet upright, but all the weight is taken up up the base. Rather than finger-painting, try holding it on both sides like a tablet or gamepad and operating with thumbs.

Scrolling/controlling checkboxes and switches feels GREAT. Depends entirely what you're using it for.

While I'm the same and totally agree with you, the few times I've been using touchscreen I find the habit sticks so hard that for days I keep touching my macbook screen, so there is definitely some subconscious desire for this (or I would have defaulted to using the trackpad even if my brain thought touch was available)

It is indeed addictively intuitive. Once these people get to use it for a week, they won’t ever be able to look back.

> I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.

Apple has apparently being going to put a touchscreen in a laptop every year since the iPad came out, and it's never materialized.

Previously, those were rumors from enthusiasts who wanted to see it. Now it's an internal leak so there's a lot more credibility to those rumors.

No, there were internal "leaks" in the past as well.

https://archive.ph/xOgtp

> Based on current internal deliberations, the company could launch its first touch-screen Mac in 2025

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.

> January 11, 2023

> 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."

Yes and it's an article about a leak 3 years ago. And there were more "leaks" before that. I just can't be bothered to research and link the obvious to argument against an "opinion".

Because it would blur the lines between the iPad and MacBook to much. Right now it's two clearly distinct product lines, with separate use cases. Adding touch to the MacBook could hurt iPad sales (in the pro segment).

I also think Apple knows that their laptops doesn't need touch. It's a gimmick and adds nothing to the usability, but raises the cost.

All my Windows laptops have touch screens and I love it. What is the problem with having another input method available? You only use it when it’s appropriate.

It just feels ancient and weird now that I can tap every screen I own, except my Mac. I don't want to replace the Mac's keyboard & mouse with a touchscreen, I would simply like it to support touch.

(This also made me realize the impending obsolescence of the Studio Monitor XDR: no touch support.)

Why though? What compels you to even want that?

My iPad is mounted next to my Macs. I use it as a media player, checking deliveries, personal messages when I'm on my work laptop, and such. All of that is done via touch. When I need to flip over to my Mac to do the same thing, I have to use a 40 year old interface (a mouse).

It's not hard. I don't think we need to make everything touch-size on Mac. Small icons & buttons are perfectly fine in a production environment, and they're considered to be accessible. Just let us touch the screen.

I don’t understand what is wrong with the mouse/trackpad. 40 year old tech? I bet touchscreen tech is that old too.

> I have to use a 40 year old interface (a mouse)

…yeah, and?

Should we just drop mouse’s and keyboards now because they’re “old interfaces”?

C’mon, please. I’m not sure how old you are but you sound like you grew up with an iPad in your hand.

First laptop was a Powerbook 100. First computer was Atari 800. Currently use an MX Master 4 mouse. I totally get the irony.

Tech-reviewers keep harping on the MacBook for not having a touch option, but I think it's mostly of check a box.

Something no one seems to address is that it makes no sense to have touch on the laptop screen, because you honestly don't use it much, at least in a professional setting. You'll always dock your laptop anyway, either for comfort, or legal compliance (or both). My 27" monitor doesn't have touch, that's what I use 99% of the time, the laptop screen is a small auxiliary screen on the side. Why I reach out and touch it? That's also why the touch bar made no sense, it was on a keyboard that I almost never use.

I wouldn't want a touch screen to become the primary input device, but I think it would be useful on occasion. Not entirely unlike how we still have touchpads even though we try to use keyboard commands.

> I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?

I don’t want a touchscreen MBP, but as long as touching the screen is an optional interaction and everything else is the same, I see no reason to reject it if it was free. I can just not touch the screen.

> we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad.

“We” is a much smaller percentage of people than you’re likely thinking of. We’re outliers, not the norm. Yes, even amongst professionals.

I have 2-3 old touchscreen laptops lying around. The touchscreen is useless to me. Worse than useless. If I ever use it, it’s accidentally, and I end up annoyed.

Why? Better than a track pad.

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.

