Is Apple Preparing OS X to use a touch screen interface?

[Falhófnir]

Personally I'd ignore all of the things Apple said before.
I can 100% see this happening.

2 points:

1: As we know, touch designed based iOS apps are going to run naively on new ARM Mac's in the future.

2: Take a child you was given an iPad at a young age, from the age of, let's say 3, 4, 5 they will be using touch for everything. their entire computing world will be touch, and simply accept screens accept touch input.

A few years on, and you give them a Macbook, the 1st thing they will do it touch the screen as they have been doing all their lives and simply expect it to work.

Sure Apple said NO, but then they said no Stylus/Pencil, they said no BIG screen phones.
They only say no, when they don't want to sell it NOW.

It's all leading to be touch enabled when the price is right and they decide now is the time.
Personally I think it's unthinkable to say Apple will NEVER allow touch screens.

If they also go for a fold-flat design, Apple Pencil support could be a bit of a get out of jail free card on what they've said previously - i.e. that's the primary driver for adding touch support, being able to poke the screen to interact with your content in a different way when you want to is a bonus/ side effect, and it's still a mouse & keyboard first OS, just as iPad is still a touch first OS that now also supports mouse and keyboard as supplementary input methods.

 

[iMac-iPad]

Why not? -let's sit n see what's coming up from Apple's mind (what a mac is a mac) in next 5 years...or less
Many are for that though.
So far things are in a meet unless Tactile for mac, i see

 

[sub150]

The iPads will run a lot slower given the demands of a heavier OS compared to the final chips they put in the Macbooks, which will have more memory, clocked higher and probably many other enhancements that place power demands and heat dispersion that's not possible on an iPad.

Sure, but a 2014 MBA can run Catalina so an iPad made in 2020 can surely run Big Sur.

 

[boswald]

Not quite yet, but I think they want feature parity between all OS's to make development easier.

 

[DinkThifferent]

I’m very surprised that this question has popped up everywhere online but nobody has answered it the way I believe it should be answered. Because Apple has already released a touchscreen Mac! And I am typing on it right now.

It is called the iPad. No, I don’t mean that MacOS is going to replace iPadOS or vice versa, but i can “attach” my iPad to my Mac with Sidecar and suddenly control MacOS with the touch screen of my iPad! So when, for instance, designers are going to use their iPad Pro’s to draw on in Sidecar-mode, the new control center interface is much easier to use with your fingers or Apple Pencil.

That’s the reason MacOS is going to be more “touch friendly”, not because Apple is going to release an iMac with a touch screen, but because they want to turn the iPad in the best Macintosh accessory on the planet.

 

[TiggrToo]

I’m very surprised that this question has popped up everywhere online but nobody has answered it the way I believe it should be answered. Because Apple has already released a touchscreen Mac! And I am typing on it right now.

It is called the iPad. No, I don’t mean that MacOS is going to replace iPadOS or vice versa, but i can “attach” my iPad to my Mac with Sidecar and suddenly control MacOS with the touch screen of my iPad! So when, for instance, designers are going to use their iPad Pro’s to draw on in Sidecar-mode, the new control center interface is much easier to use with your fingers or Apple Pencil.

That’s the reason MacOS is going to be more “touch friendly”, not because Apple is going to release an iMac with a touch screen, but because they want to turn the iPad in the best Macintosh accessory on the planet.

Sidecar is nothing new. Before that was Duet.

In addition using an iPad as a access point to other devices is nothing new - RDP and other remote desktop apps have done it for years. If I use my iPad to connect to Windows Server does that make the iPad a touchscreen Windows Server now? If we use your argument it is.

You're stretching the point here.

 

[ArPe]

It’s not called Mac OS X any more just call Mac OS

Apple said X means ‘10’ but early marketing material in 1999-2000 when OS X Server shipped said something like ‘X with the power of Unix under the hood’

That marketing created this confusion that X stands for Unix, but more tech savvy people who have been around for years always knew the kernel was derived from Mach and developed into the hybrid XNU kernel. The BSD subsystem didn’t get Unix certification until around 2005.

 

[LeeW]

Every time I see Big Sur my thoughts keep coming back to it being ideal now for a touch screen, however unlikely I have always thought that would be in coming to a Mac, the uniformity, spacing and so on just seem to point to either macs getting a touch screen or macOS heading to touch devices, iPad.

 

[filmak]

Don't see any indication of touch coming to Bug Sur

I hope this is a typo and not a conclusion...
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I’m very surprised that this question has popped up everywhere online but nobody has answered it the way I believe it should be answered. Because Apple has already released a touchscreen Mac! And I am typing on it right now.

