When Windows 8 came out it look to good to true. Then when I used it I found out it was. The very things that make windows well windows just didn’t work with a touch screen. They had tried to create some things that would make it easier, but windows programs aren’t made for touch screens. You could get around find with your finger, but once you needed to run a real program you had to resort to the mouse. For a little while I thought that windows would finally be fluid and smooth and touch ready, but it wasn’t.
The problem for me at least we obvious. The track pad is a great touch input and the touch screen is a great touch input, however even though they are both touch inputs they are not the same. So what does that really mean? A track pad or even a mouse is great because you are using something bigger to push around something smaller. With a mouse you move the whole thing around and it translates to a tiny cursor on the screen. With a track pad you do the same with your finger. The result is an accurate nimble precise cursor movement. The touch screen doesn’t have that. Your cursor is going to be your finger and that means when you touch something you touch the entire size of your finger tip. That means buttons have to be bigger and further apart. There is nothing more annoying on a touch screen then a bunch of little buttons bunched together. No matter what you do you always end up pushing the wrong one.
The difference between inputs is the reason you normally have a mobile operating system on stuff like phones and tablets while on computers you have a full operating system. Normally the underlying core of the OS is pretty similar, but they are tailored to what each is doing. So by now I bet you are asking what any of this has to do with Apple!? The article was about Apple and iOS and OS X right!?
Apple has been going down a really interesting path in the past couple years. Each release of iOS their operating system for tablets and phone is starting to feel more and more like OS X their operating system for computers. This said Apple has yet to give any line of computer a touch screen. To date they have yet to release any a mac with a touch screen. It does look though as if they are getting close.
If you go to your local Apple store today and take a good look at all the macs you will see one common trend. Apple is working hard to bring them as close to the ipad as possible. The death of the DVD was a step in that direction. They have also started to move toward the idea of the thinnest possible laptop.
Enter The Ipad Pro
Yesterday was a BIG day toward of the movement of moving to a single OS for iOS and OS X. Ironically it comes on the same day as the release of yet another OS tvOS (but that is another story). For the first time we are seeing apple releasing a keyboard for the ipad. Keyboards have been available for the ipad from third party vendors for years. You could even pair up mac Bluetooth keyboard to an ipad and use them, but Apple didn’t offer a keyboard made for the ipad. So what does this mean? Many took this right out of the gate as a move to take some of the surface market. It was seen as apple trying to go and respond to that. It sounds good, but there are some problems. The first thing you will notice when you look at the new keyboard is that there isn’t a track pad. No mouse on an ipad, no track pad that makes sense. The interesting thing though is that when Apple showed off their new toy they had a big focus on productivity apps. They even had Microsoft show how you could use office on it.
The Ipad Pro isn’t going to be the first apple touch screen laptop, well at least not yet. With the current direction that Apple is moving with iOS and OS X I think it is a safe bet to say we have at least another few years before we get our touchscreen macbook pro. The real question though is when they make that move will their even be a macbook line? Or will be all be using the next gen ipad pro?