I very much would want a touchscreen for my use cases.

Well, when I am doing rather thinking work, so not type in commands as fast as possible - I very much do like my laptop to have a touchscreen. It is way more ergonomic and comfortable, but yes, slower. But when the real work happens in my head, I like to be rather comfortable.

(Also I can immediately test touch features of the apps I develope)

Sometimes I feel the urge to do some art, and the bigger surface might allow that. Perhaps in lieu, make a bigger trackpad.

The ergonomic aspects are horrible. I believe there's actual research on this from the 70s/80s/90s.

Seems like it only makes sense if it's a hybrid tablet laptop like the Yoga. Otherwise it's a nice gimmick. I can also see Apple being terrified at someone's dirty fingers smudging the laptop, though they'd have some anti-smudge coating built in at that point

Macs are definitely not optimized for keyboard commands. If you feel the software you use is keyboard optimized, odds are it's not really Mac software.

Absolute base line example.

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

I really just discovered after many decades that you can still just select text and paste it with the middle mouse button just like you could in the Solaris days. No need for any keyboard command.

Even better is that it's a separate clipboard from the ctrl+shift+C clipboard, so if you want, and you're careful, you can copy-paste two things independently from each other.

however to make a screenshot you've to press shift+ctrl+cmd+4 instead of just win+shift+s.

yeah but that's actually easier to do (on a macbook k/b).

you get really good at hitting either the 4/5 while holding those down to take a pic/vid.

personally win+shift+s is too bunched together, less comfortable to hit.

macOS has been one of the best keyboard OSes for over a decade, maybe longer. Nearly everything is bindable without additional software or third party apps. This can be done on globally or app-specific. A lot of this comes from the deep script ability that used to be a priority but has fallen by the wayside in recent years.

Huh? Of all the wonky shit about my Mac, the flawless keyboard navigation is really none of that

I had been using Windows my entire life and using a Mac in 2009? was awful. How do I get to the menu bar? Ctrl-F2. They keep changing the behaviour of the menu so that cursor keys don't wrap at the bottom of a menu so you have to know which direction you want to go to get to a menu item - make your choice! Up or down!

How do I get to the dock so that I can open the Applications menu? Ctrl-F3. left left left left left up. Then the popup menu doesn't respond to any letters.

All of this contrasted with Windows which had Alt + key for the menu. I learned it from Windows 3.11 for incredible speed:

- Alt space - show the window menu

- Alt space x - maximize

- Alt space n - minimize

- Alt space r - restore

- Windows key - start menu

- Windows key > P > right cursor > N - notepad (the right cursor = accessories)

This was broken in later start menus. The modern start menu is absolutely useless and takes forever. Up until XP this worked fine.

- (with Quicklaunch): Windows + N (number) - launch that item. Eg. Windows + 3 will launch the third item across. No idea if they broke this in Windows 11.

Under Windows 98 all of these were lightning fast. Explorer behaved as you'd expect too.

None of this was possible on the Mac and using it was very very very slow with a mouse to wave around the screen.

I mean, all of this is available in MacOS as well, and configurable even—your main complaint seems to be that it works differently from Windows?

MacOS is a different operating system with different paradigms; instead of a start menu, you'd use Spotlight search for the same effect, which can be invoked with CMD+Space.

No, the main complaint is that you can't do half of those things with a keyboard. Eg. how do I maximise a window on macos with my keyboard?

I have been using macos for decades and use it daily at work so I understand it is different. I am just saying that the out-of-the-box functionality for keyboard usability is very poor compared to Windows (and Linux DEs which imitate Windows).

I end up using Rectangle on macos for moving windows and maximising them using keyboard shortcuts because else it's infuriating for window management to have to move from the keyboard to the mouse all the time. The usability under Tahoe for window edges etc. is even worse with a mouse than previous versions and a complete joke, so I am stuck on Sequoia.

> how do I maximise a window on macos with my keyboard?

System settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Window > Fill. Default on my machine is fn+control+f, but you can also reassign that there of course (which AFAIK is something Windows doesn't let you do, by the way.)

