I would argue that once the dust settled post-Windows 8 with Windows 10 a full decade ago, the touch screen has been the opposite of what you’ve described for Windows systems. It absolutely is a harmless feature that you can ignore. There’s no reason not to have one.
Same goes for Linux. My CachyOS install on my Framework 13 Pro has a touch screen. There’s literally no downside for me having it. I don’t have to use it if I don’t want to. But if I want to scroll a website or scrub a video the option is there.
I don't think you can say that. Windows 10+ has a tablet mode that is completely detached from desktop mode, and it's a global toggle. Switching on tablet mode brings full-screen, upscaled, simplified explorer and settings, and switches off the classic desktop launcher with paper bin, shortcuts, etc. in favor of a larger "Start"-type menu launcher. What deeper and experimental integration there was in Windows 8 had just been removed as it became clear MS couldn't quite sell into the iPad/Android tablet market or compete in terms of power management. After stripping most of Windows 8 innovations, what remains is a touch keyboard, touch mouse emulation, and a few affordances in explorer to make tablets not outright terrible, with the target audience education and mbas interested in mobile powerpoint and web/mail.
Windows 10 had a tablet mode. Windows 11 does not - it just appropriately scales up the padding and size of some UI controls to make them easier to tap.
I’m failing to see where there’s some kind of downside here. What you describe doesn’t really sound like a bad experience.
You cant figure out how those kinds of requirements might influence or curtail development in the non touch parts of the system?
We saw the same thing happen with mobile first on websites.
The introduction of the mouse led to developers paying less attention to keyboard shortcuts and function keys, but I don’t see anyone seriously saying computers should not have mice.
Or for that matter, that adding support for game controllers (something that has actually happened with Linux desktops) would led to curtailed development of non-controller parts.
Have you found some kind of performance or other detriment of the mere support of touch screens or is this just theoretical?
It's a fine experience. It's not what Apple is doing though. Apple is doing the half way experience that will leave all unhappy.
Sounds like touch screens on laptops are so great! I sure am excited about the future of touch screen Macs! /s
I made this point below, but Windows 10 still doesn't have the display-real-estate efficiency of Windows 7. Windows 10 wastes all kind of screen space on large, flat surfaces that a non-touch-screen user will never use. Windows 7 wasn't as pretty as Windows 10, but it was better at displaying information.
So actually, you are harmed by this decision every day you use a Windows 10/11 laptop. You live with this every day. You just don't know what you're missing.
Let's try to imagine a situation when Win10+ UI has "the same display-real-estate efficiency of Windows 7".
Would it change anyhthing? No. Because developers of the programs what are not part of Windows aren't keen on keeping "the same efficiency". Audacity 4, Thunderbird are good examples of a bad interface - and they did it disregarding the OS UI.
I've been using Thunderbird since I don't even remember when and I never noticed that it's got a bad interface, unless when they broke manually sorting folders and fixed it years later. It's got the UI that a mail client has to have. GMail does have a bad UI. Sometimes I don't understand where a message ends and where a message starts. Luckily I don't have to use it.
The obvious downside is that all the UI elements are unnecessarily big for all the people not using touch.
Not anymore, a lot of apps (from browsers to the system UI) adapt to whether you have a touch screen and whether you use it. For example, Windows Explorer and Edge (and Chrome) still use (relatively-)compact widgets on touchscreen-less computers.
unless i misunderstand the implication as to their behavior on touchscreenful computers, this would seem to poorly address the concern upthread of explicitly expecting the touchscreen hardware, and thus the concomitant software annoyances, to become effectively unavoidable
Are you making this point from the context where you’ve never tried a touch screen computer?
This isn’t an unimplemented theory. You can head over to Best Buy right now and see what it’s like to use a touch screen laptop.
I feel like all this debate is taking place in an odd vacuum where a lot of us are talking about a bunch of potential problems with having a touch screen on a computer and all these problems are already resolved.
Maybe it’s similar to the whole iPhone duo thing where Apple users are just discovering all the caveats of a foldable phone, but we’ve already gone over all of it with competitors.
You make a good point. Windows 10 course corrected fairly heavily from Windows 8. The tablet mode was there but you could ignore it pretty easily.
However, I still feel like Apple is in their Microsoft era where they're making some of the same mistakes Microsoft have made in the past 20 years.
Aero -> Liquid Glass
Ads in the OS -> Ads in core applications
Fullscreen ads for Microsoft services in the OS -> banner ads for Apple services in the OS
Dark patterns for Windows 11 upgrades -> Dark patterns for macOS 26 upgrades
Windows Mixed Reality -> Vision Pro
I could also say Surface Duo -> iPhone Duo but at this time it's too early to tell. I also think that a touchscreen Mac is a mistake. Not because it's something Microsoft already did but because the reason a MacBook does not need a touchscreen is because Apple has best-in-class trackpads.
> It absolutely is a harmless feature that you can ignore. There’s no reason not to have one
what i've learning developing and creating products over the years is that harmless features tend to be the ones that cause the most problems. for ex, now you have to add touchscreen code to the OS vs previously not having it at all. and this code or feature we will support for the rest of the lifetime of that product.
While I agree with you in many cases in concept, I think it's also possible to erroneously avoid features by being too afraid of this.
In the case of touch screens, it hasn't caused a lasting problem in Windows or Linux.
I turn it off in the bios.
1. Takes extra battery 2. I’m not touching my screen regardless. It gets dirty enough
My last three or four laptops, which never even booted Windows, have had disabled touchscreens
This is like saying you take the battery out of your Casio wristwatch at night to conserve battery.
The UI is worse, which is the GP’s claim, and you don’t address that at all?
The way you describe it, this release amounts to an extremely large and expensive Touch Bar.
I agree. KDE is by far the best desktop environment for Linux laptops with touchscreens.