If rumors are to be believed…
Actually, let’s stop for a second. Do we all understand why rumors should be considered fickle, unpredictable things that cannot be trusted, like fairies, fairies and Ruby developers? Of course, these days you can expect your Marx Gourmand, your Mings-Chi Kuo to have a fairly high success rate. But back when Macalope was a young deer, the rumors about Apple were real crap. And not a dice game. It was like going out into the field and shooting cow patties. Just a complete mess and nothing was received.
In the late 90s, there were rumors about a set-top box. “It was real!” they would say. “Apple is working on it!” It probably was, but it was something the company wouldn’t release for another 10 years.
Moral of the story: don’t believe the rumors, they will only hurt you.
Now let’s take some of the rumors at face value. You’re not my boss, Makalop from 15 seconds ago.
Man, that guy. I am telling you.
According to the aforementioned Gurman, Apple will soon “challenge the company’s longstanding orthodoxy” and add touchscreens to the Mac. Yes, Apple has denounced touchscreen desktops as an ergonomic nightmare in the past, but let’s face it: the company said a lot of things that later changed course. It said, “If you see a stylus, then they blew it up,” and then sent an Apple Pencil. It said professional laptops only needed USB-C connectors, and then shipped new MacBook Pros with MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card slot. The company said web apps were a “great solution” for iOS app development and then introduced the App Store. He showed us the glory of Bob Mansfield and then let him retire.
An iMac with a touch screen can be an ergonomic nightmare, but a MacBook with it is no bigger than an iPad with a keyboard attached to it, not much.
IDG
With the release of the iPhone and iPad, Apple popularized touch computing long before Microsoft introduced it with Windows 8. And instead of screwing the touch interface into its desktop operating system, Apple was slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
It remains to be seen if he can piece this puzzle together into something cohesive. Stage Manager, which could be Apple’s answer to switching apps on the Mac with a touch, might be disappointing. Meanwhile, there are a lot of touch targets on the Mac these days that are too small to hit with your fingers accurately. Imagine that you are trying to close the window, not resize or minimize it. Now imagine that you are trying to do this with hooves. Instead of just zooming in on all controls, Apple can use the same control that zooms out on the cursor in iPadOS; aim with your finger and release when the appropriate control is selected.
Why not just make all the controls bigger?! Of course, why not waste screen space? Why not put “Powered by M2” stickers on your Mac while you’re at it? Can you even hear yourself, Steve?
As maddening as the new System Setup app is, it starts to make sense when you consider touchscreen macOS. What doesn’t make sense is the combination of radio buttons and checkboxes. macOS Ventura is a clunky intermediate stage that Macalope would like Apple to avoid.
However, the company plans to address this issue – assuming it does indeed ship a Mac with a touchscreen – it should try to avoid the way Windows tries to serve two masters, a touchscreen and a mouse, neither of them well. Large targets take up too much screen space, and the dual input mode is crazy. The problem lies in the need to rethink the input on the desktop. Apple is certainly capable of this if it takes time. As for the Ventura, the signals about how well they’re going to do it are a bit mixed.