"I think the charming and articulate executive is putting us on." — Jean-Louis Gassée
From "Apple: No Mac-In-Touch" posted Sunday in Gassée's Monday Note:
Reviews of new Apple Silicon Macs are not out yet. They’re likely to be good. But one small disappointment lingers: Why didn’t Apple use the transition as an opportunity to bring Touch to the Mac User Interface?...
Disappointment over the Missing Touch didn’t escape the attention of the Apple execs who were sent into the media landscape for a barnstorming expedition of post-launch interviews. In an interview with the UK’s Independent, Sr VP Craig Federighi pooh-poohs the Touch speculation:
“I gotta tell you when we released Big Sur, and these articles started coming out saying, ‘Oh my God, look, Apple is preparing for touch’. I was thinking like, ‘Whoa, why?’
“We had designed and evolved the look for macOS in a way that felt most comfortable and natural to us, not remotely considering something about touch.”
I think the charming and articulate executive is putting us on.
My take: Ben Thompson and John Gruber, who usually agree about everything Apple, clashed on this issue in a Dithering podcast last week. Thompson thinks a touchscreen Mac is inevitable. Gruber disagrees. If you want a touchscreen, he says, get an iPad. Listen here.
P.S. Having wasted much of Sunday watching a half-dozen MacOS update attempts fail without apology or explanation, Big Sur arrived overnight. The new screen looks pretty touch-friendly to me.
Hybrid? No, the MacPad.
Mixing metaphors, I’m sure Mr. Gassée didn’t show all his cards when he used to be an Apple Computer, Inc. exec.