> I end up using Rectangle on macos for moving windows and maximising them using keyboard shortcuts

I also used to use Rectangle, but by now the built-in window management shortcuts fulfil the same purpose out of the box (almost, that is; where Rectangle can move Windows onto the next screen, that is arguably where the built-in shortcuts fall flat, only being able to arrange on a single screen)

Oh my goodness I am so so so so happy

I never knew this existed!!!!

Thank you!

Also, somewhere in accessibility settings, you can turn Keyboard Navigation to On - this allows you to tab through just about any control on the screen - very helpful. I find keyboard navigation much more fluid and easy on my Mac than my windows machine, but then I’m rarely doing anything serious in windows anyways and there’s a ton of muscle memory built up at this point

I'm surprised you feel that way. I fight with my mac every day for one reason or another. At least it's not as bad as the days where some software used Cmd + letter and some used ctrl +letter, but for instance Cmd tab will switch to the wrong window when I go back and I have to use the mouse. Window switching in general is a lot harder if you only have the keyboard because the laptop is docked without a magic trackpad

strange. Some keyboard shortcuts in os x are kinda weird and not intuitive to linux or windows users, but they are there. It's totally possible to use mac without trackpad. even cmd+tab switcher has a lot of hidden (but googlable) things: while still holding cmd after initial cmd+tab, you can close apps with q, switch to other apps with tab and (cmd+)shift+tab or left/right arrows, show app windows with down, etc. There's also a cmd+` for switching between one app's windows. I still find that distinction weird from usability perspective, but it's not too hard to adapt to it.

> totally possible to use mac without trackpad

As I discover every time I have a mouse fail, it is exceptionally difficult to use a modern Mac without a pointer device because at some point, it became quite difficult to get from (eg) the settings nav panel to the settings panel. I can CMD+SPACE to open spotlight, type 'Settings' to get to a settings panel, type 'Bluetooth' to open the bluetooth settings, and where I feel like I _should_ be able to `Tab` or `Enter` into the devices list, or have SOME way to navigate over there, the only way I've found to be able to is to plug in a physical mouse

Moreover, I occasionally encounter modals that won't let me tab to their action buttons, requiring a pointer device click to dismiss

Take a peek in the accessibility settings - there is a setting for keyboard navigation that defaults to Off - setting jt On should let you navigate those items

huh. I just did what you describe above (on tahoma) and was able to tab into the list of bluetooth devices, no problem.

do you have "Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard navigation" on? I thought it is on by default, but apparently it isn't. Without it "tab" only jumps between text fields and checkboxes.

There's also an "Accessibility > Keyboard > Full keyboard access", which gives more controls.

It was indeed not on by default

I appreciate the tip! I'm going to have to put that in an Ansible playbook

Specific applications sure, but the base OS interface is unusable without a trackpad.

Cmd+Space to open spotlight, type in the first 3 or 4 letters of whatever you're trying to do (an application to open, or a system setting to change) and then Return gets me about where I need to go most of the time. Cmd+Tab and Cmd+` for window selection. I don't do much else on the OS itself so my bases are covered.

This is true for the most part, unless you adjust keyboard settings in System Settings to let all UI elements be focusable with the keyboard (for tabbing between UI elements). I think it used to be under "keyboard" but they might have moved it in the recent Control Center reshuffle.

Really? I find that on MacOS apps are very inconsistent about whether popping open a menu shows me hints for selecting items in that menu. Those same apps are consistent about it on Linux.

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...

Display of shortcuts in menus is the responsibility of the app developer (especially in the case of use of foreign UI toolkits). If you don’t see them it’s because its dev dropped the ball and the Mac version is an afterthought.

I think its more about priorities. I expect touch related features to be a bit rough on Linux and I expect the same for keyboard focused things on Mac.

Skipping keyboard shortcut indicators in menus feels a bit like leaving the back seat out of a four-door sedan, but maybe that’s just me.