It is called the iPad. No, I don’t mean that MacOS is going to replace iPadOS or vice versa, but i can “attach” my iPad to my Mac with Sidecar and suddenly control MacOS with the touch screen of my iPad! So when, for instance, designers are going to use their iPad Pro’s to draw on in Sidecar-mode, the new control center interface is much easier to use with your fingers or Apple Pencil.

That’s the reason MacOS is going to be more “touch friendly”, not because Apple is going to release an iMac with a touch screen, but because they want to turn the iPad in the best Macintosh accessory on the planet.

Nice!
This is what happens when you dink thifferent.

 

[simonmet]

YouTuber Snazzy Labs seems to think so.

I wasn’t convinced but now I’m starting to think they will, or at least keep their options open.

I still don’t think it’s necessary or a good idea for existing desktop and laptop makes, but maybe they have a convertible in the works, or they’ll allow the iPad Pro to run macOS?

 

[dmccloud]

YouTuber Snazzy Labs seems to think so.

I wasn’t convinced but now I’m starting to think they will, or at least keep their options open.

I still don’t think it’s necessary or a good idea for existing desktop and laptop makes, but maybe they have a convertible in the works, or they’ll allow the iPad Pro to run macOS?

I thought it was odd that they forked iOS and separated iPadOS last year. Now Apple is introducing iOS-like UI elements into MacOS and also bumping the version number to 11. Given that we know there is a plan to transition to ARM-based Macs in the next two years and that they have announced no hardware besides the Developer Transition Kit (which is not the final hardware by any stretch), I'm starting to believe that the end goal of this transition could easily be a formal merger of the iPad and MacOS into one platform...

 

[imdropbear]

I thought it was odd that they forked iOS and separated iPadOS last year. Now Apple is introducing iOS-like UI elements into MacOS and also bumping the version number to 11. Given that we know there is a plan to transition to ARM-based Macs in the next two years and that they have announced no hardware besides the Developer Transition Kit (which is not the final hardware by any stretch), I'm starting to believe that the end goal of this transition could easily be a formal merger of the iPad and MacOS into one platform...

So, what would that mean?

Macs with iPad capabilities or iPads with Mac capabilities? Because I'd hate MacBooks being dumbed down to iPadOS levels but I'd love the **** out of an iPad Pro running a fully capable macOS.

 

[The Clark]

I sure hope not.. touchscreens on laptops are such a mess. The finger prints alone are groanworthy.

 

[dmccloud]

So, what would that mean?

Macs with iPad capabilities or iPads with Mac capabilities? Because I'd hate MacBooks being dumbed down to iPadOS levels but I'd love the **** out of an iPad Pro running a fully capable macOS.

I think the ultimate goal is to make the iPad Pro form factor the successor to the MacBook Air line. There will always be a market for the MacBook Pro and its capabilities, but replacing the Air with the offspring of iPad OS and Mac OS could make a lot more sense in 2-3 years, once we see the first ARM-based Macs hit stores.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I'm not going to answer no to this topic, purely because I don't think it would make sense for Apple to introduce a new 'hybrid' device (for which the primary input is still a cursor; touch would be secondary), when they already have such a product with the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard.

For the latter, that would seem like the biggest selling point to me - the ability to use the device in both contexts. Plus, with SideCar on the Mac, there's a further incentive to purchase an iPad as an accessory and use it as an extra display, drawing tablet etc.

Apple would also have to fragment their Mac line-up to accommodate the hardware that would be designed out-of-box for touch input (i.e. an MS Surface Studio clone) compared to, say, a Mac mini, or even the Pro Display XDR which is a relatively new product. It doesn't send a clear message.

Furthermore, although Big Sur employs the iOS design language, it's still not fundamentally designed to be touched regularly if the user so-wished. The Traffic Light buttons on windows, the Menu Bar, even the inconsistencies with sliders...

..it doesn't jump out to me "I wanted to be touched" like iOS does.

 

[Natya Sadella]

No apple will not introduce a touch screen mac. it's just a redesign guys, to look consistent for iphone/ipad users.

click on the menu bar drop downs. it's still way too small for touch input. IF they change something radical, I could imagine they bring the ipadOS cursor to the mac. Would be badass.

 

[seclusion]

If they solve finger slime I think it'd be great

 

[Tech198]

If you noticed each upgrade of OS X looks more like iPad OS and in this keynote Craig mentioned they are giving "All of the items a little more room to breathe" seems to me they are giving them more space for touch controls, Is Apple finally accepting touch is the future of computers? What do you think

Add iOSey-type look and feel by giving Control center on Mac, and everyone gasps to something wonderful is gonna happen..

Didn't the same thing go when we all got Notification Center ? I think Apple is still trending towards the part they always decided upon.., "Bring iOS features to the Mac", and not "all features"