The new Magic Trackpad 2 introduced Force Touch to the iMac, but Apple’s not ready to embrace the concept of a Mac touchscreen — and according to Phil Schiller, it’s unlikely to do so anytime soon.
We’ll take that as a “no” for anyone dreaming of an iOS/OS X hybrid.
“iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience – you don’t have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little ‘close’ boxes that you can’t hit with your finger,” Schiller said recently, speaking with tech writer Steven Levy for a (superb) Medium article about Apple’s new iMacs.
“The Mac OS has been designed from day one for an indirect pointing mechanism. These two worlds are different on purpose, and that’s a good thing — we can optimize around the best experience for each and not try to mesh them together into a most-common-denominator experience.”
Schiller has said similar things before, but this time he is responding specifically to Microsoft’s recent entry into laptops with the Surface Book, which further merges the desktop and mobile experience.
He makes it sound as though Apple has experimented with this concept internally before turning it down — which is exactly what you’d expect from an innovative company open to new possibilities.
“From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable,” Schiller said.
Would you like to see an OS X and iOS mashup, or perhaps a Surface-style tablet/notebook that can operate in both modes? Leave your comments below.