Cmd+Shift+Tab goes in the opposite direction.

Yes but what goes left, right, up, or down?

“Flawless” is absolutely the opposite of how I’d describe the third class keyboard navigation in MacOS.

It’s actually more intuitive to use a magic keyboard on the iPad than on the desktop OS.

What do you find missing from macOS keyboard navigation?

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.

I have a lot of complaints but I would say my three big gripes are:

- 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

Interesting, those are problems I don't have, I guess due to my work and workflow.

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.

They kinda added window positioning with Tahoe -- there are things I like more about it than Rectangle (resizing), but I found that it was janky enough I switched back to Rectangle.

I rarely use the Dock, it's somewhat eye candy I leave up, or add stacks for folders that I use, but typically for keyboard action I reach for spotlight (cmd+space). Now, spotlight occasionally shitting the bed, that's another issue...

Window navigation is just ctrl+direction

That does not work between monitors.

> Window navigation within open programs

Isn’t table cmd + ~

The absolute first thing that's needed: Maximize window.

Annoyingly it doesn't even maximize properly. You have to use alt-click for sensible behaviour.

They also decided about 10? years ago to make it behave as a "fullscreen" button which was really useless to me on a Mac Pro with 2 screens, where it would only ever "zoom" to one screen and then make the other screen display the desktop wallpaper - not the actual desktop - the wallpaper.

Useless.

Ctrl+Fn+F?

At least we have trackpads that are worth a crap.

I do adore the macOS trackpads, they blow anything else I’ve used out of the water.

The keyboard (physically) is also just very pleasant to type on.

There is no comparison. I even use their trackpad in my desktop setup. The keyboards are fine. I prefer a mechanical keyboard, but this is a laptop of course. I do want to strangle someone over at Apple for deciding to NOT put the control key in the bottom left corner though. Luckily it's not a hard fix.

It would make sense if the screen folded over. In a laptop form factor a touch screen is just annoying because it keeps pushing the screen back.

Maybe they solved the greasy fingers leaving smudges on your screen problem with a new surface. :D

I completely disagree. I've got a laptop with a touch screen, and it's occasionally very useful. It's rarely my primary input method, but when you're not constantly using the mouse, how often do you lose track of where the mouse cursor is? Instead of reaching for the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is, and then carefully maneuvering it over the button I want to click, I can just reach out to the screen.

A touch screen is incredibly useful when you're not currently already holding your mouse. It's easier to switch from keyboard to touch than from keyboard to mouse.

The benefit of a touchscreen MBP is that Apple will be forced to make their screens more protective.

I agree. I've never wanted a touch screen on my laptop. My screen gets smudged enough already.

Yes, I feel like it'll be a degrade in quality if they do this with any of their current line up. If they want to make a Macbook Ultra or whatever with it, that's fine -- I would have no interest in it.

But the Touch Bar was such a resounding success …

as long as it works well, would rather have it than not (but don't want to pay extra, so yeah... leave it out)

Love it! I appreciate the ethos of doing more with existing hardware. Adding an actual touchscreen would add real COGs to a macbook, and many potential failure points. Using the existing camera hardware + software seems to produce a "good enough" result for most people for casual use. I'm sure with some time and eng, Apple could make the "hack" shippable. But it doesn't earn product managers the big big bonuses, so it'll never happen.

Touch screens are not pleasant for laptops. I prefer not to have them.

It's actually quite pleasant user experience for scrolling. Some interactions are better with a pointer, others are better with touch.

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.

Honestly I just hate having fingerprints on a screen. And I use pageup/pagedown mostly which to me is better than scrolling.

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.

Yesterday someone online told me I'm a boomer because (among the many other issues I mentioned) I said that apple computers lack page up/down keys which is annoying.

Option-up/option-down?

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.

As a stolid classic-era Thinkpad user I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that the strain of having to hold down another key as I scroll rapidly would get tiring rather quickly. Perhaps if there was a Cmd lock it would be fine.

in most apps you can just press the spacebar (pgdown) and shift+spacebar (pgup). Home is cmd+up and End is cmd+down

Agree for iPad. But for a laptop trackpads ftw!

