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crain300

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 13, 2008
52
0
i love hp new touchsmart all in one machines
but they are not apple darn
do you guys see one coing out in the future?
 
Personally I can't imagine using a touch screen iMac.

My usage is leaned back in my chair with the keyboard and mouse at the edge of the desk. Reaching up and dragging my fingers around the screen seems like a hassle.
 
Personally I can't imagine using a touch screen iMac.

My usage is leaned back in my chair with the keyboard and mouse at the edge of the desk. Reaching up and dragging my fingers around the screen seems like a hassle.

Agreed, I can't see myself leaning up and moving my fingers around the screen either.
 
I have worked with touch screen windows based systems for over 6 years. Trust me, the touch screen is nothing more than a novelty that wears off very quickly.
 
a touch screen desktop is stupid and Apple knew this ages ago. sitting in a chair and raising your arm to touch a screen perpendicular to your desk is not comfortable. the keyboard and mouse have slowly evolved to be perfect for desktop computing. tablets and PDAs are the only devices that should have touch screens. and hey Apple's already got one… its called the iPhone :eek:
 
Apple already makes a computer with a touch screen. By happy coincidence, that same computer is also enabled for phone calls. They call it the "iPhone" :p

All joking aside, HP actually came out with an early version of the touch screen on PCs way back in the mid-80s. My employer at the time had a couple and I was assigned to use one...I thought it was really nifty for about the first 10 minutes. After that, it sucked. All that reaching slowed down my work as well as leaving me with sore arms & shoulders every day.

Overall, really cool looking and very novel. However, probably not a good idea for high-volume or repetitive use.
 
Back when I worked at best buy either gateway or HP had a touch screen desktop and it was a huge failure. Not one person bought it (this was roughly a year and a half ago)


I myself dont ever seeing this as a possibility. Think about it, do you really want to have to reach up and touch the screen everytime you want to click something? What if you have large fingers and try and click the mac smilies on the edge of the screen? Or radio buttons for online forms? I don't see this being feasable.
 
A touch screen may work in certain situations but I don't see it as the "next" interface in the majority of computer use.

Think about it this way, what's easier to write a letter on: a piece of paper or on a chalkboard?
 
lame comments

you think that the touch screen is really for people who are sitting at their workstations trying to complete tasks all day??? Look at the commercials. They show you when it would be better to use the screen.

Not everyone wants to sit one-on-device. If I was up doing things around the house and wanted to turn the volume up, switch songs, change the station... walking over to the screen and touching the controls would be nice.

Or, how about showing off pictures from the last thing I did. A few people in front of the the screen touching away, sliding through pictures, selecting, zooming... That is much cooler and user friendly than me sitting down to "take the helm," mousing around and scrolling with the mouse scroll button. We all know what it feels like when someone else leans in to take control of your mouse/keyboard. Now it's just, ooh that picture, touch...
 
unless you build an imac that sits on the desk top and is inclined at an angle to face you. maybe have it so you can change the angle or something, plus optional bluetooth mouse and keyboard
 
you think that the touch screen is really for people who are sitting at their workstations trying to complete tasks all day??? Look at the commercials. They show you when it would be better to use the screen.

Not everyone wants to sit one-on-device. If I was up doing things around the house and wanted to turn the volume up, switch songs, change the station... walking over to the screen and touching the controls would be nice.

Or, how about showing off pictures from the last thing I did. A few people in front of the the screen touching away, sliding through pictures, selecting, zooming... That is much cooler and user friendly than me sitting down to "take the helm," mousing around and scrolling with the mouse scroll button. We all know what it feels like when someone else leans in to take control of your mouse/keyboard. Now it's just, ooh that picture, touch...

I'm guessing you're talking about something similar to microsoft surface, with those cool looking coffee tables with a fancy multi-touch screen? Twisting pics and movies about on the 'table' as if they were bits of paper and showing them off to people sat opposite you?

