🔗 macOS Isn’t as Small As You Think

I was scrolling through my RSS feed when I came across an article from Matt Birchler over at Birchtree where he addressed the argument to add touch to macOS. This past week, this has been a topic that’s been on my mind a lot, due to a few videos and articles I’ve seen talking about this. I love what Matt’s done here though. Writing about the devices he used to support his argument, he writes the following about his 14” MacBook Pro and iPad mini.

My MacBook is a pretty average Mac laptop size, and the iPad mini is the literal smallest iPad Apple makes. Nobody is out there saying that the iPad mini is unusable via touch, in fact many people in the enthusiast community will tell you the iPad mini is the epitome of the iPad lineup.

Source: macOS Isn’t as Small As You Think

I’ve gone back and forth on whether macs should have a touch interface or if iPads should have a way to run macOS and I think Matt nails this one. The full article is worth a read, but the long and short of it is that macOS is already pretty ready for a touch interface, save for the need to add a little padding to a few areas.

And I do think that the day of a touchscreen Mac will come, the question is how long will it take? Apple’s tried to do a lot to blur the line between computer and tablet over the course of the last few years and I see this as an obvious next step in the process (no pun intended).

The reality is that while different form factors work better with different input methods, Apple’s approach to software is what really makes me think we’ll see this at some point. Apple loves pointing out all the way you can make an iPhone or iPad app that can run on Macs with Apple Silicon and the divide between native macOS software and what the iPad can run is only going to get smaller in time. Adding touchscreens to Macs makes logical sense as long as you view these as two separate devices eventually meant to be siblings, as opposed to the cousins that they are now.