You don't have to use it.

As long as there's a way to maintain the current display density, that would be just fine.

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.

That's a fair ask. My dream would be a simple toggle in something like control center for macOS that can flip between "touch mode" and "desktop mode" with most of the under the hood stuff being the same and just UI changes for the task. No doubt this would create new hurdles for software devs but again I'm dreaming here. Windows 10 actually had this with "tablet mode" in the notification center but I think they already soured people on the touch Windows thing by this point. I think Apple could reasonable do it better if they had the will but they'd much rather you buy and iPad for touch and a mac for desktop and everyone who doesn't want an extra device for certain use cases is left out in the rain.

Note on Windows you can disable the touch device and it goes back to the old density. Don't know if Macs support it.

you will accidentally touch the screen more often that you think.

My previous work provided laptop had a touchscreen and I miss it (for the record, the screen didn't fold 180). It was useful about once a week and I completely forgot about it the rest of the time.

Two primary use cases. Sitting on the train with the laptop in my actual lap it was often more convenient to reach for the screen instead of the trackpad, especially when I had someone sitting next to me on the right and I didn't want to stab them in their ribcage with my elbow so I could reach the trackpad. Second use case was often scrolling while reading, for some reason (phone-scrolling-indoctrination I guess) it felt natural to scroll using finger on screen.

The screen was never my primary pointing device but it was always an option. I think it was annoying a handful of times during the two years I had it, you point at something on the screen and end up clicking something.

What a super neat application of computer vision. Cool writeup. Thanks for sharing the code and making it open source too!

This is cool. Simple prototype. Is it dependent on lighting ... what if you are outside or backlit or glare etc...?

> "Filter for skin colors and binary threshold"

Which skin colours? The image below that has a lot of colours that I'd associate with darker skin colours, and they're not included in the triggering zone. I'd be interested to see some data on hoe well it works with someone who has dark skin

I was laughing so much. Thank you. Unexpected tech!

This is amazing. They should start to install upward looking cameras to implement this officially.

Ignoring whether touchscreen laptops are actually a good idea, I "OOF"ed out loud at this line.

> 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.

People use their laptops under various lighting conditions. I can imagine it would be difficult (or likely impossible) to bring this PoC to a solid production level technology. It looks like a fun project though.

This project brings back memories. I worked somewhere over 20 years ago where we were working on something just like this (touch displays using cameras). The biggest challenge was definitely the lighting conditions as you mentioned. We tried to rely on natural light but it was too unreliable. Darker skin tones were harder to pick up, and then you had issues with random reflections, light and shadow being cast on the screen, etc., which would make the system detect spurious fingers and touches.

We also had algorithms to detect finger shape to detect location of the pointer and when you were touching the screen. I saw way too many videos of fingers touching screens back then, so it's funny to see similar video clips here.

It sounds like a fun project. I worked on a vision based biometric system that used near infrared light as its light source. NIR was supposed to be more stable than natural light but we still experienced issues similar to yours. We found that certain problems appeared at different times of day, and the system also struggled to handle the diversity of people.

I think I could do this for less than 15 cents: four small peices of double sided tape, and the tiny mirror, and two hair pins... but the software? Priceless.

As other people mentioned this is obviously not something I would want in my notebook... but I can still appreciate the cool tech!

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).

Difficult to capture reflections across a large screen while also dealing with outdoor lighting, glare, and moisture. The touchscreen part isn't usually what makes outdoor signage expensive compared to IP65, temperature control, and a secure housing, all of which would still need to apply here.

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).

I almost hear that screen cracking when accidentally closing macbook with the camera inside...

I love Mac since I started using it in 2020, but boy this hardware is fragile. I am scared that I will be held accountable for fixing a broken screen of my work MBP

I don't even imagine how I would be tapping on the screen of my MacBook, not because of its form factor or design, but because of the macOS system itself. It's a different story with the iPad where you can do it endlessly...