Look at all the previews and hands on vids of microsoft surface. You'll find they all show off the wireless connectivity and the fun you can have by placing items onto the table itself, but none of them show advanced image editing. You don't see them playing spore, or COD etc...not a single vid shows them typing anything.

Its great idea for showing off pics and movies, but everything else? PC's, Macs and the like are made for more than what a touch screen can (efficiently) provide. I use mine for homework, browsing, photo/image editing and gaming. you could use a touchscreen for any of these, but to the same efficiency and accuracy as a mouse/keyboard? Definitely not.

I use touchscreens at work, and after 8+ hours i arrive home and thank the gods of technology for the invention of the mouse :p The novelty definitely wears thin after a while
 
Has anyone here seen the movie TRON? I think that the keyboard for the iMac should be a complete touch surface (like the office desk in the movie). That way, the keyboard could change based on what application you are using. I could see this being a whole lot more useful.
 
I'm guessing you're talking about something similar to microsoft surface, with those cool looking coffee tables with a fancy multi-touch screen? Twisting pics and movies about on the 'table' as if they were bits of paper and showing them off to people sat opposite you?

Look at all the previews and hands on vids of microsoft surface. You'll find they all show off the wireless connectivity and the fun you can have by placing items onto the table itself, but none of them show advanced image editing. You don't see them playing spore, or COD etc...not a single vid shows them typing anything.

Its great idea for showing off pics and movies, but everything else? PC's, Macs and the like are made for more than what a touch screen can (efficiently) provide. I use mine for homework, browsing, photo/image editing and gaming. you could use a touchscreen for any of these, but to the same efficiency and accuracy as a mouse/keyboard? Definitely not.

I use touchscreens at work, and after 8+ hours i arrive home and thank the gods of technology for the invention of the mouse :p The novelty definitely wears thin after a while


yeah, but at the same time you could have built in bluetooth for a mouse and keyboard
 
yeah, but at the same time you could have built in bluetooth for a mouse and keyboard

true, but touchscreen with the added benefit of using a keyboard and mouse when the touchscreen fails? no matter what spin you put on it, your list of features would still pretty much state 'touchscreen only useful in 50% of cases'

at this stage, apple would never go for it...and rightly so...i certainly wouldnt buy it :p

Don't get me wrong...looking at microsoft surface i see a step in the right direction (because lets face it, it's very very impressive) but realistically? its great for hotel lobbies and shops (and CSI Miami have certainly fell in love with it)...but for everyday use, and the variety of tasks used on a daily basis, a purely touchscreen interface just won't cut it right now. Give it a few years :)
 
this would be awesome but if not a touch screen computer at least a touch keyboard that looks like the iphone but has keyboard buttons on it. :apple:
 
i really think we're years away from a touch screen mac. Whenever someone asks jobs about it he really dismisses it as "research" or "we're waiting to see how the market is doing..."
 
HP Touchscreen.

I've work at Circuit City for a little bit now and we actually stopped carrying the HP Touch Screen because it barely sold. Over the past three months I've been there the only one we sold was the floor model, which was subsequently returned.
I think it didn't sell well in general is because compared to it's PC counterparts it was hugely overpriced for the power. At somewhere around $1300 you got 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo. For $1000 you can buy a PC Tower with 8GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Quad processor. If someone was looking at paying that much for a computer I would always point out they could get something more powerful and upgradeable for less. And in general we rarely sell towers near that price, people buying PCs are looking for something inexpensive.
Mac users are willing to pay a premium price for features and more power so an iMac touchscreen would do better. It's probably just going to be a matter of time in which the touch screen panel won't either raise the price or cut into margins to much. Even if you don't use the feature if it doesn't cost you anything extra it's nice to have, some people will enjoy it.
 
this would be awesome but if not a touch screen computer at least a touch keyboard that looks like the iphone but has keyboard buttons on it. :apple:


i know what you mean. like a long flat glass type thing that is a screen. and when its off it would just look like a piece of glass
 
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