I beg to differ. On phone/tablet screens we tend to be more forgiving and use them in lighting situations that downplay their effect. On my laptop I see every tiny smudge and use a little micro-fiber thing to clean it regularly since the smudges make it harder to reliably edit images. The smudges that are a trivial annoyance on my phone interfere with workflow on my laptop. Modern screens coatings do handle them better than in the past, but resistance is still poor.
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i agree they aren’t perfect yet, but if it bothers anyone they can simply stop touching the darn thing. i’d rather have the ability to use it when appropriate then not have the ability at all.
dumb screens are so last gen. 
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You don’t have to use it if you don’t want but you still have to pay for the thing you don’t want. They add at least $100-200 to the price.
My phone screen is often disgusting and has to be cleaned daily. My laptop doesn’t have this problem.
Also, if my laptop is actually in my…lap…the screen is just out of reach. Hence my ergonomics remark.
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Looks like I’m in the minority on this thread, but frankly I’m pretty excited by the touch bar. I sort of feel the idea of putting a full display touchscreen on a Windows (or Mac for that matter) laptop is a gimmick. Firstly, I don’t draw, so there’s that. More importantly, Windows and MacOS are mouse driven UI’s, and trying to touch tiny little elements with your meat sausages is an exercise in frustration. Sure it’s fine for flipping up and down a page, but you know what, so is a two finger swipe on a trackpad, and you don’t have to reach up for the screen to do that.
Seems to me a useful touch input device would be better off to be designed from the ground up with finger input in mind, what better way to start than with a new interface device and an SDK to go with it. The current generation of Touchscreen computers have been out for what, 3 or 4 years and I understand things like Photoshop still have really poor support for them. Adobe already has an update ready to take advantage of the touch bar and it hasn’t even shipped yet. Anyway, I for one am eager to see what devs come up with for it… I think there’s a lot of potential with the little strip.
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The average retail price difference in 2016 was $75.00.
I get that touching your screen isn’t for everyone, but it is the fastest growing segment in laptops for a reason.
Because using a trackpad and keyboard is hard? Because computer companies want to merge their tablet lines into laptops to sell you something new?
How do you use a touch screen in your lap if your keyboard is at arm’s length? Quit using the keyboard?
The problem with the surface books is the big pile o’stinking shit that is windows 10. Plenty of battery and driver issues as well but it doesn’t change the fundamental problem that it runs a spyware riddled OS that gobbles up resources when uploading all your keystrokes and telemetry every 5 minutes. There are scenes of doctor strange using one in the new film and i imagine many of them had to be redone when the surface rebooted due to another bloody forced update. Oh, the update won’t be applied, no, no, no… it’ll fail of course, revert changes, reboot and go through the whole farce again.
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One would obviously only use a touch screen when it was within reach. If my keyboard is out of reach i can’t use that either. that is kinda how most user interface devices work.
I don’t find either to be difficult to use.
Your use case might not have much use for a touch screen, but assuming every one else’s use case is the same as yours is flawed. most people these days (not us dinosaurs) are using phones and tablets with touch interfaces first and laptops second, they have usability expectations that are different then olds.
I’ve already outlined a number of use cases, note taking, digital art, design, hand writing recognition, etc. that are ideal for screens with touch and digitizers.
I agree! Which is why I’ve been waiting for years for apple to catch up, alas, no reprieve in site. they don’t seem interested in releasing an OSX tablet or a mac with touch screen and digitizer, designers and creatives be damned. I remember when apple used to court that market segment. sighs
I’d like nothing better then to have an OSX tablet with a digitizer and touch that i can run the FULL photoshop and illustrator on. The third party mods just aren’t up to snuff but i’ve eyed them.
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Yeah, surface studio does look pretty if you got the cash to pay for those things but be sure to put it on metered connected so you don’t lose a ton of work should it go into a forced reboot.
Or lose a killstreak…
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i was mainly lamenting that microsoft was being so innovative with their hardware and apple wasn’t.
i want a surface studio from apple!
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Ahh yes i see what you mean and they should, wasn’t that always apple’s raison d’etre? I’ve never been an apple user but as someone on the outside looking in that always seemed to be their thang.
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I’m not sure how you use a laptop but if my keyboard is at finger length, my screen is literally an inch or so out of reach.
True but that’s in their personal life. I see very few people being 100% tablet in any corporate or business environment. Everyone whips out their laptop from a messenger bag or, shudder, has a full desktop system nailed to a perch.
or get Adobe to ship on iOS and you can use the (mostly useless) iPad Pro!
I’m going to stop explaining how people are using touchscreen laptops and suggest you view a few users in the wild. you’ll figure it out. 
hint: it’s the same as every other touch device you already own.
doesn’t negate a single point. you can still type on the keyboard on a touch screen laptop. it isn’t a tablet, it is still a laptop, just with more abilities, not less.
they already do and it sucks compared to the real deal.
If I ever see one of these wild beasts, I will watch. I work in engineering with developers. They don’t use these things. We all have Lenovos or Macbook Pros (without number pads!).
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sounds good.
yes, i know you do, at mozilla. being the fastest growing laptop segment and more and more standard, it just takes getting out of your engineering enclave and looking around to see them in use. go get a coffee or something. really they aren’t hard to figure out how to use, touch is the most natural human interface, and one that everyone uses on their phones and tablets already.
again your use case isn’t every one else’s, that is one of the first things they try and teach engineers.
there is a reason Microsoft’s hardware line is focused exclusively around touch and digitizer enabled devices.
This is a big UX failure. Along with everything you mentioned (and they’re all valid points) when you open the laptop up all the way to tablet, the keyboard is on the bottom of the “tablet.” So you get inappropriate keystrokes and mouse movements if you try to set the thing on your lap or set it down anywhere except a perfect flat surface. And it’s heavy, so you want to set it down or rest it on something. I just got a new ASUS Flip, and it isn’t all that. Unfortunately the company already re-purposed my ancient HP Elitebook which I liked way better.
And don’t get me started on Win10…
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oh man, that sucks. the convertible laptops are supposed to disable those when opened fully, i can’t think of one that doesn’t. i’d contact the manufacturer, it is likely a defective unit. (unless it has a rotatable screen that you just aren’t rotating. is the hinge in the middle?)
agreed.
Touch seems to have caught on pretty well on phones and tablets and is spreading over the laptop and desktop markets very quickly. i do understand that it isn’t for everyone, but calling it a failure doesn’t seem right.
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MacBook Pro: there’s no escape.
actually, there is one on the Touch Bar, but only at certain times.
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i know, sad day for us developers… 
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I actually do work in the corner coffee shop a bit and visit it daily for…coffee (I work remote). Mostly, I see a lot of Macbooks in shiny metal but I’m in the Bay Area too. A lot of cheapo Dells as well (and a lot of iPads).
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