Reminds me of Johnny Lee's Wii-mote projects...

http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

Using an external webcam is that not more than $1? cool project though; reminds me of how you could use a Wii remote to create a interactive whiteboard.

Internal with a small mirror

Don't love touchscreens that much.

But I did love my Toshiba Satellite. It was like writing on paper!

Down with capacitive screens and long live Active Digitizers!

It feels real because of the dirty touchscreen.

I don’t want to encourage people touch my screen and smudge things up.

Is there a coating you can apply to the glass to help with smudge marks?

Oleophobic coating is standard on phones and tablets, which is part of why they don’t pick up fingerprints as easily.

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

And this is why modern screens (and eyeglasses) should be cleaned with a damp microfiber cloth and no aggressive cleaners. These coatings are fragile.

I do carefully clean the nosepads with soapy water, however.

The reason we buy macbooks is because they aren't touchscreens.

I always say, people who want a touchscreen on their Laptop never used a really good trackpad. I never missed a touchscreen on my MacBook but when I do something on someone else’s Windows Laptop I often prefer to touch the screen because the trackpad is just terrible.

Checking this profile of a random hacker in 2018, of course they are now working on AI.

I was working on AI in 2018 too :)

At that time, I was quite interested in adversarial examples and ML security.

I wonder how well this would work with my bright blue fingernails that are about .5" longer than my finger.

I then wonder how much recalibration I would have to do when one of them broke and I was poking directly at the screen.

You could still use the keyboard and track pad

You chose to suffer not just with touchscreens. That said, it would probably work just fine.

It's honestly kind of amazing how many things seem to never be tested by anyone with long fingernails. My favorite was the time I picked up a video game controller and physically could not use it because the buttons were in a stylish little recess that meant my thumbnail would have to pass through the plastic housing before I could get the button to make contact.

Why would product designers make products worse for most due to self-inflicted conditions of the few?

You do realize that a significant portion of the population is encouraged to grow their nails long, right? Women exist.

Even as a non-woman I sometimes like to have my nails done up nice, and sure it’s my _choice_ just as it’s my choice not to purchase products that are fine excluding a chunk of the market. Out of curiosity, do you remember what controller? We are pretty much all DualSense in this house but I’d like to be aware in case we go shopping for new ones at any point

This was something a friend had in his office when I visited him at Activision back in the late nineties. I have no clue. :)

Brilliant!

sooo clever

Neeeeveeeer!!! please let macbooks be as they are .. why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't get it!

> why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't get it!

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.

There is a reason why the MacBook hasn't been replaced by an iPad with a keyboard and trackpad attached to it. Very different use case.

You're right. Those are completely separate millions of dollars to be made. Best not let them overlap at all, even if some of us intuitively touch our laptop screens to scroll a window now and then, especially when carrying it around.

They overlap plenty where it makes sense. There was a time where Mac users were worried that Apple was going to merge MacOS and IpadOS. Nobody wants that.

What is that reason? Clearly Apple can put desktop chips in the iPad, their desktop apps already support ARM, and the iPad hardware can absolutely run macOS. What is the advantage of iPadOS, instantially?

The advantage of iPadOS is that Mimi and Papa have a harder time breaking it.

Still an amazing hack today and I love it. However, I heard Apple are developing a touch screen MacBook this year, and I simply don't get why they're doing that. I don't know what's worse, the ergonomics or the fingerprints.

i used to have a bad touch screen laptop like 7 years ago and back then it made the mobile development more pleasant (both native and web based)

So you mean they're developing the iPad, an insanely popular device, and you're not sure why they would make such a device?

I have been around touch screen Windows laptops for I don’t know how many years now, and I have never felt even the slightest compulsion to touch the screen.

It might be a generational thing; my kids get touchscreen laptops from their school, and they interact with them almost exclusively by touching the screen. I agree, I'd much rather use a mouse (or even better, a trackball; i wish most laptops still had those)

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