Earlier this week, Apple did the thing we’ve all known it would for months and finally unveiled its touchscreen MacBook Pro. Awkwardly dubbed the “PROLED XDR Display,” Apple says the touchscreen panel gives pro users “a whole new way to interact with their content.”
Yet, to say I’m unconvinced would be an understatement. While I’m excited for that OLED goodness, I’ve long been skeptical of the benefits of touchscreen laptops, as I find their gesture interactions to be by turns unnecessary and uncomfortable to use for long periods of time. And if something is either so unnecessary that you don’t use it or so uncomfortable that it causes your arms to ache, it probably shouldn’t be in a product.
But hey, what do I know? Practically every Windows laptop manufacturer offers at least one touchscreen version, and now Apple has got in on the act. I’m sure Apple will do what it often does and blow everyone else away with a perfected feature that redefines what a touchscreen display should be about … right?
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Actually, scratch that, I’m still totally unconvinced. Because not only has Apple completely sidestepped the entire issue of arm fatigue, but it seems the company can’t even convincingly explain why anyone should buy a touchscreen MacBook in the first place (and let’s not even talk about the $2,899 starting price or the $14,549 maximum configuration). No, I think I’ll be sitting this one out. Here’s why you might also want to.
Simply the best?
If we want to understand why this touchscreen MacBook Pro exists — and maybe why you should buy one — we should look at how Apple frames it. The company says that “Graphic designers can now use the entire display as their canvas, no longer constrained by the area of the trackpad when drawing,” and that “musicians can play software instruments right onscreen.”
But does Apple actually think that doing either of those things is going to be remotely comfortable for more than about 10 seconds? There’s a reason why people play keyboards horizontally, after all: because playing an entire gig with your arms held rigid and outstretched is a quick path to aching limbs. Why would it be any different on a laptop?
Surely Apple doesn’t picture long-term usage like that, so my guess is it expects you’ll do a few quick taps on-screen and then go back to a normal, sane way of using your laptop. But if you only interact with the touchscreen for a few seconds at a time, is it really worth it? Is that kind of limited interaction good value for money when you’re paying a $400 premium over the regular MacBook Pro?
Maybe, maybe not, but the fact that Apple’s big, expensive, flagship feature is something many people will simply shrug their shoulders at suggests a failure of inspiration on Apple’s part.
Yes, you get a beautiful OLED panel as well for your $400, and that I think is easily justified. But every feature in a product you buy should be able to justify its existence, especially in an Apple product and especially in these expensive times. Yet the touchscreen panel just feels like it’s come along for the ride.
After all, Apple is the company that has reinvented category after category, from portable music players to smartphones to tablets and beyond. And now the best it can do is a feature that isn’t comfortable to use for long periods and that is best employed in short bursts with extended periods of inactivity in between.
If Apple, of all companies, can’t blow you away with a feature that resets expectations of how the category should work, why is it bothering at all? Apple’s mantra has long been not to be first, but to be best. Does this touchscreen really feel like the best in the industry, or just another addition to the pile?
An uninspired feature
In hands-on demos across the land, plenty of people have said that using the touchscreen MacBook Pro feels great — or “totally and wonderfully natural,” in the words of my colleague Lance Ulanoff — and I don’t doubt that it does.
But that doesn’t negate Steve Jobs’ criticisms of the idea of touchscreen laptops at all. In his famous critique, Jobs said that “after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time your arm wants to fall off.”
I’m sure that Apple has crafted its touchscreen display in such a way that it does indeed feel amazing when you first start using it. A few taps and swipes and you’re probably ready to part with your cash.
The problem is that, unless I’ve missed something, our arms haven’t evolved in the 16 years since Jobs made that oft-cited pronouncement. Keep using a touchscreen laptop, whether it’s made by Apple or anyone else, and you will eventually start to feel fatigue and pain.
Given the laws of biology haven’t changed, I was hoping that Apple at least had some sort of killer feature up its sleeve for the touchscreen display. Sadly, I’ve come away disappointed.
Even John Ternus, Apple’s new CEO, can’t seem to sell it well. When asked by Wired why Apple decided to release a touchscreen MacBook, Ternus had this to say:
“We needed to get to a point where adding touch didn’t make the product lesser in any way. It didn’t make it heavier. It didn’t make it thicker. That came together with the OLED screen, the best display we’ve ever put into a Mac. All of these things, and, oh yeah, it has touch as well.”
“Oh yeah, it has touch as well.”
It feels like that sums up the inclusion of the touchscreen almost too well. Why did Apple include it in the MacBook Pro? “Yeah, I guess we may as well do it.” That’s the way it sounds to me.
Is that the attitude of a company that leads? Of one that prides itself on inspiration and innovation? Or just one that sees everyone else doing touchscreen laptops and thinks it should probably tag along?
Look again at what Ternus said. The time was right to include a touchscreen because Apple could do so without making the MacBook Pro worse. Not the time was right because including a touchscreen would elevate the MacBook Pro to exciting new heights. Just, “hey, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Apple’s playbook has often been to let others go first and wait until it has the capability to blow everyone else away, not to let others go first and then add their own thing because “I suppose the time is right.” It just screams of passive, unimaginative thinking. Where’s the drive, the passion? The desire to make something “insanely great”?
Are we really expected to believe that Steve Jobs made the first iPhone a touchscreen product because he wanted the company’s customers to say “oh yeah, it has multi-touch as well”? That designing an Apple device was a checkbox exercise of adding what you could as long as it didn’t make the experience crap? Jobs was famous for his conniptions, and you can bet everything you’ve got he’d have one if that’s how his teams thought.
And yet here we are, with Apple’s own CEO making the headline feature of his latest MacBook Pro feel like an afterthought that half of the company’s users might not even notice. It boggles the mind.
Before the PROLED MacBook Pro launched, my colleague Lance Ulanoff pointed out that Steve Jobs often changed his opinions and argued that Jobs would have loved the idea of a touchscreen MacBook Pro. Maybe so, but he would have hated the milquetoast way that Apple has framed it.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
