You may get your wish with all the rumors of a touch screen on the M6 MBPs.

Love that they didn't learn anything from the touchbar.

They just didn't do anything with the touchbar. It could have actually been more useful. The removal of the esc key was pretty dumb though.

The only useful thing I remember about the touch bar was the DJ trying to play some beats on the touch bar. That was just weird imo.

Barring removal of Esc key, I think the touch bar was useful because it showed contextual actions. But not every app used it so it didn't really get a chance to shine.

I liked it for having volume/brightness sliders. But that's nowhere near enough to justify it!

Yes that was some analog-feeling goodness

I wish they’d come back with physical keys, with tiny changeable displays on each one. Customisation, but touch feel without looking.

Comparing the touchbar to a touch screen is silly

I guess I'm just a luddite that spends my life on a CLI or text editor. Taking my hands away from my keyboard to leave finger prints on my screen just doesn't make sense to me.

I think people that do do tasks where a touch screen makes sense are probably just doing most of their work on an iphone or an ipad anyway.

Now gesture control on VR/AR setups? Sure, that feels like a new human/computer interaction system that makes sense. Jabbing at my laptop screen with one hand on my keyboard, not so much.

You are right the touch screen is even more stupid

It’s not. I had a thinkpad with a touchscreen and while I used the touchscreen seldomly, it was useful in some applications. Notably to easily develop touch based applications.

I have a M1 MacBook Pro with the touch bar since. It’s crap. I remember the keynote where they introduced it and a DJ mixed music using it. It was ridiculous that it got approved.

> Notably to easily develop touch based applications.

Ok, actually you're right, that's a use case where I'll agree it's probably useful. If you're writing iOS applications it might be nice to run it in Simulator and be able to do gestures without having to offload to your physical device for testing.

I do remember the cringy music demo. Can't believe someone really said "yeah let's rehearse this and actually sell this product."

Fortunately I just keep my laptop closed and use an attached display and keyboard and mouse, so I don't even remember if my M1 has a touch bar.

Also minor nit: it's seldom, not seldomly. Seldom certainly doesn't seem like an adverb, but it is.

A touch screen could be useful! I love having one on my HP. It’s just another option that doesn’t hurt you if/when you aren’t using it. Unlike the Touch Bar that deleted 13 keys and replaced them with garbage.

The problem is that I'm afraid it will hurt everyone that isn't using it, as it will push MacOS further in the direction of iOS/iPadOS and optimizing for touch, which is not necessarily the best UI for the non-touch use case.

Hmm. It certainly doesn't have to be this way (in my humble opinion Windows, for all its recent stumbles, seems to have not let touch optimization cause harm to its UI)... However one look at Tahoe tells you everything you need to know about how good 'modern-day Apple' is at making considered UI decisions. So, you're right.

how about a cell modem in one